Influencers Bring Reach, Athletes Bring Trust | EP 98

[00:00] In the beginning, episode ninety-eight. Courtney Atkinson, how are you? Liam Flanagan — I'm actually very tired, I just finished up a twenty K run. Hey, you look a bit — yeah, you do look a little fatigued. I was going to say I'm good, I'm good, but actually — I jumped in for twenty, so I'm heading away. I've got a bit of a long weekend coming up, so I'm not going to run for the next three days. I consulted Claude about it — well, I didn't, but I kind of did.

[00:30] Yeah, and I was like, okay, let's just take it easy, and I went out for 20K. But I started gym this week, so that's playing a factor — you know when you first hit the gym and get that soreness? That's playing a factor too. I ran Tuesday, did the first kind of proper session since the marathon — four by two K with ninety seconds float. And I tried to run marathon pace again, so I did that at about three fifty, just to monitor my heart rate.

[01:01] My heart rate was fine — I've recovered. However, I still think my muscles are a bit beaten up, because I was fine in the session, but today I was just plodding around. That's interesting — I've never really discovered that with races I've done previously, but I've talked a bit about it with the miler stuff. Aerobically you feel fine, but it's the muscles. That's something most people probably don't discover. Yeah, I do believe they were a bit cooked, but then on the flip side, I ran three times in the bush last week — in the forest, ran a trail —

[01:37] — a diversion, so that was a new stimulus. Went to the gym again for the first time, new stimulus. Did a session on Tuesday for the first time, new stimulus. So it's probably common sense I'm a bit beaten up. I've been back in the gym a bit at the moment too, and I did some squats with a bar and some weight on them — man, it took my quads a while to recover from that. You know the one everyone remembers, the abductor — the adductor down the inside? It's always the first to go.

[02:10] Yeah, and you know, if you're going to do three reps, you do the first two and you're like, I'm good, I'm good, and then you go down on the third and you're like, no, this — yeah. It's a tough place to — unlike a bench press where someone can spot you, it's a tough place to get some experience with. You know what it feels like. But, to quote the great Adzy Gordon — as we get older, we have to do more to maintain, not to improve. We have to do more just to maintain. You've got to get back in the gym, do all this stuff. Can we start with some training stuff?

[02:42] Yeah, I want to start with something — sounds very romantic. This is a session I was introduced to in the last two years by you on this podcast. It took me a while to understand it, and then it took me even longer to get a grasp of how to actually train it properly. I'm back running with some purpose at the moment — I want to get some speed back in my legs, I want to get my 5K time back,

[03:15] and subsequently I want my ten K time to improve. I'm back in that world a little bit at the moment — maybe only running three times a week, but the non-negotiable in my running week right now is the mona fartlek to start the week. Disclaimer, the mona fartlek isn't mine — I want to talk a little bit about it. I know we've talked about it probably in the early episodes, but I want to go over it again because a lot more people are in the community now.

[03:50] Can you give us a brief history of the mona fartlek? Well, we're still — you've heard different people talk about it, but there's only one guy who can tell you the true history and that's Steve Monaghetti. Steve, if you want to come on — I'm sure he will, if we travel to him. We'll go to him. Road trip. Road trip. No, my history — I can only talk about my history with it, right?

[04:21] My introduction to it was with Pat Clohessy. I'd put Pat a little bit like the godfather of distance running here in Australia as far as coaching goes — obviously Dea Costa's coach, and he's had his finger in probably the majority of it up until the more recent decade. Everyone who's done distance running has crossed paths with him in some shape or form. We'd be out at the University of Queensland, running around the cinder track there, or the —

[04:54] — I don't know what you'd call it, kind of dirt, I suppose, around the university there. And it was just a given that we would do it. So interestingly, as you went through, I think a lot of why so many people love the mona fartlek is, one, it's branded. Yeah, interesting — it is the number one branded session, and you go, what do you do in your week? I do a long run, and I do a mona fartlek. You don't really go and say four hundreds is branded.

[05:26] Although I do have Deek's Quarters in my watch, my Deek's Quarters never got the play — no, it never had the full send that mona fartlek got. You go to any runner, they know the mona fartlek. Deek's Quarters, I'd say you've got to be pretty in-depth into running to know that. Deek's Quarters, mona fartlek — mona fartlek goes hand in hand with a long run. It's literally like, what do you do in the week? It's just there. So I think branding's number one — it's easy to default to.

[05:56] And then two, I think it's become a bit of a default session because you can do it in so many different shapes and forms. Anyone — I mean the way I know the traditional session, and this will be debated again, only Steve will be the one to tell you the truth — I've done it in the form of four by two-nineties, with ninety-second rest; six or four by sixty seconds with equal recovery; and then four thirties by thirty, and then four by fifteens and fifteens.

[06:31] To be clear, the mona fartlek does have a Wikipedia entry, and it's exactly as you described — two nineties, four sixties, four thirties. Then a modified mona fartlek can come down and you skip the nineties and just do the sixties. Or you go up and add extras — you can put a three-minute on the front of it, so three into three, or three into ninety seconds — or then you're just making stuff up, right? But here's the key: how you do it matters, because it is a fartlek. Often when I'm up with Gold Coast Run Co,

[07:08] Jacko there will prescribe it in different ways — like, okay, today we want to keep the floats moving, so it becomes more of a sustained threshold run. But if a race is coming up, it'll be prescribed more as, let's really work into them, and when we come down to the quicker reps we really start moving, but take the jogs in between. Yeah. The thing I love about it, and the reason I wanted to talk about it today, is — as I said, I'm back into trying to run with some purpose, and I

[07:43] don't quite have my long run back into me yet, but my mona I've done the last two, three weeks now, and the thing I love most about it for a lot of the hobby joggers out there, for a lot of the people who maybe haven't trained with purpose previously — you talk about junk miles, you hear people talk about junk runs, where you just put your shoes on, you know you're going to go for a run, you roll out, ten K's later you're back home and you've just done 10K. It's not nothing, but you maybe haven't done any of it with any intensity or purpose or direction.

[08:20] Mona fartlek for me, with a twenty-minute warm-up into the session into a ten-minute cooldown, works out to be about 10.3, 10.5K for me. And that 10K flies by in comparison — it absolutely flies by from a time perspective. If I go out and roll through 10K's just junk-miling it, there are times where I'm like, geez, I'm looking at my watch —

[08:53] it's like watching a clock on the wall at work, going, geez, when's this day going to end? By comparison, when the mona fartlek's pre-planned into my watch, giving me the alerts, time flies by. It's like having a busy day at work, but a good busy, as opposed to just being at work. I couldn't agree more. The way I put it is it's like having short-term goals to get to a bigger aspiration, a bigger goal.

[09:23] If you put the short-term goals along the way, everything becomes — you're focused for a lot shorter, and that becomes easier, and your mind's on something. It's exactly the same as putting some type of structure into a session. Now, what I have to work on, going back to what you were saying about doing the mona fartlek session as prescribed — right now I'm not actually letting my float be a rest. It's not a float, it's a jog, and that's where I've got to let the ego move on a little and bring the intensity to my speed efforts.

[10:03] I've got to slow them down so my recoveries don't just become jogs — they need to go back to being floats. I think this is where I'm probably a little torn — it's branded so strongly that you do it, but it's probably not a great speed session, it's probably more speed tolerance. But it's actually an over-under session in the end — going quicker than you can handle, then coming back and recovering. And how quickly you do that float recovery improves as you get fitter.

[10:37] That float, or that running just under threshold, should become easier and quicker. And this is a great thing with running, and I think this is where maybe those newer to running, so focused on Strava and getting quicker and on speed — it would be very easy to look at those 20 minutes we talked about and go, well, I'm doing the 20 minutes quicker, so I'm doing better. Or look at it a different way — you could go, well, I'm running the sixty seconds quicker,

[11:10] so I'm getting quicker — but if you're running the sixty seconds quicker while doing the rest of the recovery easier, it's not necessarily going to help you go out and run a 10K faster, or a 5K, or a marathon, or whatever. It's that same thing about running at the everyday level — ultimately you're only racing yourself. It's like golf — if you get to the end of the hole and someone goes, what did you have, and you say five when you know you had a seven, it doesn't impact who you're playing against.

[11:40] You know in your head you cheated. You know you cheated, right? If you go out and run the mona fartlek and go, look, my ninety-second efforts are quicker — fine, but my float in between is bordering on a walk, you know in your head that you haven't really earned it. The ninety seconds might look impressive, but you know you haven't admitted to yourself. The way the mona fartlek works best is when you're using it to try to improve your speed threshold, or utilising it in a way where

[12:17] you're teaching your body — it's building up lactate, you're building up to a point where you're actually going too hard to sustain over longer distances at that pace, and then you're bringing it back to a recovery point, just enough to recover, and then you go again. So you're really teaching your body to go over, under, over, under, which in the end — we talk a lot about marathons and perfect pacing — look, it's not going to help you for that necessarily in a tactical way,

[12:47] but if you're actually going head to head with a mate in a 5K or 10K, that's something — or if you're at the level where you're trying to win races, the tactics of being able to race and handle surges and come back, that's racing. That's what makes mona fartlek fun for me in a group — it becomes more of a tactical race. Someone might be a little fitter and able to run the recoveries a bit harder, which makes it harder for the guys who can go faster.

[13:21] It all becomes a bit of a tactical, psychological session. If you're not watching this episode, if you're just listening and not watching it on video — Courtney's eyes literally lit up when he started talking about the idea of racing and tactics. Interestingly, I bumped into a former professional basketballer the other day, and I was just talking with her — she's here on the Coast, she's relocated, raising a family, but also thinking about what she wants to get into afterwards.

[13:51] And she was talking about the fact that, being a former elite athlete, she still has that drive to achieve and pursue a goal. And I was just like, yeah, it's funny — I do a podcast with a former Olympian who has that finding-finish-lines disease. So yeah, we all have our problems. Not a bad problem to have. Anyway, shout out to the mona fartlek — if you don't know how to do one, it's very googlable, you'll be able to find some training, it's pretty simple.

[14:24] I can't recommend it enough as a hobby jogger, and as you've just heard from Courtney, it prevails at the elite level too. How's it been — have you been back out in the water? I haven't been back out in the water. I did punch out two K's in the pool the other day, which for me is a lot. We've talked a bit about flow state in running before — I've never found flow state in the water, and I don't think I ever will. I don't know if it's my mind, and I know part of it is, but it's also to do with my physiological make-up.

[15:02] I can't find that — the act of swimming for me isn't a comfortable one and never feels comfortable. I actually had a swim this week, Monday morning out in the ocean, with Ty. He was telling me about you tagging along — there's nothing like being shark bait out there, Liam. Sounds like you'd lost the groove. Oh yeah, it was a dark morning, everything about it. I was dressed like a seal.

[15:32] I understand why there was some anxiety, some panic out there — I feel it too. If you're off the back and out there at dusk, it's not a great feeling. But you've got to keep going and doing it. He's got a lot more meat on him though — I don't think sharks would want to take him on, they'd think he was one of their own. He's enormous, he's two metres plus.

[16:02] The reason I'm out there doing it — I don't know if I told you this — I've signed up for a swim run. No, I thought you were just doing it for Noosa. Noosa as well, but I've signed up for Swim Run Australia, the Gold Coast event, the twelve K. Give me some information, I'm not right across it. Basically it's a swim run event — I'm doing the twelve K distance, which has five swimming sections all up, totalling one point seven K.

[16:34] The longest swim will be five hundred metres, and the run sections — there's six of them — the longest run is four point two K, and it's about ten, ten point three K all up. So where's the scariest swim section in that? You're out on your own — you're not with a partner in swim run? No, mine's a solo thing, so I'm on my own, no one around. Where's the bit you go, oh geez, really? There isn't one. No.

[17:04] The truth is, the way it's set up, I think you swim out around Elephant Rock, but that's it — for the most part the rest is all beachy stuff. You don't swim around Burleigh Head — which I did the other day, and that wasn't fun — you run through Burleigh Headland. So in that respect there really isn't too much terrifying from a swim perspective.

[17:34] I'm going to take it on — this is coming up in September, so I've got some time to train for it. I was going to say you're shortchanging yourself with a two K swim if it was this weekend. No, no, no — there's also a twenty K event as well, which you do in a pair, you could do that with someone, but there's no need. That's the other part about swallowing your ego with some of these things — you don't always have to jump straight to the hundred-mile race, as I learned earlier this year. Sometimes you just go and take on something you want to have a crack at.

[18:04] So no, I haven't been back in the ocean, but for those following along with my attempts to lose a bit of weight, I'm down about two kilos now, with a bit more size coming back through the shoulders because I'm back in the gym. Liam's coming to show you the video of him benching — people don't think I could bench a hundred kilos, and I reckon I'll do it today. Anyway, can we talk a bit more running and industry stuff?

[18:35] Yeah, I want to give a bit of love to a couple of things. First, Armidale Running Festival's coming back — Ryan Kelso and his crew out west, thirteenth and fourteenth of March, if you want to get involved. It came back last year, Kelso dragged it back to life, it was a great success, and he's bringing it back again in twenty twenty-seven. So Armidale Running Festival, go see that beautiful part of Australia. And then I had some audio last week we didn't play.

[19:07] I'm going to see if I've still got it here — I think I do, okay, let's can that one for now. I want to talk to you a little bit about Nike. Over the start of this year, I feel like we talked a bit about Adidas having super success amongst the race winners — Sabastian Sawe breaking two hours in a pair of Adidas.

[19:37] And we've seen other brands — these bandit running, these niche brands — emerging and starting to make noise and capture a share of the market. But Nike, and we've talked about this from a bigness perspective in the world of sport, they're still the biggest dog in the yard. And I thought this was really interesting, because I wasn't aware they'd done this before, but I've done a bit of research and they have.

[20:07] Keely Hodgkinson — tell me what you know about Keely. From the UK, the middle-distance runner, reigning Olympic champion at 800 metres, basically the middle-distance queen, right? I wasn't aware they'd done this before, but they have — Keely Hodgkinson has unveiled her first signature Nike running collection. And the reason I found this interesting is, if you remember, around Noah Lyles —

[20:41] he'd sit up there in his press conferences — this is the American hundred, two hundred metre runner — and talk about why sprinters, why track athletes, aren't treated like basketballers who get their own shoes. And not a spike — that's the thing that stuck with me, Noah said, I don't want a spike, I want a signature shoe I can make money off, because your average Joe, Dick, Sally, Tom isn't buying hundred-metre spikes.

[21:11] They want to buy shoes they can walk around in — why can't I have one of those? Keely's collection is made up of not just performance shoes, but Vomeros as well. And I didn't realise Nike had done a bit of this before, but what it looks like with Keely — the shoes themselves, the fit, everything she's making — it looks awesome.

[21:41] It's obviously designed and usable at the elite level as well as the average level, but it showed me that Nike's always had the best of the best wearing their stuff — LeBron, MJ, Tiger Woods, all that sort of thing. And they had a reshift — we talked about this I believe a year ago — where they went, okay, things aren't going quite to plan, and they went back to being athlete-first. And I love the look of what Keely Hodgkinson's put together — and clearly, for them, they've identified her.

[22:15] She's twenty-four years of age, she's in her prime, she's already at the pinnacle, but she'll probably be in her prime for the next Olympics, maybe two Olympics. I think you're going to see a massive push around Keely Hodgkinson. Go and have a look at the shoes in the collection, tell me what you think. So it's across — I'm just looking now — the Vaporfly, there's shoes across the whole collection. Yes, there's the track spike she'll race in, and then a Pegasus 42, which is a great shoe.

[22:46] Have I spoken about the Pegasus 42? Not sure — talk about it. The new one? I'm sold, love it. In the past, you know, everyone knows the Vomero — she's got a Vomero in there too, with all the new cushioning. The Pegasus gives me a bit of nostalgia — they've got a full front-to-back air pocket through them.

[23:16] So they've moved away from just pure foam a little there, but what they've done with the flex and the actual ground feel — you're not feeling like you're running on a pair of clouds. As soon as I got in them, you felt the air, and that's something I remember as a kid with some of the shoes. The best pair of runners I ever owned was the Nike Pegasus. I've still got an old pair of Vomero 5's, I might still have them in the other room — a front air pocket, same thing.

[23:49] You walk around in them as a shoe and — remember Air Max? I can still remember, my first ever pair of running shoes, trainers, I got from Baylety Sports in Adelaide. For anybody out there, Adelaide listeners, Baylety Sports still around — vivid collector Nike Pegasus, I still remember them, light blue, white with the light blue swoosh. But was that the first pair of running shoes, like a sneaker?

[24:19] No, that's the one I wore at school for sport and stuff. So that was the first shoe I can remember — can you remember the very first running shoe you bought, buying it as a "I'm getting into my running era" purchase? Was it, what, 2016 for you? Can you remember the very first shoe I bought when I first considered myself a runner and went to buy a shoe specifically for running?

[24:49] The fact you're looking it up — you obviously can't remember. I'm trying to remember, because I can picture it plain as day, my first ever true running shoe. It was a Nike Waffle — white, green tick. Anyone from my age and era who was a runner, they were so soft, even the base of them had soft spikes in them.

[25:20] Effectively, like you'd think of an old-school track spike — they just put rubber nubs in where the spikes used to go, and it was as flat and non-rubber as you can imagine. But it was iconic, white with the green. Plain as day I can remember — you had to have them as a cross-country runner. I don't ever recall — even running cross country at school — I can't picture a shoe from back then. But interestingly, from 2016 through to now, we've talked about this historically, I've been an ASICS runner.

[25:56] I've run in the Superblast, the Novablast, and the Edge, and on occasion I've used the carbon ones. But interestingly, when you talked about that, do you remember going and buying a pair of shoes — the Mizuno Wave Rider? I ran in them, this was back probably in 2016. I remember buying them because they had a little bit of a carbon plate thing in them.

[26:26] They were a horrible colourway that I purchased, and I reckon I gave the City to Surf a crack in them. And then once I moved, I think I bought a pair of ASICS after that — I was like, geez, those Mizunos were shit, in hindsight I did not enjoy them at all. And I've never run in a pair since. But anyway, going back to Keely Hodgkinson — what I wanted to say was, if people get a chance to look, the shoes run the full gamut, as Courtney's just said.

[26:58] She's got the Vomeros, the Vomero Pluses in there too. It's not quite a street shoe that people would cruise around in, which is what Noah Lyles was hoping Nike would do for him, but to me it shows a bit about direction. I had a bit of a Google — last year they did a range for Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Similarly, as far as I could tell, he had some Pegasus in there as well, and the Vaporfly shoe.

[27:31] And obviously his track spike as well. They called it the Jakob Ingebrigtsen Essentials collection. They've done it for Faith Kipyegon as well, and unsurprisingly they've done it for Eliud Kipchoge too. But I think you can see that athlete-first mentality you talked about with Nike — the next big athlete that announces themselves in that middle-distance range, someone who captures us as an audience the way a Jordan or a Tiger Woods did, I think you'll see Nike get

[28:12] behind them in a huge way. I think they're just waiting for that athlete — obviously Keely Hodgkinson is one of them for them, but be on the lookout for the next one. I love what they've done with this. I read a great article by Brad Bricknell — do you know that name? I feel like you might have mentioned it — currently at Mizuno, he's the marketing manager or director for Mizuno here in Australia and across some of APAC.

[28:47] He wrote a really interesting article that resonated with me the other day around athlete endorsement. I won't get this a hundred percent right, but it was pretty much the fact that there's a place in this world today for athletes and for influencers — each has its place, but how do you actually define what they do?

[29:19] Because it's getting muddled these days — athletes are getting signed into contracts, and I had a conversation about this with a snowboarder yesterday, about this expectation to be the best athlete in the world but also be an influencer at the same time. How can you, while trying to become an Olympic champion, spending a hundred percent of your day focused on being the best athlete you can, also be expected to have this other job of an influencer where you've got to carry a camera with you and

[29:49] hold it up to your face and do all that — whereas the influencer or creator in that space doesn't have to train to be elite. They do a great job at what they do, of course, but there's a place for both. What does each actually bring? Brad put it in a really good way — the influencer, the creator, they bring reach. But what the athlete brings, like a Keely, that the influencer will never bring, is trust.

[30:21] Trust and belief, because that's what athletes actually stand for. They're not there to bring the numbers necessarily, but they're out there doing the thing at the highest level possible, and with that it brings a lot of trust. So when you're going to buy a pair of shoes — here's where I'll bring this together — you talk about Keely having, let's say, the performance range, her signature shoes.

[30:51] There should be trust there — you're buying into that trust of the shoe being worn by the best, not just buying it because it's her. Versus a signature shoe you just wear every day — maybe that's actually best told by someone who is purely giving as much reach as possible,

[31:23] telling as many people as possible about the shoe, and you buy into that for a different reason. So neither's right or wrong — both have their place, they're just very different purposes. And this is why I loved reading this article so much — I think that's where sports marketing, everyone thinks it should all come together, but maybe it actually needs to be differentiated more. Each actually has its own pure purpose.

[31:55] Which brings me to a question — are you going to buy the Alphafly and wear it in the marathon because the fastest marathoners in the world wear it, or because the person with the most followers wears it? For me, I'd wear it because the fastest marathoners wear it — that's trust. Yeah. Are we getting the two mixed up sometimes? Yes, definitely. What you're talking about — I've been trying to craft an analogy in my head of how it exists.

[32:32] The best one I could come up with is that they're two planets within the same universe, right — the universe of running and branding and all that sort of stuff. These two planets exist in that universe, but they're very, very different. They both serve a purpose, they're both necessary in today's digital world, and there might be crossover at times.

[33:06] On the surface it can seem like similar messaging, but fundamentally they're very different — trust versus reach. Well done to Keely Hodgkinson, and again I like the aesthetic of what she's come up with there. Have you ever — you never got to design anything, a Courtney Atkinson thing? Not really a signature, no, not input into anything like that. That's the thing I'd always be really interested in — it would be super interesting to be a fly on the wall of the process as an athlete designs their signature collection.

[33:40] I'm sure the top Nike athletes, in this case, have had prototypes of those shoes before they've come to the consumer market. But at the same time, Keely's isn't necessarily her signature shoe in the sense that the Vomero isn't her design — she may have had input into a shoe along with other athletes when it was designed, I have no idea. But I think the next level is

[34:10] — this is my shoe. Like how the basketballers have signature shoes — the Air Jordan was a shoe made for Michael Jordan that he had input into. LeBron's would have happened in a similar way, I just can't think of the name off the top of my head — if anyone knows one, let us know. Interestingly, did you know Kevin Hart, the comedian, has his own shoe through Nike?

[34:42] The Nike Hustle Hart, a training shoe he developed with them, back in about twenty seventeen I reckon. Anyway, I'm sure if you went down the old history of shoes there'd be plenty more. The closest thing I've heard of, in my area, where it's specifically "this is a shoe" — we talked about the Solomon Genesis and Ryan Sandes, I ran with him in Austria earlier this year.

[35:13] I brought it up — I don't know if it was completely all him, but the story behind that shoe is that it's Ryan's shoe, he developed it. Cool. But then he never got — well, that's where how big a stick you carry into these meetings matters, right? It really does. Anyway, all right, let's move on from shoe chat. Last week we were talking about the world's fittest person, where CrossFit were claiming —

[35:46] yeah, friend of the pod, Reedy, told me I embarrassed myself when I mentioned Ross Edgley. I was throwing his name into the mix for conversation purposes, all right. Well, my note on this was the massive love for KB, Christian Billmeyer — around VO2, which I'm still not advocating is the fittest-person metric, because we also know some of the best endurance athletes don't necessarily have the best VO2 either.

[36:20] But at least it's a data point we can all agree on. Cyclists — unfortunately I was on the cycling bandwagon, still think that's the toughest event at the highest level. Obviously, with what's been in the news of late, I got slammed on that. But to back you up, there were a few Ross Edgley lovers out there, in full support of Ross,

[36:51] saying he's done things no one else has done. And that's kind of the point — he's done things no one else has done because no one else goes to do them. And this is where I'll plant my flag, Liam — I don't — well, I do care, there are amazing feats going on across the world, the fastest people across Antarctica, everything going on across India, whatever it is. But the best and the fittest

[37:21] are the pinnacle of sportspeople who go and do an event that's been run every year, has history, that you can compare back over years and years. And if you're in that sport, that's the event everyone wants to win. Look, the great thing about these sorts of chats is there's no right answer. No, there isn't. You can never put these in a vacuum —

[37:54] it's like trying to compare eras of different sports. You can never compare — the example a lot of people use is Steph Curry, right, who arguably changed the game of basketball, the way he came into the sport with the shooting. He had really serious injury concerns when he came in — if he comes into the sport thirty years ago, he doesn't have the career he's had, because the medicine, the medical support, the footwear support wasn't there — all the things that needed to occur for Steph Curry to become Steph Curry.

[38:34] He had the ability, the work ethic and all that, but he had legitimate physical issues. How can you compare what he's achieved with a Pistol Pete Maravich, or someone who played in an early era of basketball without all that support around them? Same thing when you look at cricketers today compared with Don Bradman, right —

[39:04] what Don was batting with was a twig compared to what every professional cricketer walks out with these days. Don Bradman walked out with a single musket, and these blokes walk out with a super cannon and a million rounds of ammunition. It's impossible to compare the eras. Then when you talk about what you're saying, that an elite athlete has to be

[39:40] competing professionally in a sport with history, at the pinnacle of that sport every year — well, what about an individual soccer player who plays for a minnow nation? Erling Haaland's an example — just because Norway never wins the World Cup, does that mean he might not be the best footballer in the world? And that's my point — it's incomparable. He agreed with everything about comparing eras,

[40:10] comparing all of them. But we were talking about the world's fittest person. And I still think it's those true long-distance endurance sports — and this is the key — the competitive nature of them, where everyone has one goal, to be the best at it.

[40:42] That can be cross-country skiing, cycling, Ironman, tracking endurance as the mark of fitness. It's how you describe fitness, right, and I'm in full agreement there — but aerobic fitness, the person who can use their body to go the fastest, not survive — because then you get into survival and a whole different debate. I've got a grandma about to turn a hundred, so —

[41:14] — fittest in the world, for sure. Hey, we're never going to win this, but we loved everyone giving us their two bob's worth. There was love, and hate's not too strong a word — there were definitely some people who weren't happy. Bringing this into the world of entertainment — Jason Statham, the English actor, just turned fifty-nine, and Men's Health, the Aussie mag, did a feature on him. I love this quote.

[41:45] I saw this on my way to the gym the other day — Statham trains hard, but not just to look good. "Muscle men grow on trees," he said in an old interview. "They can tense their muscles and look good in a mirror — so what? I'm interested in practical strength that's going to help me run, jump, twist, and punch." And he prefers to be time-efficient, get the most out of short, high-intensity sessions — "Get serious, do forty-five minutes, not an hour and a half of nonsense, it's so much more rewarding." But that line — "I'm interested in practical strength that's going to help me run, jump, twist, and punch" —

[42:16] I'm like, that's good, that's kind of — so I'll go off on another tangent, because you hear a lot about — I don't know how much you hear it now — "fit for purpose" was a big thing, right? When I hear that, I'm like, you're fit for purpose to go and do the activity you need to do. So you've got to condition yourself for a purpose, to go and achieve an activity, or in her case, win a fight,

[42:47] in his case, film an action movie. So my question is, in cycling terms or running terms, your fit-for-purpose is to go and win that race. What happens if there's no outcome? The fit-for-purpose is just to do the activity — that's a part of our world now, there's a lot of people whose purpose is for the Instagram. Well, that's fit for purpose too. So what's my fit for purpose? To look good — it's still fit for purpose, right?

[43:19] Is that purpose any less worthy than the purpose of winning a fight, or filming a movie, or running a race? Well — yes, it's less worthy. Go do something with your body, go challenge yourself, that's your job, Liam. And they're making money out of it — it's fit for purpose. From talking about fit for purpose — Maccas.

[43:50] The breakfast of champions. You're saying Bolt used to smash chicken nuggets before going out and destroying everybody over a hundred, two hundred metres? So this was in Runner's World mag, kind of made me laugh but also made me think — when you love authenticity and truth — I can't say this name right —

[44:26] Jacoby Tharpe — you nailed it — broke the thirteen-year-old world record, and his signature meal, like you said, Maccas. Jacoby Tharpe's Maccas order, let me find it — two cheeseburgers, a large fries, and ten chicken McNuggets. Here's what I'll say about that order — he's young, he's fast, he's getting away with it right now. I can give him a hot tip — at forty, he won't be getting away with that. What was the actual record he broke? A thirteen-year-old record.

[44:57] Not the athlete's age — a thirteen-year-old-standing record in the 110 metre hurdles. He ran a twelve seventy-five. Wow. Firstly, he's a smart young man, because everybody knows two cheeseburgers is better than a double cheeseburger — cheeseburgers by themselves beat a double cheeseburger. What's your Maccas order? Last night, coming back, I was at a function in Brisbane, finger food, quite a fancy function, but you know when you only get finger —

[45:33] food and that's it? Had the same thing last night at the AFLW Gold Coast Suns launch, it was nice but I had about seven arancini balls, and it doesn't quite tick the box. So driving home from Brizzy to Springfield, Maccas, beautiful, about nine PM — small cheeseburger meal, because I'd already eaten and didn't want to go overboard with a full meal, but I threw in the chocolate thickshake.

[46:04] You like that one? That's literally my meal hack too — I can take or leave soft drinks, but I've got a mad sweet tooth, and you can't order a McFlurry with your meal and eat it in that order, and you don't want to smash the McFlurry first. So what you do is incorporate dessert into your meal by making your drink a chocolate thickshake. I'm very simple though — I'd hit their slushy equivalent, the Maccas frozen Coke.

[46:35] Frozen Coke, but at that time of night I'd hit a quarter pounder. Yeah, man — it's kind of like a man's cheeseburger, you should try one sometime. But again, chicken nuggets — if they made me run as fast as Jacoby I'd be there in a heartbeat. Have you heard the Logan Morris story? No. Sticking with Maccas and athletics — you know who Logan Morris is? No. Logan Morris is a man Tom Rockliff thinks could be worth two million dollars in the AFL.

[47:08] Logan Morris, young full forward — turned twenty-one earlier this year, already has two premierships under his belt. This is a young man with a huge future, an incredible career already — two premierships, I think he'll win a third this year, three-time premiership player at the age of twenty-one. But his debut — and I called this game, this was back in what year, must have been twenty twenty-four —

[47:40] he played in the reserves for Brisbane, was an emergency for the game, and in the warm-up somebody got injured, so someone else came in and he became the on-standby emergency. Then somebody else got injured in the warm-up again, and all of a sudden Logan Morris, who'd already played in the reserves and run 13K's,

[48:11] had to make his AFL debut. But this is the story that became famous, because after he finished his first game of footy, he went through Maccas — this is the Logan Morris order — a barbecue Angus meal, six nuggets on the side, and a frappe. Nuggets is a young man's game, right? I don't think so. Great — I know they're great, I just — you never hear a young fella order Maccas without some nuggets. I can't remember when I've ordered nuggets myself —

[48:47] except for my son. You're a young man too. Just to put a full stop on Logan Morris — for those playing along, he also played that debut game in a pair of footy boots one size too small, because he didn't have his own boots — he didn't think he was going to be playing, so he made his debut with a belly full of Maccas and a pair of size twelves instead of the size thirteens he normally wears. This is club sports — and this is another thing, if you're just getting into running and getting slammed on,

[49:26] whether it's your friends, your run club, or social media, telling you everything's got to be absolutely perfect — the reality is it doesn't. One thing here and there isn't going to make or break you. I used to race against a guy in triathlon, Ben Bright — he went on to become coach for the UK team, had a lot to do with me racing against the Brownlees and all that. I don't know why I remember this, but when I was real young and he was winning a lot of races, KFC the night before was just his go-to meal.

[50:01] Ben, if you're out there and that was a lie, apologies. Ryan Bailey — remember the track cyclist? He was built, wasn't he, a sprinter, and he was addicted to KFC. Whatever your body is, it's a car, and you find the fuel that works — whether it's E10 or premium, whatever makes it go. Hey, on the VIP areas — my brilliant idea about why we should have toilets you can pay for, I said you'd be up for three grand, five grand —

[50:40] I was completely wrong, this already exists. Do you know why I never realised it exists? Because I've never needed to use it — you don't need to buy VIP entry when people are calling you up and asking you to come participate in their events. As a former elite athlete, a two-time Olympian, you get invited, you get the VIP treatment without realising people pay for it. I was still standing at Australia Fair looking at the line-up for the toilets, going — did I tell you about this?

[51:12] Pre-marathon, one of the things I loved about the Gold Coast Marathon — you park at Australia Fair and it's a hundred metres across. I got there pretty early — it's another thing that's changed in my life, I used to turn up to sessions two minutes before start, timing my alarm to everything, now I just get up at a set time, get there early, grab my 7-Eleven coffee, whatever, and turn up.

[51:46] So I was at Australia Fair, hanging in the car, chilling. Went up, first toilet stop, perfect, no one there — I think I hit it just as the cleaner walked out. Went for a warm-up jog, came back to the car, got my singlet, my t-shirt on, whatever, went back up — I kid you not, there was a line-up out of Australia Fair, three toilets within a hundred metres, each with a line a hundred metres long to get to that toilet.

[52:17] I was out. I'm all in for this VIP toilet plan now. Not going to pay three grand for anything though. Hey, this weekend — I know you mentioned Armidale Running Festival coming up in March, but we should also quickly shout out this weekend's City to Surf, everybody running that. If you're listening to this on Saturday, I'm sitting there rehearsing for tomorrow's broadcast,

[52:48] and if you're listening on Sunday, I'll be on Channel Nine, 9Now, or YouTube for the City to Surf, which is going to be a lot of fun. A little bit apprehensive, a little nervous about this — why not? I've never done this before — I've done radio, podcasts, called footy, but never a TV broadcast. Well, it's too late now — by the time you hear this, I'm already there.

[53:18] But yeah, Run Walk Talk — I know friend of the pod Bo Jones is up here this weekend doing that. Sean Swaine's the man behind it all — for those who might not be aware, it's a trek from Point Danger to Byron, and it's all about something that's become so much more prevalent, talked about, and supported and open —

[53:48] talking about mental health in our country, particularly among blokes. Still not done enough, still blokes out there struggling in silence. So Run Walk Talk gives blokes the opportunity to spend some time, share the miles and share with one another — great to see. Good luck to everybody taking part in Run Walk Talk this weekend on the Coast. Great course — I was seriously considering going down and joining in for the most part, but I've taken the lazy option.

[54:20] I'm going for a long weekend, relaxing instead. What have we got — off the back of talking about running shoes, we had some feedback on that, some feedback from Singapore too. I've really dropped the ball on today's notes, I'm normally pretty good at getting everything in.

[54:53] Look, it's a lot more — let's just say we were thinking shoe brands are pretty locked in. I can't even remember exactly what we said, this was off the back of the Strava conversation — had ASICS become number one? My memory's shot today. Anyway, Britt was saying — because she obviously sees a lot of runners for injury down at the sports physio, and she watches a lot of the developing athletes running in training, across cross country, track, trail, the whole spectrum —

[55:30] of the population here on the Gold Coast — she'd say when it comes to shoe brands of developing athletes, a hundred percent Nike. That's the shoe younger developing athletes choose first. Interesting, and I think that comes down bigger too — if I go down to school basketball, ninety percent Nike. I think Nike's got a good foothold when parents are making the decision for their kids.

[56:01] And then she's seeing a bit of ASICS and a touch of On. On hasn't caught fire like I thought it might this year — remember, I came back from Japan with a big bold prediction, and it hasn't quite caught on like I thought it would, but we'll wait and see. Can I ask you a question — a bit more on the coffee front, you mentioned your 7-Eleven coffee earlier. What's your opinion on returning coffees?

[56:32] Give me a bit of context — like you get a cup and go, this thing's no good. So my first question is, are you enough of a coffee snob to even go, this isn't good? Yeah, oh, I am. So my first question is, what dictates a coffee for you, because when I say I go to 7-Eleven in the morning for a coffee, some people look at me with disdain, like —

[57:02] like you're living in a garbage bin. You get your coffee hit where you get your coffee hit — I don't discriminate based on where you order your coffee, a good coffee is a good coffee, right? I'm a McCafe man, I'm here for it. But here's the reason I ask, and I won't say where, because it might have just been a one-off and I wouldn't want to tarnish anyone —

[57:32] okay, so we can narrow it down to probably — were you at this station? Somewhere between — we'll try and identify the place later. But I'm a strong flat-white operator, extra shot flat white. To me the greatest coffee crime you can commit is making it too milky — making it something my kids could drink because there's no apparent coffee flavour, it's just milk.

[58:02] And I was thinking, for a runner your coffee's an important part of your pre-run routine, because it's what gets the bowels moving and gets you racing to the bathroom, so you can go out and enjoy your run feeling light and bright and happy. I think this morning's coffee, if I'd gone for a run off the back of it, I almost would have given it back — it was that bad, it was basically a babyccino they handed me this morning, and I feel like there needs to be —

[58:34] some sort of universal signal for runners, that if you get fed a coffee that's not going to do its job, you should be able to return it. I'm a strong advocate of not returning anything. What do you mean? When it comes to food or beverages — no. Why? Because I don't trust what comes back.

[59:04] This is the cynic in you, this is you all over — you'd assume if you complain, that person's not going to try and improve or be better? I think there's a high risk something comes back different. And then if someone at the table does that while I'm eating, I can't eat anymore. So if we were having a share plate here, Liam, and you were like, I don't know, what's a share plate you might send back?

[59:38] The crumbed calamari, it was like it had been sitting in water, it was dripping or cold — and they were like, this is cold, take it back, and they went, do you want another one? Yes, of course. I'd only have another one if I could supervise its preparation. You know what's happening next time we go out for lunch, you're going to scan the coffee, I'm going to watch your face.

[1:00:09] That's funny. Anyway — if you make me a coffee, make it a good one, because if you see Liam Flanagan from Triple M radio — the guy who's on every second bus stop on the Gold Coast at the moment, there are a lot of bus stops at the moment, high-frequency advertising — if you see that guy, make sure his coffee's a good one, don't make it milky, or he'll start ordering longer ones.

[1:00:39] Before we finish up — how much do you pay on the Gold Coast, do you order a small or a medium, let's call it a regular coffee, what's your breaking point? I've found my safe zone for coffee — shout out to Fox's Pantry in Chevron, I get my wife and I a coffee, she's a small skinny flat white, I'm a small extra-shot flat white,

[1:01:10] that's a tenner for the two coffees. Five bucks each, that's reasonable. Now when I go to other places and order a solo coffee and get stung five-fifty without the extra shot, I start to go, why? It's not that expensive in other cities, I don't understand why the Gold Coast is so expensive. Eight dollars is too much for you? Eight dollars is insanity. You're not paying eight dollars for — well, one of our mates up north paid the other day —

[1:01:41] eight dollars. Six or seven for a regular, eight for a large — but that's a coffee I pay for with a view, so I justify it. That's fine, that's fine. Can I propose an impromptu Liam scheme here at the end of things? You know how when people review shoes they cut them in half, so you can see inside — no, no, no, you can't cut a coffee in half, Courtney.

[1:02:11] No, but what you can do, the same way they cut those shoes in half and go, look, this is here because of this and that's there because of that — if you're charging more than six dollars for a coffee, you should have to have a diagram on your machine showing why, showing the percentage that's going to your staff, the percentage

[1:02:43] that's going to your rent, the percentage that's going to the beans — because at six, eight dollars for a coffee, I want you to justify it, your barista better be winning awards at eight dollars a coffee. So we're talking about these prices, and this isn't about price for me, it helps — I won't say it doesn't help — mine's all about convenience.

[1:03:13] A hundred percent convenience in this situation. What do I do, 7-Eleven, press the button, coffee beans, same coffee beans? Maybe they're different beans to the organic ones coming out of wherever — I'm sure there's some great marketing story behind the organic beans you're getting from Uganda or somewhere. Dollar fifty with the app.

[1:03:43] Yeah, because it's a robot — it's a robot making it, there's no person there. There's no person with sailor tattoos and a fancy moustache telling you, "hey, enjoy your coffee." Don't make me milky coffees.