Roger Federer Lost $74 Million In A Day | EP 101

[00:00] In the beginning, episode one hundred and one, Courtney Atkinson, how are you? Liam Flanagan, I am, I'm very well. I'm gonna start today's ep with a hand-up accountability moment — when we get things right we can carry on a bit, but I think it's important that when we get things wrong, we admit to it. And I've got something wrong. Not as bad — it hasn't cost me as much as it's cost other people, but I still feel I should admit to it.

[00:28] At the beginning of the year you might remember I came back from Japan and I had a bold prediction for twenty twenty six in the running space. Do you remember? This was one inspired by my trip to Japan and something I'd seen — something I thought was gonna have a huge year in twenty twenty six. Was it the running stores and hire stuff? No, it was the brand On. I thought On was set for an explosion. I thought the lineups, the queues I saw at the stores in Tokyo — my prediction at the beginning of this year was that On was going to go to another level. Didn't they have the big activation at Sydney Marathon last year? Activations. I was wrong, because they've lost nineteen percent of their stock price — their shares dropped nineteen percent last week, after they missed their second-quarter sales expectations.

[01:31] But it hasn't cost me as much as it's cost someone else. Let me guess — Federer? Roger Federer — do you know how much that cost him? Seventy-four million dollars in a day. On's failure to meet their second-quarter sales expectations cost Roger seventy-four million dollars. Just because they missed their targets when they published their revenue. Which is interesting, because aside from the share price, when I made that prediction it wasn't so much that I thought they'd do this — I thought I'd be keeping tabs on their revenue and sales, I thought they'd be noisier. I just thought, in that marketing-running sense, we'd see more — they'd be a noisier brand in twenty twenty six than they have been. We've got the Sydney major marathon coming up in a week and Melbourne still to come, but I just haven't seen the noise I thought we'd have.

[02:43] It's interesting — do you think noise in general has actually calmed down a bit around the running brands? Do you actually think it's quiet at the moment? We've always talked about where the ceiling might be for saturation of continual product-led activations at run clubs and everything else. Do you feel like it's actually backed off? Well, just because you said that, as I was thinking along I thought maybe it has — slightly come back. Is it that it's come back, or is it that the noise has become normal? You know, when you turn the TV on and first throw the volume up it's like, whoa, that's loud — but if you sit in front of it long enough, that noise becomes normal, and it takes somebody else walking in. I say that from experience, because my kids will sit in front of the TV and I'll walk in and go, that is so loud.

[03:57] If you arrived in the running space right now for the first time as a new runner, would you be overwhelmed by the marketing noise? Yes. Then I think it's probably safe to say that you and I, who've been sitting in this space a long time, it doesn't seem loud to us — it's just the normal volume. If you don't see it in real life, you're only consuming it on socials — and I've probably just answered my own question. When we were midway through all our episodes I was on socials around running a lot because we were talking about it, and I got oversaturated on running content on socials. We have the In The Beginning podcast account, which is literally just running content because of the algorithm — so if I go on there I get one or two posts down and I'm like, get it off. So my consumption of social media —

[05:00] You've come off it. A hundred percent. I've turned the volume down myself, which is probably why I made that statement — which is probably wrong — that I don't feel it's there anymore. It's probably there, I'm just not exposed to it. I think that's bullseye territory in terms of where this is all at. I also think for people out there running along listening to this — I know everyone's telling you to reduce your screen time — but there's a lot of fun stuff happening in the running space around marketing right now, I think the brands are doing better work than they've ever done, some super creative stuff. But if you can walk away from it for a while and come back to it, I think the impact of it is tenfold. Same for me — if I block social out for a bit, then when I come back in I go, my God, look at that idea, that's amazing.

[06:02] I saw Red Bull did a thing the other day — the hybrid athlete competitions, which honestly, if I'd looked at it six months ago I would've gone, oh, they're doing this now. I'd steered away from it a bit — I've been consuming less — and then I saw Red Bull had the hundred-metre race between Mondo Duplantis, the pole vaulter, and the hurdler, whose name I forget. That was done a while ago, you might have just gotten a repost of it. I loved it — I instantly went, this is so cool. And then my brain started going, is this a fair representation of the two sports, or is Mondo Duplantis just a generational athlete, not just in pole vault but in everything — I think he ran a ten-thirty-seven. But to that point, there's cool stuff happening all the time, the world we live in, the internet, there's cool stuff everywhere all the time. It's the noise, the impact of it, that's lessened if you're just living there full-time. Agreed.

[07:02] And I've got something — hopefully we'll get to it — I've got something on surfing, taking a different angle. You want to hear it? Let's go. Okay, let's jump into this one, because this will keep the conversation going: "Elevating the surfers, making them feel like rock stars, making them feel really cool. Taking the marketing away from the surfers, allowing them just to rip and be mysterious, would save them a lot. I think there's too much of — I ate this oatmeal this morning and then I meditated and then I drank water — I think that's terrible, I think it's goofy. A lot of people don't really make surfing look that cool — I feel like a lot of the surfers who are really good at surfing do a really bad job of marketing themselves. One thing surf films really do well is they leave space for imagination. They give you enough to get an idea, but they don't give you everything of who somebody is — they just give you, my god, that looks so cool, I gotta know more. But they don't give you everything — not like vlogs these days, that leaves nothing for imagination, it takes that idolised perspective away from people. I just want people to eventually respect surfing as being really cool, because surfers are really cool and I think that's what helps the industry. I think there's a lot of that missing."

[08:10] That was Stab magazine, with Jordy Smith and Chloe Andino, two of the best surfers in the world — I loved Chloe Andino growing up, I remember watching him in all those drive-thru series surf films. So the conversation's really using it to have the discussion from both sides — these are elites talking about what's happening to their sport, and this idea of access — we just talked about saturation, getting everything and leaving nothing to the imagination — do you actually get to the point where nothing then actually matters? Of course. Too much access. More access isn't always the answer. As you walked in I was watching Andy Buchanan, who's doing a great job responding to what athletes have to do in today's age — he had a great YouTube vlog around his win at City to Surf, I sat there enthralled. But at the same time you're now getting access into someone's room, what they're doing in the morning, how they're getting dressed, everything else.

[09:31] Surfers talking about the other side, who for decades have arguably been the transient cool guys around, finally going — is it too much? Everyone's going to have a different perspective, because someone might want all that access. Others — you may not realise, but when you don't have all the access and you want to know more, that's where the intrigue comes, and that's where someone becomes very interesting. And that's also where you generate value. In a world where AI is starting to figure out how to do things faster and faster for us, and give us answers we might not have arrived at ourselves, something that is undefinable — for example, cool — you can't call yourself cool, it's an attribute that's given to you, it's not something you can go out and do the work to become. It's just an intangible quality people have. And athletes, or anyone who works in content creation or entertainment, have this difficult line to walk — how much do I need to do to achieve my goals, and at what point does it become too much?

[10:51] Andy — we talked about this with him about twelve months ago, before City to Surf, before the city major marathon — put it eloquently, that elite athletes, if they want more of the marketing money in running to go their way, they need to tell stories better. Andy's an example of someone doing that right now. Matt Hauser's another one, in your old sport, triathlon, doing that now — they're doing it because their careers require it, they need it. But at some point — maybe those two sports will never reach that point because of the nicheness — but at some point you might arrive, and it might not be easy to define, where you don't need to do it anymore. And then how do you turn that tap of access off?

[11:45] One thing that popped into my head as you were playing that out — in the conversation of basketball, the debate around LeBron James and Michael Jordan, who's the greatest of all time, it's generationally dependent when you were born. For a lot of people it's Michael Jordan, king of greatest of all time, three-peat with the Chicago Bulls in the nineties. LeBron James is the modern day, still playing at forty-one, forty-two, whatever he is now. I think the greatest thing Michael Jordan has done for his legacy in that debate is be inaccessible. Tell me when you've seen Michael Jordan on a podcast. I can't — there was The Last Dance, which released during Covid, again a masterstroke of access from someone who's famously reclusive — when everybody was shut inside with nothing else to do, they dropped that and it just vaulted him back to front of mind. But what he does incredibly well is you hear all these stories secondhand about Michael Jordan — people who've played golf against him, people who've seen him on holiday — you rarely hear a firsthand account from Michael Jordan himself. His reclusiveness, his inaccessibility, I think is what also keeps him in that mystical, elevated pyramid, aside from the fact he was the greatest basketballer of all time.

[13:11] Something that's always intrigued me about celebrity is exactly that — he doesn't have to, right? There's a reality to it too, that if there's something he doesn't want to do, he doesn't have to do it. If he doesn't want to sit there and continue to pump his PR, it's not going to change his life either way — he has nothing to gain, he doesn't need any more money, doesn't need anything. There's a certain level of celebrity where you've got to continue the PR push, otherwise you become insignificant, or forgotten, right — so I understand that side of it too. And that's probably where, in today's age, it's getting more and more. But I always find it really interesting when those ultra-celebrities who don't have to, choose to put themselves in, showing it all.

[14:08] There's a case in point right now on YouTube, with giving family access, showing what you're doing around your family. You know who did this better than anyone — you talked about Michael Jordan — Michael Jackson was actually probably the king of this. If you think about him as a musician, even all the way back then, he'd go missing, never did interviews — well, there were other reasons too — didn't show up, didn't show himself, didn't let people see him, and then bang, he just dropped the album, and he was there. So it was nearly the intrigue — did the intrigue actually drive it to go bigger? And then that questions today — I don't know what's right or wrong, because in today's world it's a race to the bottom, how much can I get out there.

[15:09] Is better? There's two great examples of old-school mentality versus what we're in today. I believe — I might get this wrong — it's Steve Martin, the comedian, who has a card he leaves behind which says "you've just had an interaction with Steve Martin." He's still alive, still working, very reclusive, disappeared from the comedy scene for a while. But the Bill Murray one's the other one — Bill Murray doesn't have a phone, uncontactable for the most part unless you know how to contact him. But because he's not constantly posting on YouTube and Instagram and doing interviews, the myths build up around him — you hear these incredible secondhand stories, like the one where he walked up to a table at a restaurant, grabbed a chip off their plate, ate it in front of them, and said "no one will ever believe you," and walked off. What a cool way to handle and laugh about the idea of celebrity.

[16:32] Here's the catch though — this is a running podcast, by the way, we started with running, we're just using other examples — that all works when you've got an expertise, you're known for something you do so well in another space, that it doesn't have to be promoted, or it's promoted by someone else, an entity, a movie, PR, they're doing the promotion for you. It's the same as a famous chef or whoever — you're so well pronounced in your own area you don't have to do that, and that becomes a choice. But if you're starting up in today's age and you don't have that position, what is your choice? Maybe there is no choice — because if you want to be both the best athlete and have the support, it's a lot harder to remain mysterious and aloof as Eliud Kipchoge than it is as Andy Buchanan. When you're the best, you don't have to work as hard on your narrative — but when you're not, you're gonna have to put in a shift, for everyone else that's not.

[18:00] It's across all different walks of life. I've been getting the algorithm spam with building videos lately, building houses and the housing market — and that industry would have exactly the same thing, a young developer or builder — do you spam all your stuff out there, or let your work talk for itself and try and get it recognised through other people? Comes back to the chicken or the egg, isn't it? There's a thing called a parasocial relationship, or parasocial interaction, born out of when an audience hears you or sees you so much — to take Andy as an example, someone might be all over his socials, watching his YouTube, following his Instagram, and then they see Andy on the street and they engage with him like a friend instead of the stranger that they actually are, because of that parasocial relationship.

[19:24] And that becomes the byproduct of access — if you permit a greater level of access, you can't get angry when suddenly people start to treat you like their mate. It's like when people come up to us — I think it was Mark in the lift at City to Surf — "hey Liam, how you going." Good, I'm Liam by the way. "Mark, yeah, I ran City to Surf" — we had a chat because he listens to this podcast on his long runs. And that's the relationship people develop with whoever they follow — if you listen to it long enough, and engage with it often enough, and it becomes part of your habit, when you see that person in the wild it's like, well, I know this person, I listen to them every day, I see them on my socials every day — but in their mind, they've never met you before. It's weird, and it happens to me on socials too.

[20:26] People that love triathlon and would have seen you over your career, seeing you in person running the trails up the range — but I mean the other way, I watched certain athletes in snow or motocross where I'd walk up and go, I kind of know ya, but — we would never have had that growing up. I'm trying to think — when I was growing up, Reggie Miller was my favourite basketball player and Andre Agassi was my favourite tennis player, and there was no Andre Agassi podcast or YouTube page or Instagram. So if I'd seen Andre Agassi on the street I would've lost my mind — I wouldn't have treated him like a friend, wouldn't have been all cool and gone "hey Andre, loved that last episode" — I would have lost my shit.

[21:13] There's levels of celebrity, Liam, as well. I think — like when Jelly Roll was here, or you go to a rock concert, there's definitely, girls and guys are still going, fainting, because they see someone — you're dead right, if you saw them in the lift at their apartment block they live in, they're just a normal person. But you put them in the stadium in front of ten or thirty thousand people, and suddenly they're the Messiah. That's a good point. Alright, let's move away from marketing and talk about how much money is going into running outdoors — this is off the back of the one post I did see this week on social media.

[22:02] Arc'teryx — I've always wondered how you say this brand. Whatever way — when you make a name so complicated, people can call it whatever they want and you can't whinge. So they sit under Amer Sports — I actually saw their parent company listing the other day, someone owns Amer out of China, Wilson tennis rackets, a whole range, they sit under there. But what blew me away is these concept stores they're doing — exactly what you talked about, the lineup in Japan into the On store. These are now coming into Sydney and around Australia, and I'm just looking at them going, how much of this equipment or clothing, and what's the margin they're able to get to this level of store — it's really going above and beyond. There's no way I'm having a dig at it, it'd be amazing to walk into these stores, but it got me thinking, who's buying this stuff? Arc'teryx is notoriously expensive, and good quality I believe, though I personally haven't worn it — if you'd love to send us some, we'll give you the address.

[24:00] It's obviously been worn on the street, for trend as well, and they've got a great history in the outdoor space — but who's buying it, who's spending this money? Do you have the answer? I think if we go top-down, these successful businesses run with a strategy in place aren't spending this level of money on a store fit-out, putting themselves into debt to do it — a brand's not going to mortgage its future just to make their store look cool. I'll challenge that a little — they may not mortgage their future, but they have a future revenue they believe they'll get. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean — there's a lot of brands that make losses because of their marketing spend in the initial years, with the forecast of regaining that. I'm glad you put a business hat on there, because you're more experienced in that space than I am. I think my point is they're confident they're going to get the sales to pay off the expense — yeah, they're going all in, and I think to a degree some companies, especially in a smaller market like Australia, you've seen them come in and out over the years. They'll come in and spend big — you either get the foothold, get the market share, or it collapses and you walk away, tail between the legs.

[25:38] So who's buying it? Well, this is the other realisation I've had — there's a lot of money out in the world, a lot of people out there, more of them than ever, embracing running and the outdoors and activities, and you never know how much money some of these people have. More and more, I think there's a generation of Australians coming through that aren't bothering to buy a home — they're staying at home longer, or just renting, which allows them a level of disposable income to buy very expensive gear. I didn't want to leave this one out, because we love investment into the outdoor space — anyone doing anything, to me, is a positive thing that adds to the industry. So what I was going to go with is there's a whole idea that in the running space, at least some of the expensive clothing is being bought purely to show the idea of "I feel like a runner" — because I've got everything, and the more expensive it is, the better I feel as a runner — but the actual soul of actually running may not be the same.

[27:05] Now I didn't want to bring it and be cynical and go down that path, but to your point that there's a lot of expendable money out there — that's what I believe is driving a lot of these sales at the moment. It's not being sold because someone's going out to camp on top of Mount Barney in winter at two degrees — they're more likely walking down the street in Brisbane, down the Valley. Either way, it's great for the industry — human nature wants to be part of something that's taking off, that's called jumping on the bandwagon, right? It's human nature to see something exciting and fun, putting energy into so many people around you, and go, I want to be part of that. We see it in every walk of life, we're seeing it in running now. And not all, but a lot of those people who see a trend and go, oh, I want to get on it, but I'm late to it — well, the way I can get to the front is to spend more money, the way I can be seen to be part of this more deeply, less a bandwagon jumper and more entrenched, is to spend my way into that position. And that's what some of these brands probably allow you to do.

[28:22] We see it in things like — for lack of a better example — card collecting, baseball, basketball, Pokemon card collecting, that industry's gone gangbusters. But what's actually happened is your hobby collectors don't have the same purchasing power as people like Logan Paul, who can go and buy a Pokemon card for millions of dollars. Johnny down the street can't do that — he loves Pokemon, collects the cards, but doesn't have the ability to buy one of the rare cards. Does that make Logan Paul more of a Pokemon enthusiast than Johnny? No, it just makes him richer. So the people who can buy some of these higher-end brands — they might have always been in the community and can just afford it and like it. That is true as well, more than one thing can be true, there's always more than two sides to the coin.

[29:24] I was running along the Esplanade this morning, and for some reason I was taking in what people were wearing more than usual — I think that's because I was running slower, trying to run easy, it was only forty minutes, purposely trying to keep it as easy as possible, heart rate down, below zone one, that was the point. As I was doing that, you automatically start to look at your surroundings more because it's a lot easier. There was one guy — for some reason he had massive Nike branding on his shirt, that stuck out to me — Nike hat, Nike shirt, Nike shorts, right down. Next person, Gold Coast Marathon gear head to toe, the marathon hat, the marathon shirt — missed the shoes at that stage. All types, every — there's enough to cater for everyone.

[30:32] Let's get to some more fun — I want to play a little game with you, it's kind of a running budget game. I'm probably not the person to play this with, Liam — generally I'm a hoarder, I'll either take stuff for free or — this is the annual premium runner, right, this is not an essentials-only runner, this is a premium runner, someone who's drunk the Kool-Aid, bought the ticket, on the full ride of the running boom right now. There are six elements that make up their annual running budget — as in things they spend money on. Now that budget totals — this is an estimate — let's just call him a runner, for lack of clarity — fifteen hundred dollars is approximately what this premium runner spends annually. I'd like you to try and tell me the six elements that make up that budget.

[31:42] I'll say as a premium runner, fifteen hundred dollars, if you compare that to most sports — even as a premium runner, and we're gonna say this is a lot for running — it's a lot for running, but it's still the entry point, that's why it's so popular, because — well, I'll tell you, the essentials runner, according to my source for this game, can be an essentials-only runner and spend a hundred bucks a year — a pair of Dunlops, maybe a pair of Chinese shoes. Alright — shoes, yes: shoes account for two hundred and eighty-two dollars of that fifteen-hundred-dollar budget. Shorts and shirt — we're gonna go apparel — yes, that's the largest factor in the annual budget of a premium runner, three hundred and eighty-two dollars, you obviously need more than one set. So three hundred and eighty-two on apparel, two hundred and eighty-two on shoes, you've knocked out the two biggest, four remaining elements.

[32:55] I'd put a hat in apparel — yeah, we'll bundle it in. A running vest? We're gonna give you that and call it gear, running gear — two hundred and fifty-six dollars. Now you've knocked out the three biggest, three remaining factors, you're around nine hundred dollars in, six hundred left, three more things. Coffee? I'm not gonna give you coffee. Nutrition. Thank you — nutrition at two hundred and forty dollars a year. Two more elements to make up this fifteen-hundred-dollar budget. That's not necessarily stuff they're wearing. No. Race entry fee — race entry fees at a hundred and eighty-five dollars a year. One final element — it's gotta be something around training or Strava. Boom — running subscriptions, Strava — yeah, at a hundred and fifty a year. Nailed it. So nutrition, race entry, subscription, gear, shoes and apparel are the six elements that make up an annual runner's budget.

[34:00] The great thing is, the fact I got all six means it's still so simple — if we did that for mountain biking or snow, you'd start going, where does the list stop? That's the point, right, it's pretty simple, there's not too much more you can do for running. I'd be interested to know how that breakdown works against anyone out there who knows their own annual running budget, because to me that's a pretty clean, not-too-far-off summary of probably how I spend my running money — right around the apparel, like the shorts we've talked about, my favourite shorts are about a hundred and fifteen bucks a pop, I'm a pretty simple guy, I like black, I'll cycle five or six pairs of black shorts and five or six black t-shirts. So there alone I'm gonna break that — if I was buying those same shorts I'd be breaking that premium pretty quick. This data, by the way, was in US dollars, so double it for Australian — but yeah, I thought that was really interesting, and the fact you got them all is proof — you are a premium runner.

[35:32] Now I've got a bit of audio I've got ready. Do you ever — I know your brother plays fantasy football, your brother is obsessed with NFL fantasy football, properly obsessed — I made the mistake of asking him at Little Athletics once if he played, and I didn't get a word in for the next forty-five minutes. He's obsessed with it. Unless you're into it you wouldn't realise, but apparently just as there's probably seven thousand running podcasts out there, there's seventy thousand fantasy football podcasts. If anybody doesn't play fantasy football, you might play dream team in the AFL, NRL has a league, surfing you can do it, cricket too — all the sports now, if you're a sporting league, the other thing you do is have a fantasy accompanying league where people pick and choose their team and win points based on it. We should do this for running, actually — anyway, I'm in a fantasy football team, NFL, it's a twenty-buck buy-in, it's low-key, it's fun, a way to stay engaged with the sport.

[36:41] We've never had a punishment for who comes last, but it's a very common thing in the US to punish that person. And I saw this, because we're coming into the NFL season, and I thought — what a beautiful way for runners involved with fantasy to bring punishment into their fantasy league: the 5k not-so-fun-run. The loser of the league must be dropped off five kilometres from everyone's favourite bar, and the other nine members take the loser's credit card, and they get to drink for free on their tab for as long as it takes the loser to get from that point to the bar. People can be super mean about it, get a few rounds on the loser's tab, but everyone's together having a great time — and it's a bit of a punishment for the loser, they have to run, be all sweaty, get to the bar and pray your friends didn't run up a three-hundred-dollar tab. How big a tab could you get up? If I'm the loser, my credit card's sitting with my mates at a bar for around twenty minutes, doing some damage — you just know they'd order food as well, it's food, it's drinks, I reckon in twenty minutes my mates could reliably spend easy five hundred bucks. Jeez — depending how many mates are there at the bar, it doesn't take much these days, even on beers, fifteen, twenty bucks each, you could do some damage.

[38:26] Actually — our coffee conversation about the expense of coffees, we finished up last week — I'm sorry to whoever wrote in, but they obviously owned a coffee store, and gave us the full rundown on why the price is what it is — we don't need to throw whoever it was under the bus, but it was good, because we joke around and have a good time, but there was perspective in it that it's hard out there in the business world right now. There's a reason behind it — this was Rob Clark: thirty thousand dollars for machines, roughly two grand for rent, fifteen hundred in beans, maintenance, staff wages, over a thousand dollars in milk — this is a weekly thing — plus standard wage of thirty-five dollars an hour. So under eight dollars a coffee is pretty good, still seems very expensive, but anyway — thanks, Rob, appreciate that.

[39:38] Just quickly, Fee did write in in response to our merch idea about coloured milestone merch, and said, that's like what they do at parkruns — and I love it when you come up with an idea and then realise the idea that parkrun had ages ago, we've just come up with it — so it's always nice to realise. Did you already know about it, Park Run milestone shirts? No, have you never seen them? No. If someone was running down the Esplanade wearing one, would you notice? Yeah — like a hundred parkruns, fifty parkruns, yeah. We also — apologies to people writing in — I completely stuffed up the Melbourne Marathon date as well. This is great, fact-check us, when we get things wrong let us know — but that was a good fact-check, because now I know.

[40:42] Where are we at with knowing your running future, please, Courtney Atkinson — what can you tell us? Still not there, Liam. I do have a plan — I can give it a plan, I'm gonna run a 10k, a half marathon and a marathon over the next six months, so for those who want to hear more about running, I'll each week do my best to get into the nitty-gritty of what I'm doing. This week, for the first time — remember last week I was saying I was mucking around with a bit of speed, because before the last marathon I completely dropped it — I've actually pulled up a bit sore, which is worrying. It is an indication you're pushing. Well I am pushing, but I'm also worried I'll push too much — that build I did for the last marathon, it felt so good, only running every second day, I felt amazing.

[41:45] You think that might be gone, the idea your body might have relaxed into it? Well, I've been throwing a little more caution to the wind the last few weeks, and I'm going back to thinking maybe the reason for the structure — not saying I need to only run every second day, but maybe let's not go from zero to hero again — but yeah, I'll get into more. Oh, you're running Bridge to Brisbane? Yep. How far off is that? Maybe I should come up and do Bridge to Brisbane. Why not? Well, 'cause I'm trying to get faster, turn up in a slot — don't know, gotta get faster for Bridge to Brisbane. No, I'm gonna run Bridge to Brisbane, a half and then a full. I'll get into the others, I'm just still trying to figure it out, can't say yet. I want to run — this is good, this is good to hear. That's the plan, to run another marathon and make the build a little bit different. Excellent, good to hear.

[42:52] Before we get into — because I believe we've got a message we're gonna play from a longtime friend of the show, Reedy — I just want to tell everybody, while you're giving your running update of ten, half, full to come, I am continuing to search for speed, Noosa Tri is the next thing on my list, haven't been back in the ocean since I trained with Dow that day — but I do have a swimming update for everybody: to all my fellow heavy-ass swimmers, to all of you who feel like your feet sink to the bottom and you're swimming like the shape of a capital L, go and invest in the floaty shorts. Like the wetsuit ones — the Volare, however that brand is pronounced, V-O-L-A-R-E, a hundred and fifteen, hundred and twenty bucks, not cheap, but they've got the floaty stuff in the legs.

[44:04] Orca were the originals, I believe, do them too — it's not just that brand, but they're the ones I've got. I did a pool session in those for the first time the other day. I normally have to swim with a pool buoy between my legs. So why not just swim with the pool buoy and not spend a hundred and fifteen bucks? 'Cause I can't kick when I've got a pull buoy between my legs. Put a band on, gives you some extra strength. That all sounds very difficult — I just want to finish these races, I don't want to win them, I put these floaty shorts on. Are you judging me for having purchased floaty shorts? Yes. Why? I'm not judging you, I understand it makes swimming easier if swimming's harder for you — but my challenge to anyone who does this and then wants to race, what happens at Noosa when you can't wear a wetsuit and you've got lycra? That's okay, in the ocean the salt has natural buoyancy to it. The pool gives me no buoyancy, I sink in the pool, it's so hard for me to swim in a pool — these shorts give me the same level of flotation the salt water gives me out there.

[45:03] They're gonna give you more flotation than salt water — and it's flotation right in your ass. Guess where I need it. Right, exactly — but when you go in the salt water it doesn't automatically prop you up like that, suddenly the whole mechanics of trying to swim without a wetsuit — I can use these in my swim-run though, these are perfect. Don't make things harder for me, Courtney, I'm trying to — in the long run, what I'm trying to say is the shortcut — if your goal is to get to the fifteen-hundred-metre swim in the triathlon, one of two things is gonna happen, you're gonna have a full wetsuit — which never happens at Noosa, it's always too warm — or you can't wear the cheating shorts, which means your body position and how you swim, you've gotta manage fifteen hundred metres without your cheat. Surely, let's get technical for a moment — surely practicing in the correct position will naturally lead to me being able to hold that position? There's advantages to positioning and technique and training, but not full-time wearing those shorts and then expecting to turn up to Noosa —

[46:22] Hey, I was in the water on Wednesday with Dow, just doing laps, talking about — it was pretty dark still. We jumped in around dusk. But anyway, we were sitting there waiting for a wave, and he did the old "I think there's a dolphin just over there," twenty metres away — I looked, it wasn't fully bright yet, and then I saw the fin, and I'm like — yeah, so we saw the fin and it kind of looked like a dolphin, and I'm in that middle ground, half going, I don't really want to be here — and then we sat there for another good five minutes because the waves weren't breaking consistently, and that dolphin or dolphins just stayed twenty metres away from us. My heart rate's gone up already just hearing you tell that story. As much as I want to love ocean swimming, my brain might be too far down a certain pathway to ever truly relax out there — I wasn't a hundred percent relaxed either, trust me.

[47:40] Let's play this voicemail from Reedy: "I just wanted to call in and talk about Harry Summers equalling the City to Surf record. I actually called him across the finish line that day, and it was incredible, and I had to be the one to tell him he actually equalled it, he didn't break it — heartbreaking. But the reason is, they've always started on the western side of College Street, but they've had to move the timing mats down to the eastern side, because now you've got people starting on the southern side of College Street and the northern side — so if you had the timing mats up on the western side you wouldn't capture their time. So while his net time, if you look at his certificate, is actually forty flat, it took him five seconds to get from the start to the timing mat, so his gun time was forty-three. I think it's listed as forty-five, but I'm pretty sure it was forty-three — interesting fun fact, they don't even list people's gun times anymore, well, not for the elites anyway. Also, if you speak to Steve Moneghetti, he reckons when he set that record, the guy starting the stopwatch in the lead car fumbled it and may have even started it a little late."

[49:14] So don't be surprised if Moneghetti didn't break forty that day — lots of myths and fun talk around that record, but I tell you what, either way, those guys who run that fast are bloody incredible. Nothing like a good story from the old days before electronic timing. We talked about this last week, it's part of the myth. Speaking of which, I've got an idea around City to Surf — I don't know if this will take off, but there could be a new tradition off the back of this year's City to Surf. Have you seen where Andy Buchanan's trophy ended up? Yeah, Lindsay Laurie has it on his work desk. Andy, for those not aware, after he won City to Surf, ran from the CBD down to Bondi Beach — he's now in his training block for the Sydney marathon next week, and he was going to continue, finish off his training that day by running back to his hotel in the CBD — but he had this trophy he'd been handed, so he walked into the Bondi Beach lifeguard tower and said, do you boys want this? And that's when Lindsay posted it since.

[50:30] I kind of like the idea of the trophy living there — it creates a bit of storytelling, a bit of ceremony, where the winner hands off their trophy and keeps it going. We've often talked about how running races where there's tradition, in the medal or the finish, gives them a special moment. I don't know if Andy's gonna go back to defend his title in twenty twenty-seven, but if he does I'd love to see him walk into the Bondi Tower again and hand over another trophy. I think it's a cool idea — in your racing career, did you ever win an incredible trophy, something like a perpetual trophy that gets put in the winner's place where you'd won it? I can't recall winning — what's the Noosa trophy? You want Noosa at the right time — no, a specific trophy, wood, a perpetual one. I think that's the key — I watch a lot of motocross and motorsport and they always have some kick-ass trophies, and generally those athletes have a wall of all the trophies at their parents' house or somewhere. If the sport has a unique trophy every time you race, I think it becomes quite cool to have all the different trophies — but if it's a one-off thing here and there, most of the time you get a little perspex engraved thing.

[52:00] This leads me into the other thing I wanted to talk about today — your kids are older now so they won't be into it, but some parents out there might be aware of the Ooshie craze that's back. I am bang in the Ooshie phase, and the fact Woolworths have now stopped doing them, my kids are about ten short of a full set. Yeah, devastating — we're a family that rubber — get them elsewhere, there's trading going on at school and all the rest of it. Is this like the ones anyone would remember? No — it was all Woolworths driven, you'd get one for every ten dollars you spent at Woolworths. They're these little characters, all the Disney characters, Toy Story people, Star Wars people, it's bananas — there's a toy that when they open a shop they all line up for. I thought you were about to tell me you're into Labubus — no, not Labubus, the Ooshies — but the reason it jumped into my head off the back of you talking about the trophy stuff:

[53:41] Major marathons are grown-up Ooshies. This need to complete the set is in us from such an early age. My kids are six and ten — well, Sydney's next week, right, we'll have people listening who are running Sydney, might be their first major, their second, or the last major they need to run — I was talking to my kids, six and ten, about their determination to complete this set of Ooshies, there's forty of them in total, they've got about thirty at the moment, they want to complete the set. I was talking to some people in my Runners in the Dark crew in Sydney, and the conversation turned to major marathon running, and one of the group is trying to tick off all the majors — someone said she's hunting one of those seven stars at the moment, and I said, well it's actually gonna be nine once Shanghai gets approved. And then the conversation spiralled — as we've talked about here, twelve is my theory, my working theory is that by the end of it there'll be twelve majors, one every calendar month. But I was wondering, is the medal the coolest way to represent having completed the thing, is there a different way to do it — I even like the idea of a jacket.

[55:03] I get the medal, but I feel like there's gotta be a different way to represent it. I mean the medal, it's just tradition, isn't it — it is tradition, it stems from the Olympics and any sport, get on the dais, win first, second or third, you're presented a medal. Well, let me pitch you this — I'd love to see a running race award the winner a jacket. I think the green jacket of the Masters is one of the most storied awards you can be presented as an athlete, and if I was a major, an event organiser trying to find a way to differentiate — we always talk about making the experience different — I would not present the winner with a medal, I would present them with a jacket, and make it a special jacket, so the narrative that bleeds through is that person's a black-jacket winner, for lack of a better colour, or the tartan-jacket winner. My favourite kind of award is when it actually has some real, true local meaning, or the event itself has somehow come out of that award — a rock, a piece of wood, whatever it is — if it was a rally event, it's the wheel that came off the winner's car in the whatever it was, there's an actual story around it.

[56:46] So the Masters created the story about the jacket, but just giving someone a jacket doesn't create a story on its own — it takes true history, this is like any event, you've got to have something you own, and it begins as nothing. That's what made the story around the medals from Paris — from all reports they didn't keep well, but the story was that they all had a bit of the Eiffel Tower in them. Really cool story, more than just — could we take a bit of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the Sydney Marathon weekend? Looks cool, actually falls off each day — is it still true that once they start painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the moment they finish they have to start back again at the other end?

[57:38] Have you seen the medals for this year's Sydney major? No. They look — I'm going to bring them up for you. That's the marathon medal for the major this year. You're underwhelmed, I can tell in your voice. Can I be really honest — it just looks like some type of flower painting, is it? Can I show you a medal I think you'll like — do you want to see the Las Vegas Marathon medal, have you seen it? I'm not a connoisseur of medals. Well I think you'll love it, look at it — now you got me, I'm in. It's a roulette wheel that you spin. Done — it's promoting gambling, it's great. I'm sure you'd get that same reaction out of ninety percent of people if you showed those two medals side by side. Should we go run the Las Vegas Marathon, January tenth next year? That's a winter one, isn't it, pretty flat.

[59:10] Had no idea — when does the NRL launch their season, not until February. Imagine the Titans being there this year. Is this the third or fourth year they're going across? They're cycling through the teams — Titans deserve to be there, don't know what you're talking about. Anything else to hit? I was just looking up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, you got me intrigued about the paint — you know that's what Paul Hogan used to do, he used to work on the Harbour Bridge, don't know if he painted it, but he definitely worked on it. Are you fact-checking the thing about the Harbour Bridge and whether — I'm not fact-checking, I'm just interested, I'd never really considered they paint the bridge — but you're right, it's a continuous multi-year maintenance operation. Painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge is a continuous long-term project that takes about thirty years to complete. Imagine landing that contract — four distinct coats of paint, each a slightly different shade, the final colour is heritage-listed Sydney Harbour Bridge grey.

[1:00:35] Do you know why it takes thirty years — they've got a multi-layer coating system, a zinc-rich primer, a mid coat, and finish it off with a fluoropolymer top coat. Just for the one they finished thirty years ago to wear off and go again. I'm asking who has the contract for painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge — searching — the initial contract to build and paint it was awarded to the British firm Dorman Long and Co. in nineteen twenty-four, but because painting the bridge is a nonstop permanent job, there's no single external company that holds a permanent contract. Boo — imagine that, you're a painter back in the day. Twenty million budgeted annually to paint that bridge — thirteen to fifteen million a year as an ongoing multi-decade restoration project, but they budget twenty million a year, that seems a bit dodgy. I'm reading this from New South Wales Parliament, and this is typical — maintaining and painting the bridge roughly costs thirteen to fifteen million a year, but they budget at twenty million.

[1:01:42] Watch me tie this back into running — everyone's given a paintbrush at the start of next week's race, and as they run across the bridge, just a little lacquer, little bit of primer, government still isn't gonna give you your money back. Alright, enjoy the podcast, we'll see you next week. See you next week.