EP 17 - MAN VS. HORSE & THE SIX FOOT TRACK

[00:00] In the Beginning, episode 17 — the chart not quite topping, but certainly rising. Running podcast Courtney, number six. Yeah, that's where we've peaked, like I'm peaking at six. I don't think it's peaked, but that's where we've reached — I think we can go higher. It's exciting anyway, we're loving doing it. At the moment the only things staying above us on the sports charts are cricket podcasts, which makes sense because we're in the summer of cricket.

[00:30] Did you see that Prime Minister's photo of the Australian cricket team at the Prime Minister's house? Yeah, that's kind of an annual thing where they go visit the PM at Kirribilli in Sydney around the New Year's Day Test. What did you want to talk about specifically? Well, I noticed a pair of shoes — you know we're a running podcast, right? So I noticed our youngest player, who's in the media at the moment, Sam Konstas. He rocked up, everyone's in their black dress shoes, including the Prime Minister, and he's rocked up in

[01:00] a pair of green Adidas Sambas. I'm just having a look — he's the only one who's turned up in a pair like this, and I heard another stat, he's a teenager, 19 years of age, and the next oldest in the team was over 30. He's the only person under 30. Is this a Gen Z thing, that he can just rock up like this? My guess is that the team manager might have had a word with Sam Konstas after that photo, because you do look around and

[01:33] there's Pat Cummins and Steve Smith and Scotty Boland and everybody else — even the coach Andrew McDonald — all there in smart dress shoes, and Sam's rolled up in his bright green Sambas. Tell me your thoughts on Sam Konstas — do you know much about him, have you watched much of him this summer? I won't say I'm a massive cricket fan, I don't sit on the couch watching cricket, but you couldn't help notice he was a bit like that Gout Gout situation — he's been the talk of the town. It seems like he's a brash young guy, and he's

[02:05] definitely the young one of the team. What do I think? It's putting attention on cricket. I'm neither here nor there on whether he's rubbing people up the wrong way — what do you reckon? I love him, because I love Nick Kyrgios. I'm a Nick Kyrgios fan, because sport is about entertainment, and for me Nick Kyrgios was always entertaining to watch — not perfect, not polished by any means, but I always enjoyed watching him because it was entertaining.

[02:35] Sam Konstas is the same, and I think the Aussie public is going to have a decision to make about this young man, because I think he's more Nick Kyrgios than he is Steve Smith. We're going to love to hate him, is that how you'd say it? I think this young man — he's only just turned 19, he turned 19 in October — has got another whole calendar year basically of being a teenager left, and the way he's conducted himself, there was

[03:07] no deferring to his more experienced teammates. I don't know if you saw it — he's opening with Usman Khawaja, who's 35 years old, Ozzy's much closer to the end than the beginning. But did you see how Sam Konstas would sprint out to the pitch like a footballer? Traditionally the Aussie openers, or any openers, will walk out together, arrive at the pitch together and then go to their respective ends. Sam Konstas would leave Usman fifty metres behind him as he'd

[03:37] sprint out to the middle. That's step one. Then we see the ramp shots and the ramp sweeps and everything else he's pulling off in the sixth delivery of his Test career against the best fast bowler in the world right now, Jasprit Bumrah. That's another element. Then we see the verbal barrages against Virat Kohli. Then in the Sydney Test he's going at Jasprit Bumrah — this is a 19-year-old, and if you saw him while Australia was fielding, he was chirping away at short leg.

[04:07] There was none of this 'I'll just mind my tongue and keep quiet and hope nobody notices me.' This is a young man who clearly does not lack confidence, and he's backing himself in to conduct himself the way he means to go on in Test cricket. You said you love him, but do you think that's the right way to go about it as a 19-year-old? Well, I think it's his way. And I think Aussie cricket fans are going to have to make a decision — is this the sort of

[04:40] character they want to support? Because David Warner is probably the most recent point of comparison. David Warner did things his way, and as we know with the sandpaper incident it cost him, but at the same time David Warner was never shy about being who he was openly, and he was not the most loved and supported cricketer in the Australian Test side traditionally — it's not a character we've always loved. So I'll be really interested to see, twelve months from now, come next summer of cricket, what the Australian attitude towards Sam Konstas is.

[05:11] Winning and success covers everything — if Australia's dominating and he's scoring runs, I think we'll be behind him, but when we hit some troubled waters I'll be interested to see. I do notice that with cricket, it's a lot about form — we get right behind cricketers when they're on form, and pretty quick to knock them down when they're not. How old were you when you cracked the national, international racing scene? My first — I started racing overseas as a junior as early as 16, but just once a year

[05:44] for a world junior championship. But my first proper stint heading to Europe with the national team was earlier than 18 — I was 17. I remember that because I remember my 18th birthday in Europe, and I remember my first race as well. We were in Germany at a training base, training under Brett Sutton at the time, and I missed the main team going off to a World Cup — I didn't qualify.

[06:14] I was too young, I didn't qualify for that World Cup, so they sent me up to the Netherlands — or was it Germany, I can't remember the exact city. Anyway, when I turned up there, one of the greats of triathlon back then — this is probably the early 2000s — was a guy called Simon Lessing from the UK, and he was unstoppable at that time. I'd rocked up to this race in the middle of Germany, a pretty light field, but I could swim because I come from a surf lifesaving background, and I literally just got on his

[06:44] feet and swam as hard as I could, stayed on his feet, then got behind him on the bike and we drafted — you're allowed to sit right on their wheel like a cycling race. We broke away, in this — my first professional race, I was seventeen — and I just sat on his wheel and didn't take a turn, which is a pretty low blow move, right? But I think he realised, 'man, this 17-year-old's just sitting there, he can't even get around me.' The truth was I was burning

[07:14] matches. But I sat there and lasted the whole 40K, got off to run — he obviously ran away — but I walked away from that with my chest out, just thinking, I hung on to the world champion. Where did you finish? Honestly, I can't even remember where I finished, I just remember walking away thinking I hung on to the world champion, the senior champion, for all of that, and that was good enough for me at the time — I wasn't thinking about the end result, I just wanted to hang on for as long as

[07:45] possible. My second race, though — you won't find those results because it's some little race in Germany — my second race was in the Netherlands, and that was my first professional win, as a 17-year-old. You won your second race! I won my second race in Europe. And all I can remember — this was before the euro, I can't remember what the Netherlands currency was at the time, the Dutch guilder I think — but I just remember we used to get paid in cash. You'd take a wad of cash home. And that was when you talk about

[08:17] motivation as a young guy in sport — everyone can tell you whatever they want, but there's no more motivation than cash. I used to race out of my skin because you'd be getting some Deutschmarks — big wads of cash. Well, okay, aside from you and your piles of money carried back through immigration — go back to that first experience living overseas and being part of that Aussie setup as a teenager, 17, 18 — do you remember

[08:51] — and I know your memory's trash — do you remember how you carried yourself, or whether you quietened your natural instincts and your natural personality because you had an attitude of, 'well, I'm the new kid, I should defer to these guys'? Yeah, I definitely deferred, and I'm reserved by nature anyway. I was living in an apartment at the time — definitely Greg Bennett was the

[09:22] one guy who stayed in that apartment the whole time. The one thing they did do for me — and I don't know if this was by chance or whether they were just really good blokes — they gave me my own room. In the apartment we first lived in overseas there was a bed or two in the living room and a couple of bedrooms, and they gave me my own space, which thinking back now, they probably shouldn't have — they should have just thrown me on a mattress on the kitchen floor, that's probably where I

[09:52] should have ended up. But they were nice enough — whether they realised it or not, it's something I probably should thank them for now, because it was a nicer introduction to being overseas, away from home, not being able to contact people, all that. But I just absorbed everything — I was absorbing everything. I might have been reserved in what I said, but I would never shy away from going out and doing the work. The coaches would often have to tell me 'that's enough, get home.'

[10:22] I would never be the one saying I'm done. I wanted to learn everything. I can recall at one stage — I can't remember exactly how far the pool was — Brett Sutton had this way of training where you'd drive to the pool, swim hard sessions, and then get out and for no reason he'd say, 'okay, everyone just run home.' You'd just deal with it. That was the kind of training

[10:53] I was introduced to — specifically because we talk about running — there was a specific period, a trial period, where every second day we'd go to this track on a German army base, and the goal was to run 10 kilometres under 3-minute-K pace, any way you wanted. So we'd begin

[11:23] with a couple of mile reps. Oh, so you didn't have to? No, no — this was at a time when 30 minutes was quite a good benchmark for 10K. Every second day, for I can't remember how many weeks, everyone would turn up to the track, all the seniors and myself included, with the goal of running a 10K under 30 minutes. We'd do a few mile reps, a few K reps, and if it got tight one day we'd do four hundreds — whatever it took to get there, but you had to run it at that pace.

[11:53] Whether that worked or not, who knows — interesting training, but in those early days of triathlon in the early 2000s, especially when no one really had the jigsaw puzzle figured out, we were still in full trial phase. It's so cool hearing you talk about your career — to bring it back to the same theme, the reason I ask is because you have that hands-on experience of being a teenager competing alongside full-grown adults, both

[12:27] as a peer and as a teammate. We don't know what's going on inside the dressing rooms of the Australian cricket team, and I've got no doubt — I look at Pat Cummins and think he's the perfect sort of bloke to lead and educate Sam Konstas on how to navigate the Aussie cricket world. But I think this kid is not going to take a backward step, and he's not going to quieten his personality for the team, for the opposition, for anything.

[12:57] Ricky Ponting was talking on commentary about his first meeting with — Ricky Ponting, one of our greatest ever captains and cricketers — meeting this kid in the middle before a Big Bash game, and Sam telling Ricky, 'you probably want to keep an eye on me for the IPL auction, you'll probably want to keep an eye on me.' This is a teenager. Is this a sign of the times, or do you reckon this is just one outlier of an individual? Maybe it is a sign of the times — this is an athlete who's grown

[13:28] up in the Instagram generation, where you show off what you're capable of, show off what you're good at, and tell everybody you're destined for success. This is a young man who's talked the talk, and now he's walking the walk. How many people — we talk about running influencers on here all the time who tell you how to get to where you want to be, despite maybe never having got there themselves — well, he's walking the walk, in a pair of green Adidas Sambas. I like them 100%.

[13:59] So, more running-specific things — Brett Carter sent me an interesting note during the week about parkrun attendance. This surprised me — we've been scanning what's happening in podcast sport in Australia at the moment, and there are more running podcasts in those charts than any other

[14:30] niche sport — besides the mainstream sports like your basketball, your football, your grade-A mainstream sports, running is booming. Now, parkrun, obviously being the starting point for most runners getting up to do a 5K — this next stat shows us that in just one year — this comes from the Parkrun Stats group, they monitor each week and track growth. What are they showing here?

[15:00] They've gone from an attendance a year ago of 63,000 people doing parkrun — across all parkruns in Australia, one weekend — to 84,000 this morning, which would have been last Saturday morning. So that's roughly a 30% increase from 63,000. Which equates to about one in 345 people, or 0.3% of the Australian population, running, jogging

[15:34] or walking at parkrun — 0.3% of the population, or one in 345, is out at parkrun. Now using the 2025 population estimate — this is second-hand information, sure, but to take it back, Courtney, on one of the earlier episodes I made the statement that I thought parkrun might be the greatest invention of the 2000s.

[16:04] Might be the greatest invention of 2004, by the looks of it — I did some good googling on this, parkrun started in 2004 in the UK. The first parkrun in Australia was held at Main Beach on the Gold Coast on the 2nd of April 2011. No way — Main Beach is the home of it? I'd call that my local. If you've never done it, it's a great parkrun — it's not just out-and-back on a path, you get a bit of trail in there.

[16:35] If you're trying to set a PB it's probably not the ideal course. I'm sure — I think Marty Dent at one stage nearly ran sub-15, or around 15, on that course. But it's sandy, undulating. There you go — that's the first ever parkrun in Australia, Main Beach on the Goldy. But in 13 years we're now at a point where one in 345 people is out on a Saturday morning doing parkrun. It's great — for anybody out there who's a runner and hasn't actually gone and

[17:05] done a parkrun, maybe you think 5K isn't enough, or whatever — go and find one. A friend of mine in Sydney, of a Saturday morning, is a good runner — runs his marathons around 2:40-something — he'll do a 10K session, then do the parkrun as an easy session, then cool down for 5K's, and the next thing you know he's banked 20K's. It's a great way, if you don't have company that morning, to go and do your

[17:37] harder rep work, or your tempo, or your threshold, whatever it is — you will never walk away from a parkrun without a smile on your face. We're going to have to get into some parkruns this year. By the time people are listening to this it will already have happened, but tomorrow morning at time of recording, Courtney, I'm actually going to head down to Main Beach — speaking of running on Main Beach — and this week on the Gold Coast

[18:07] the Magic Millions is underway, and tomorrow morning they've got the horses running on the beach for the barrier draw. Is that racing, or more of an exhibition thing? I think it's a bit of a hit and a giggle, more of an exhibition — you go down and stand on the beach as they race along and do the barrier draw for the big race coming up this weekend, when the podcast drops. Interestingly, if you're a horse racing fan you might be aware, the Magic Millions, already underway on its opening weekend,

[18:40] had to complete this incredible logistical manoeuvre and move the races themselves from the Gold Coast Turf Club to the Sunshine Coast. What happened was they had the big launch event, and Saturday was meant to be the opening day of races and festivities at the Gold Coast Turf Club, but on inspecting the track it looks like — investigations are ongoing — someone poisoned the grass in a section of the racetrack, and basically the jockeys and trainers and

[19:12] everyone else said it's not safe, the horses would freak out. I also think there was a genuine risk to the horses running through that section of grass. So they kept all the festivities and the off-field frivolities — the Daryl Braithwaite singing, the horses, all the auctions and that sort of stuff — staying on the Gold Coast, but the races themselves have been moved up to the Sunshine Coast. What a debacle.

[19:43] You wouldn't have to look too far — we talked about greyhound racing last week, and now this. Yeah, they've banned greyhound racing in New Zealand, cancelling it. Interesting, big event for the Gold Coast too. That's disappointing for the Gold Coast Turf Club, which — hey, that's something we might have to get around, because with their plans, they're looking to turn it into — I don't know if you've ever seen the racing at Happy Valley in

[20:15] Hong Kong? No. It's not — the races there are unbelievable, and that's what they're trying to replicate here on the Gold Coast. Prime real estate for a running race, isn't it — the Gold Coast Turf Club? The actual horse race track is always beaten up, but there's always an inside track where the... the Gold Coast Turf Club In The Beginning Handicap. I think we've got a bit further to go, mate, before we can pull those strings, but you

[20:45] never know, you never know. Hey, any loose ends to tie up from last week? I do — I've still got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about that. We were talking about some of the haters, and I'm still convinced the body doesn't know kilometres. I've put a Reel up on In The Beginning Podcast's Instagram, go check it out — that's Courtney explaining that he doesn't think your body knows kilometres, it knows time and intensity. Correct.

[21:16] It got me thinking more, for those who remember running prior to GPS watches, when you used to write a training log and then guess how far you'd run — did anyone ever do this exercise? I've never done it, but for some of the older runners on here, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about, because pre-GPS watches you'd just time yourself and go run a loop.

[21:48] Say you went and ran a loop in the morning, or a loop in the forest — you'd go, I'm going to run a 40-minute easy run, and you'd guess, 'hey, I'm a decent runner, I'm running at 4:15 pace, or 4-minute pace, so I ran 8K.' Then when we all got GPS watches, suddenly those 8K's weren't 8K's anymore — we were always overestimating how good we were. Always. That doesn't happen anymore. But it got me thinking, there's evidence to suggest that

[22:21] we were always guessing wrong, and overestimating our distances. If you're one of those people who actually believes your body knows kilometres, not time and intensity — take your watch off, go for a run on a course you haven't memorised, set the run going on Strava, hold your phone with the screen closed, and try to run 5K in a new location, and then guess the kilometres at the

[22:52] finish. Someone actually told me about that — I was running in the forest and there's a thing they call the Goat Loop on a local trail. One of the fun things they do during the year is you hide your watch, guess what time you'll run the loop, and whoever gets closest wins. Steve runs that, doesn't he? Yeah, Steve — the same Steve who runs the Cut race. That's interesting, bringing a bit of interest to running. That's one of the things

[23:22] apparently. I've asked the boys to let me know a few weeks in advance when they're going to do it, but I think it's something we could have some fun with. Just quickly, I've got some more feedback about that Reel, about that conversation — not what you'd think. This comes from Channel 7's Joel Dry, who's been keeping tabs on the pod. He said he listened to our most recent podcast, and he can't help but hear a former executive producer of his who used to say to Joel, it's

[23:52] not kilometres, it's kilometres — kilo is Greek for a thousand, and metres is English for metres, get it right, so we shouldn't be saying 'kil-OM-etres', we should be saying 'KIL-o-metres.' We've got producers on this now — that's air-checking us, so we'll try to fix our English. Well, proper English has never been my strong point anyway. Okay, well, back —

[24:22] still on a couple of little things — we had a tirade from last week, I was ragging on Birkenstocks. You were, definitely — I've worn mine again today in protest. I'm in bare feet today, I am at home though. What I did read — I was reading gearpatrol.com, one of the websites on equipment I like to look at, they've always got the new stuff — did you know Birkenstock have a pair of recovery shoes? Do you remember the old massagers — yes —

[24:52] with the little pegs, I remember the ad for that, the Swedish 'Hans' or 'Sven' or something, and they'd cut to him massaging underneath your foot. I always thought you were going somewhere completely different with Sweden and massage sandals, but very similar, not quite the same. They've got these Birkenstock recovery clogs that have pressure points built into the shoe, and there's a lot of companies who do this, but I never realised Birkenstock were in that space. At the same time they've also released their own self-massage

[25:24] tools in the Birkenstock cork material — this isn't really new, I'm not breaking ground here, but it was new to me. The 'Berky Air 2.0' clog has side vents to air out sweaty feet — I want these, they look unbelievable. Pricing and availability, Birkenstock offers the recovery pack for $220 — have you seen these kind of packs? I've never seen them either, I don't know if that's Australian dollars, but it looks great. Do you know, it's funny, looking

[25:54] at those cork rollers Birkenstock is selling as well — on Christmas Day, throwback, my son opened a Christmas present from his uncle and auntie, and he thought — we have foam rollers at the house, and he opened his present, and the first part of it was basically a cork foam roller, and he thought he'd been given a foam roller. He's four, he picked it up and looked at his uncle like,

[26:24] 'really?' And my brother-in-law quickly said, 'no, no, no, open the other bit' — and the other bit was like a skimboard-type thing, a balance board, a tool for him to practise his skateboarding and surfing balance, rolling back and forth. I know exactly what you're talking about — he opened the first part and thought, 'have I just been gifted a foam roller? I'm four, my legs will have no tightness!' I love the look of those Berky recovery shoes. I wouldn't mind exploring

[26:55] them, as much as I still despise the Birks. Now we need to shout out, Courtney, because this podcast is going global — we joke about it going global, but we've literally got international listeners. I want to give a shout-out to Rory Daniel Boone, who's been messaging us — sounds like he gets out and hikes a fair bit, he's from South Africa, all the way from South Africa, and he had a good conversation with us. He's actually given us some homework, which neither of us have done

[27:27] yet, in the middle of the holidays we haven't got to it — but we will, Rory. Mate, I just love that we found an audience over in South Africa off our little Gold Coast podcast — maybe they've got similar humour to us. Do you hike? I try not to. I can't hike, I find hiking much more difficult than running. I'd agree — it also depends, I did

[27:59] — last week I told you about my four-wheel-driving mishap where I went to a four-wheel-drive track that was shut. But my wife and I went on a hike — a little hike down at Queen Mary Falls, towards Tannymorel way. I have an issue because if I'm walking, I want to enjoy my walk and walk slow. What I find is people who don't run necessarily want to

[28:29] walk fast — and if I want to walk fast and sweat, I want to run. Why would I walk fast and sweat when I can run? Couldn't agree more — if I'm going to walk, it's a walk, it's a snail's pace. Couldn't agree more, I'll be dragging those Birks along. It drives my wife crazy because I'm a slow walker, and in my mind I'm like, well, if I'm going to move and sweat, let me run. We agree on something here — this is actually good, we agree on this.

[28:59] Well, speaking of my running and my exertion — ties in nicely here — today, day of recording, I've literally just got back from a night camping with the family and the kids up at Mount Tamborine, Thunderbird Park. There's a campsite set up, there's heaps to do with the kids, it's a great spot, Tamborine Mountain. Every time we go up there we spot a couple of other things we want to do — if you like getting out in the outdoors and nature and hiking,

[29:30] ironically, it's actually great — but at one point I was chasing my kids around the caravan park and found myself thinking, this is harder work than running, and I'm fit right now. Yet half a day of trying to keep up with my kids around a caravan park is exhausting. They don't stop, do they? Especially at your kids' age, they just don't stop. We had a great — there's a little waterfall and swimming hole you

[30:01] can kind of rock-hop your way up to, and we did all that, and they were down at the swing while we hunted for firewood off in the bush and all that. I'm cooked, and I found myself thinking, I went for a 19K run yesterday, no worries — and yet half a day chasing the kids... there'll be parents out there right now who might be runners as well, and it doesn't matter how run-fit you get, parent fitness is a different

[30:33] fitness. My son, who's four, is maybe 20 kilos — there's not much of him — and yet my wife is parent-fit. Here's the difference: my wife couldn't not run 19K's today if I asked her to, she did the half marathon last year at the Goldy. Yep, I remember that. But if one of us has to carry my son Mack around for an extended period, it's her — she's got the parent fitness to carry him around. If I try to carry him on my

[31:05] hip with one arm, I'm done in, limping on the next morning's run. I have to lift him up and put him on my shoulders, because the strength through there is fine, but that single-sided strength isn't there. I always wonder — we talk about running being on that one plane, and anything you do that goes sideways, like paddling a surfboard, even if you haven't in a while, everything just gets sore.

[31:35] Without going down the Hyrox rabbit hole — what is the perfect middle ground for parents at this stage of life? It's not going to apply to everyone, but when you've got more on your plate than just being at uni or whatever — what's the happy medium where you can be a runner, put all your effort into running and run your best marathon or half or 10K, but still operate as a normal human being? If anyone's got an answer to

[32:08] that one, please send it in urgently. I did get back to a long run — my first time back running over 90 minutes in a long time — and I want to send a message to everybody out there who might be struggling a little. I've not been flatlining, but I've been fairly mundane and boring with my runs lately, kind of a flat 10K at 5-minute pace, or 5:10-ish,

[32:41] around there. I was thinking about what you said on an earlier episode, the idea of mixing up your runs, having that effort-interval session in your week and that long run in your week, and I haven't been doing this for whatever reason — I've just been going out and the 10K's been the easy run to do. Saturday morning I went out — sorry, Sunday morning — and did a long run, ran

[33:14] 18, 19K's at five-minute pace, and about 12-13K's in I suddenly found myself thinking, this feels good again. Was this up the mountain? No, it was on the flats, out from Currumbin up to Snapper and back. That's probably where I almost saw you on Friday — I was about 13K's in and I suddenly went, I'm ticking along at 5-minute pace, I feel great, and I thought maybe I'll push on

[33:45] and do a full half marathon, but I had to get home to help with the kids and pack for camping. But I had that moment, that sense of being in rhythm, back in the running zone, feeling good, not huffing and puffing. That's great to hear — that motivates you to want to get back out and do it. So I've had a day off today, no running, chasing kids around the campsite, but tomorrow I'm excited, I found that zone again.

[34:17] I'm not going to abandon those 10K runs, they've clearly been working for me, but this week I'm going to make sure I'm mixing in either a hill set or an interval set, and get another good long run in this coming weekend. Got some momentum, it was a great realisation. I was running in the Salomon Speedcross, actually — I've brought them back into the running rotation a little bit. I like them, they felt nice, good for those rotational sessions. And that's what they're made for. They felt like — there's not

[34:48] the same level of foam as you get in some of the squishier shoes, like the Novablast, that soft feel. I wasn't sure how my legs would pull up the day after, but they've been great. Great to hear — how's your running been going? Well, you mentioned we ran into you down at Currumbin, where I said I don't venture anymore. It's that time of year where I find myself running at different locations depending on what else I'm doing. At the moment, over Christmas, I've literally

[35:19] found myself in the ring every day — actually in the ring every day. If I'm home I'll go out to the forest because I've got time on my holidays. When the kids get back to school I end up running up at Southport and the Spit, because I'm up that way a lot more. I haven't been down to Currumbin for ages — I caught up with a few of the crew who run down there, like you said, from Saltmill down to Snapper and back. We did a bit of a tempo along the beach, and it reminded me why I haven't been going back down there.

[35:49] Oh, why — 5:40, we met, couldn't get a park, mate, what's going on? The parking there, this is where I talked about it on the podcast, it's not a great parking lot, so that wasn't enjoyable. I got there and I was already running late, so I ended up parking down at the surf club and running back to meet them — but it worked out, good to get down there. I definitely won't be heading back that way anytime soon, especially once school and work gets back. But I find these

[36:21] spots I run change over time, and that happens depending on what time of year it is. I got up to about 90K this week. Oh geez, yeah, back running. Also rode twice on the mountain bike, a couple of longer rides in the forest, and I brought the gym back in this week — just more running activation. I started squats again, deadlifts again, and

[36:54] everyone's going to realise this, but you get sore. My upper hamstrings are like violin strings at the moment — just a couple of gym sessions, but you've got to go through that and then it'll normalise. What did you squat this week? 30K. I was thirty. Sounds like a gym-bro thing to say, but how much — I started at 30 plus the bar, so maybe 40 total. Pretty much the lightest weights I had lying

[37:24] around on the floor at the time. I just want to get through the movement, because I know I'm going to get sore whether I do 20, 30 or 60, and then I'll just build up through that slowly. The reason I've gone back there — I talked about doing some hill-run sessions — I'm feeling I'm missing some of that strength, and while I'm trying to get a bit of speed base back, I'm working on all of that stuff. Plus I'm heading away, so I thought let's get some done now, and then I'll miss again a bit, and then I can come back and, you know, the real year

[37:55] starts and we can get into it properly. Even elite people are missing stuff from their programme — that's the message to take away from that. No, the reason I ask is I've started — I've got a gym membership for the first time in maybe eight or nine years, and I've been using the machines for some leg stuff, a calf-raise machine and a hamstring-curl machine and that sort of thing. And I've got to the point now with the leg press, the one where if you don't muscle up

[38:25] it's going to collapse on you and you'll never walk again, and I'm doing 80 kilos on that. Which — I'm kind of, for me, yeah, it's getting shaky towards the end, so that must mean I'm at least pushing myself. But interestingly, doing that and incorporating the calf raises, I've got a bit of tendinopathy, I think that's the word, in my left knee, on the inside.

[38:55] No, just gently from running — if there's a big load, a lot of hours and minutes and K's on my legs, that can get a bit sore. That's your kind of tell — that's the one that goes, and if it starts getting a bit tender, that tells me, okay, you need to be doing that gym strength stuff again to keep it all stable. The other thing I've got to work on too is my flexibility — and I know you say a little bit of hip rigidity is good

[39:25] for runners, keeps you moving in a straight line, but my flexibility is embarrassing. There's going to be a lot of people out there nodding along going, yeah, I feel the same. I'm genuinely thinking about starting a stretch club through the radio station this year, in the programme, for people like me who can barely touch their toes, let alone their toes properly. Seriously, if I try to look down towards my toes right now on camera, it's tight — really tight.

[39:56] Do you have good flexibility? I can touch my toes, but I'd still like to be looser through the hips. There's always something, at this time — I don't think anyone, even elite runners, doesn't have something they want to improve, whether it's hip strength or hip flexibility or whatever — you're always going to be incrementally looking for something. It's been a while since I've had the — I've been doing rehab stuff on my calves, which has been very specific.

[40:27] But this is now just more general, getting back in the gym for a bit of strength. Also, we were talking about Kenny Wallace looking like an upside-down Christmas tree, I think you called him — I realised I've completely lost my lats. I swam for twenty-something years, I used to have a reasonable swimming rig, and I won't take my shirt off at the moment because I'm the opposite of Kenny — I am a Christmas tree.

[40:59] You're not a Christmas tree — you've got like a pair of train lines, tram tracks, it's very up and down. I want my lats back — up and down, talking about vanity in the gym. What are you benching? I don't bench, but I'm looking for some lat exercises at the moment, just to be able to — when I get to Fraser Island this week — I want to be able to do some chin-ups before I get out there. All right, talking about, you know what, WTF —

[41:30] WTF events, this segment — everyone's helping out here, it's great, every week we say let's stop doing this and then we get sent more weird and wonderful events from around the planet. You were trying to compare who'd run the quicker marathon, the Crocs or the Birkenstocks — here's the Croc runner, the Croc marathon record is 10:6:33 — we found out that's so fast, who is Benjamin —

[42:03] Paczewski? Yeah, Benjamin Paczewski — he's also done a 5000 metres in 14:47 in Crocs, so a 5K run at sub-three-minute pace. Do you reckon he's been given Crocs with a carbon plate in them? We talked about this last week — a reminder to the wonderful people at Crocs, stick a carbon plate in these things and I reckon your brand goes to another level. So anyway, we've got a bit

[42:33] more information on that, and some audio to play — this is all the way from Minneapolis, the most extreme run club in the country, I'm daring you to prove me wrong. This is Run and Plunge, hosted by Embrace'N. We start with a three-mile run straight into the heart of winter, passing the most iconic parts of Minneapolis, then we hit the ice — we bring sledgehammers to break the ice and dive into water so cold it'll shock your system, taking turns sitting in the cold for two

[43:05] minutes, then it's an all-out sprint back to the saunas. Embrace'N — think you know a tougher run group? Think of Bondi ice baths down at the beach, everyone doing their ice baths. If you didn't catch the audio, these guys literally run out from a station with pickaxes and big oversized hammers, find a sheet of ice, crack it, jump in, then run back.

[43:36] You're having to run with a piece of hardware like that — no, I'm out. I found the comments on that post quite funny — Minneapolis being at the top of America, I've actually raced a few times in Minneapolis, they used to have a massive million-dollar triathlon there each year. A million dollars total, or to the winner? I'm guessing someone's going to call me out — you never won it,

[44:07] definitely didn't win it — otherwise we wouldn't be here talking, Liam, I'd be living up in the sticks somewhere. No, but they had half a million dollars for first prize for male and female, and this went on for a number of years — Lifetime Fitness was the brand that funded it, and every year they'd have this invite-only race. I did it once, the opening year, and they were driving us around in limos, the whole range,

[44:37] it was like we were golfers for a week. And then the money moved on to another sport after that. Do you know, just quickly on prize money — Luke Littler is the 17-year-old English fellow who just won the World Darts Championship. Luke the Nuke, he looks like he's 38 but he's 17, he's a phenom of the darts world. My brother-in-law and I were talking about this — the prize money for him winning the World Championship of darts, he's just won £500,000.

[45:08] Seventeen years old, he's just pocketed — I did the currency exchange, it's equivalent to about $1,000,000 Australian. I'm tipping it's the betting agencies funding it. But that dart sport is massive — I've been to Ally Pally, the MCG of darts, and it's an incredible atmosphere, it's so much fun. It's an event people should get to if they can. Did you see this 17-year-old?

[45:40] No, this wasn't — no, not me — but I watched the final, he beat a Dutch fella by the name of Michael van Gerwen in the final. Are they elite athletes now, or are they still hitting back schooners while they do it? Well, let me ask you a broader question — do you consider darts a sport? You throw a dart — do you consider darts a sport?

[46:10] I say yes. Then he's an elite athlete, because he's the best darts player in the world. I'm going to say yes, 100% yes. I don't reckon he could finish a parkrun, but he's the best darts player. You know what I mean, though — you still see the darts guys having a schooner and still hitting 20, 20, triple 20. This guy looks exactly like the sort of bloke you might see in the pub about 3pm on a Tuesday. So they're still training old-school, guys. Well, they say in the comments on

[46:41] this Minneapolis run group, they're called the Embrace'N Run Club — someone's commented, 'I'm Canadian, when are you going to show the Americans the tough part?' And someone else said, 'ice baths are proven to do nothing but let everyone around you know you'll believe anything you read on the internet.' God, we can be sad people, can't we? Are ice baths proven to do nothing? I thought there was definitely some anti-inflammatory benefit

[47:12] to them, isn't there? I don't know, do you use ice baths much? I've told this story on the podcast, haven't I? What was that? 2008 Beijing Olympics — ice bath in the garage every day during winter prior to it, raced okay. Three months later, killed it — stopped ice baths. So I'm very subjective in that — objective in that it didn't work for me.

[47:42] This one — I love this one — it was sent in by Brett Quayle, one of our original listeners, friend of the pod, and he said, can you chat about the Man versus Horse Marathon? It's an annual race over 22 miles, runners compete against riders on horseback. I'm quickly looking — it's in Wales, it's shorter than the official marathon distance. I think this is great — I can see a picture, the horses are literally on the same track as the runners.

[48:14] So I'm assuming the horses are going to win this. I've read about this a little — it's rare that the runners beat them, but it has happened before, they've changed the track to make it more runner-friendly versus the horse. But what I want to talk about off the back of this is more locally, the Six Foot Track Marathon — a famous trail marathon. I'm going to put it out there — when I was coming from a road, triathlon background,

[48:45] the only trail race I knew in Australia was the Six Foot Track Marathon. Besides the history, I think it's the one race where good road runners, elite road runners, want to test themselves against trail runners on the trail. It's very difficult to get into — don't quote me, but I think it might only be three or four hundred, maybe

[49:15] only two hundred competitors each year, so you've got to get in early. My first attempt, I didn't get in the ballot. What, your very first attempt? Me and a few mates from Brisbane tried to run it, I got denied. Second attempt I got in the ballot, got in the race, came second to Vlad, one of my mates at Salomon. Third year, I won it. You won it in your third year! And then I said never again — once you've conquered it,

[49:46] let's not go back. It's a tough race — about 45 kilometres, with a 16-kilometre climb out of the river valley. But the reason I'm bringing it up is the Six Foot Track is a horse bridle trail — let's fast-forward the history a little, it started as a way to get from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves without going the long way around. The reason it's called Six Foot Track is when they did the original planning, that's how wide it was going to be, because they planned to be able to get horse and carts along it. I did not know that.

[50:16] Running it — oh damn, it would have been hard to get a horse and cart along there. Parts of it you go down through the river, some years the river's too high, you have to go over the bridge, there's a whole range of things. If you've never done this race, it's the most historic trail race in Australia, I'd say, and the most runnable — if you're not into trail, go along, have a go. I might have to do a deep dive on this for next week. But I wonder — we've talked about the explosion of marathons in

[50:47] this country, we've talked about Gold Coast being the perfect example, sold out in a week, whereas last year, three weeks on from opening, entries were only 50% sold. Sydney's now a major, Melbourne's going nuts. You just mentioned earlier the numbers around parkrun participation — I wonder if trail races are the next domino to fall. They're probably already experiencing an increase in entries and the rest of it, and

[51:17] the big ones — UTA and the Blue Mountains, Kosciuszko, that sort of thing — are already selling out. But I wonder if these smaller ones — not the Six Foot, that's always been hard to get into — but I wonder if we're going to see these other trail races that are popping up become harder and harder to get into. That's an interesting concept — I actually think that post-COVID, trail boomed

[51:47] harder than road running, to a degree, because the big road races were shut down, and trail races, being outdoors with lesser numbers, got started a bit quicker after COVID, especially some of the shorter ones, and they were in really high demand. I'd nearly go as far as saying what then happened is there's so many trail races now, they've over-saturated. There's still definitely a

[52:17] few key ones that have kicked on, but I'd say everyone jumped on the bandwagon to make the most of trail races being oversaturated. Once it condenses, once it evens and self-sorts, the smaller ones won't last. I think the races that do last will always be the heavy ones. Interesting — I remember we had this conversation on a run previously,

[52:47] you talked about the idea that trail racing at an elite level is now far more competitive and popular than it's ever been, because the money's there. What would typically happen historically is a runner would have their career on the flats, the roads, the track, and then at whatever age, retire to the trail races. Whereas now you can have a career as a trail runner from your twenties. And what's also happening

[53:17] now in Europe is you're seeing African runners coming across into the trail races as well — they're not having the same success as on the road yet, but you're seeing them start to come into fields where prior to that it was a pure European race, because it's kind of local, really. Do you think that's inevitable? I mean, as long as the investment keeps going in, yes, for the

[53:47] Kenyans and the Ethiopians — do you think it's inevitable that their biometrics, which clearly make them superior at endurance events, will translate into these UTMB-style events and this sort of stuff? Yeah, correct, there's no reason why not — running just because you're running uphill doesn't change the running, the basics of who the best runners are. If we bring it back to Six Foot Track, it's that medium — there's a bit of single track in it, but it's mostly fire roads up and down hills, and the guys who'll run quickest

[54:20] — actually it's quite even, I think. I'm not sure on the record at the moment, but when I was racing it was held by an ex-triathlete, kind of semi-professional, more of an age-grouper, who just trained for this race — he lived in the Blue Mountains and crushed it because it's quite a hilly race. Then you've had elite runners come through — some of them make it, some don't, but times-wise it's not like the elite runners have come in and absolutely destroyed the race. The trail runners definitely hold their own. I've pinpointed one thing that

[54:54] specific trail runners are able to manage — the downhill, on their quads. If you're a fast runner but haven't trained specifically on some of those really steep, long downhills, it destroys your quads, and then when you go to run uphill again, it's a whole different ball game. Very similar to running off the bike in triathlon — if you've never done that before, you think, I can run, but it's a different run. For context, for the amateur runners out there like myself, I've done two UTA 50s, and

[55:28] there's a section in the UTA 50 where you travel about 8K's but essentially descend from the highest point of the race to the lowest point, down to the valley floor in the Blue Mountains. I don't know what the elevation loss is, but

[55:59] it's a 10K descent. I think it's from — Queen Victoria Hospital, maybe? Yeah, from around there basically down to the valley floor, and it's an intense decline. To the average person you'd think, oh, how good's downhill, I'm getting some free speed, gravity's doing the work for me. But I can tell you, halfway down that thing I was crying out for a flat — give me some uphill, I can't do any more of this downhill. And then when you hit the flat at the bottom, it's sweet relief, and then you start climbing out and think, oh my God, I wish I had the downhill back, because the climb is horrible. To make my point, I was going to look it up —

[56:29] at one stage I held — I can brag a bit, eh? Courtney, you're entitled, feel free. I raced Benny St Lawrence there — I held, I'm not sure whether I still would, but I know I could put time into Benny that year going downhill, and then he just stripped shreds off me going uphill. It was that nature of having spent a lot more time on trails, running downhill and technical stuff. He also might have just been taking it easy, I don't know, but —

[57:01] don't undersell yourself. I'm just looking back at what section this is, because I've jumped on — I found the first UTA I did, and I reckon you're about 32K's in when you hit it, or maybe a bit before. I think this is going to take too long to look up.

[57:31] Oh yeah, I found it — you go from the 28K mark down to the 36-37K mark, you descend — let me do some quick maths — somewhere around 600-700 metres. But even then I thought I was flying, I'm still running 6:13, 6:22, six-minute Ks down to 5:40. But yeah, someone the downhills are brutal — that was probably five years or so ago, so someone may have knocked it off

[58:01] by now, so sorry if I'm claiming something I don't have anymore. Climb away, climb away — at one stage I definitely held King of the Mountain on the downhill. Actually, here we go — I wonder if that's it. Let's just go with it. What have you got? No, that's not it. Anyway, the point is Courtney can run very fast downhills. Yeah, well, at one time.

[58:31] At one time, you're still — you still go right on the downhills. Now, we've been piling up these listener questions and haven't got to them — let's rip through some. First one, Matt O'Reilly — I think I spoke about him on an earlier episode, a guy who was taking his running right back to basics, enlisted help from a trainer at a gym who's sending him out on three okay runs, like he was starting as though brand new to running, and his

[59:01] perspective and goal was to build up to the Gold Coast Marathon and try to run a sub-3:30. He's suffered a bit of plantar fasciitis in his foot, he's got some problems right now, and he wants to know how you re-engage with a training programme after an injury. Number one, get someone to sort it out first — don't try to do it on your own, and I'm talking about the plan, go and get it looked at

[59:33] by whoever you're going to see — professional doctor, podiatrist, physio. Don't be afraid, number two, don't be afraid to walk-run to begin, that's all I can say — walk, run, walk, run, take it slow getting back in, there's no need to rush. It'd be naive to try and jump straight back in at the point in your training programme where you got injured — depends how long you've been out, but without knowing that, sure, but you're going to have to come back in easy regardless.

[01:00:03] My advice on coming back from injury is don't be afraid to start with walking and running — nobody's going to think any less of you for it, it's the smart way to do it. Just quickly, and I know the answer's dependent on the individual, but the idea of — for you, when you suffered your calf injury, how quickly do you lose fitness, and what I mean is,

[01:00:33] Matt's trying to build his fitness — if he's at point A when he suffered his injury, does his fitness return to point A, or does it maintain for a while, do you know what I mean? Honestly, the answer is I don't know how much fitness you lose, everyone's going to be a bit different. I know for myself, I was always able to come back after a period of injury or a break of, say, three or four,

[01:01:03] weeks off, and I'd always, within about six weeks, get back to — building up incrementally — but over six weeks I'd get back to pretty close to a really good pace. I no longer can do that. What's happened, I think, over time, is that long aerobic base and mileage I had — every time I've had a break or an injury in more recent years, it's been eating away at that reserve, and it takes longer and longer

[01:01:36] every time I take a break. So what I'm conscious of now — we always say try to stay uninjured as much as possible, because consistency is what gets you there — but I'm also conscious that if I am going to have a break, keep it minimal, because I don't want to be — if I was taking holidays, for example, I'd rather take a few days off running than three weeks in one go. You want to take some of the spikes out of your training, so it's more of a flat line ascending, as

[01:02:09] opposed to peaks and troughs and bouncing back. I believe I had such a big base that I was only eating away a few percent of it, but I've eroded that to the point now where I don't come back as quick. All right, so Matt, there you go — seek expert help, walk-run back in, and be patient with your recovery, I think is how we can sum that up. Now, this one from Jack Nichols — Jackson Nichols — electrolytes before, during or after a run, what are you?

[01:02:40] I'll throw this one to you, Liam, what do you reckon, what do you do? We're not experts in diet or dietitians, so — my thought about electrolytes is they help me retain, in my mind, the way I use them — they help me stay hydrated for longer, help keep some salt in. Typically I don't use them during or after — I'll use them in the lead-up, when I'm trying to hydrate ahead of something like

[01:03:11] a race or training session — I'll have Powerade, or Powerade powder, in the lead-up. But once I get into running, it's just water for the most part, and then I'm focused, if I'm going — like when I went for a long run on the weekend, I took a couple of gel pouches and had two of them. With my running I'm more about getting carbs into me during a run, less about fluid. And afterwards, the thing

[01:03:43] that's my absolute go-to now post-run is a protein milk, or chocolate milk, something like that. I don't bother with Powerade or Gatorade or an electrolyte drink after exercise now — and that's not from any elite career performance behind me, that's just what makes my body feel good. Which is half the battle, I think, up to a certain — the way I'll answer it is in two parts. Up to a certain distance or time out there,

[01:04:15] I don't really believe it matters that much — you're running so short that if you're having a normal diet, it's probably going to suffice. If it's a normal healthy diet — if you're chewing down Doritos and not too much healthy stuff otherwise, maybe then you should be taking something else. But I've noticed I survive and I'm fine without it. However, when it's Queensland and it's an absolutely stinking hot day, I go through the servo and — we're going to be open and honest and transparent — I'll buy some of those big Maximus drinks, value for money, because they're about half the price

[01:04:46] and have more sodium in them. You can actually taste it a little too — that's not the reason I buy them, it's about the value for money, and the fact that some servos freeze them, so on those hot days — when I know it's going to be taxing and hot and I can

[01:05:17] literally feel the salt on me and losing it — if I'm not running that long day to day, I'm not that concerned, we're only doing hour sessions here and there. If you're going out doing ultra training, go and see professionals, get proper advice — or if you're doing a brick session in preparation for triathlon, cycling's different, because you're out

[01:05:47] on the bike for five or six hours, doing multiple hard sessions in a day. But running generally, you're going to be short in the morning, and if you do a second run it's still only going to be 40-odd minutes — I don't really see there being that much need. Great take I heard, I can't remember where, about Powerades and Gatorades — the irony is they're used by elite athletes in preparation for events, or incredibly hungover people the day after a bender. Same thing, because they're both

[01:06:18] dehydrated — it's the same as what we say about energy drinks. If you need one, if you're going to a nightclub and want to be ripping, it's the same as going for a 5K parkrun and wanting to be ripping — what do you want? You want sugar and caffeine, doesn't matter how you get it in, if you need energy, it gives you the energy. We've found the crossover between the nightlife and the early morning starters. I like it. Hey, listen, question from BJ Holden — great name, sounds like a car — he was an athlete a long time

[01:06:50] ago, he's now 44, hasn't played a lot of sport recently due to some injuries and surgeries, but wants to get back into running to lose weight, do some distance and run some trails. What advice are you going to give him, Courtney, to get started and build up? So this is someone with an athletic background but injuries and surgeries — we'll assume those are lower-body — something to his knees or ankles — but he wants to get back into running to lose weight and run some trails. Again, first thing, if there's injuries and surgeries,

[01:07:20] expert help, we're not the people to be asking. But let's assume he's got that expert help and been given the all-clear. He wants to lose some weight, do some distance and trails — it's running, right, all of that's running. So I'd say go and find a group — go and find someone, find a group you fit into. Personally, I think the personal match matters more first, and then secondly, find the

[01:07:53] group that's at your level, that you can run with — you're not overstretching. If you're an ex-runner cracking along really well, don't go to a group who are just trying to do 500 metres — find your group, find the group you like hanging out with, and that'll make getting back into it a whole lot easier. Besides the company, the other reason that's such a good, simple idea is when you've got injuries, or you've had a sore calf or whatever, everyone's going to notice.

[01:08:23] When you run with someone, you suddenly forget about it. If you run on your own and you've been injured, I guarantee you'll be thinking about that injury the whole time — can I feel that calf going, is that a sore spot, is that ready to go? It plays with your mind, and as soon as you have a conversation while running, it's often like there's nothing wrong there at all. That's the same notion — the little voice in your head disappears because you're thinking about other things, and you stop worrying about whether that's tightness or another tear.

[01:08:53] I love it — this is completely random, so attack me if you will, but if you had a sore calf on your right leg, go and put Deep Heat on your left calf, and go for a run and see how you go. Right? Yeah, it's like people trying to fix the yips in golf — turn your hat around, put your sunglasses down the back of your shirt, anything to take your brain off it.

[01:09:23] Neural patterning is a lot of it — we could do a whole episode on that. Hey, quickly before we finish up — and everybody keep sending in your questions, we're compiling them, we want to get to as many as we can, DM us — we'll probably do a proper episode dedicated to listener questions, because there's a lot we're stockpiling, so keep sending them into In The Beginning Podcast. Love a bit of shoe chat, love a bit of gear chat — we talked about watches last week. There's a mystery Asics shoe that's been spotted — at Japan's 2025 New Year Ekiden, which I'm

[01:09:58] assuming is an ekiden relay event that happened over the New Year's Eve break — there was a mystery Asics shoe spotted, and the blurb underneath said this is thought to be the upcoming hyper shoe from Asics, currently under development, codename 'MZ Type-1,' on the World Athletics approval list. For people who don't understand how this works, for a shoe to be legal for elite athletes to race in,

[01:10:28] it has to be available for your average runner to purchase for a certain amount of time before it can be raced in. So if Asics is developing this shoe, it will become available to your average runner. In this snapped image of the shoe, there's a few Easter eggs — people have identified a wrinkle in the foam of the shoe, which suggests how soft it is, so there's a softer foam in this shoe. By the looks of it, the upper is ultra-thin, so your socks are almost visible through it, which

[01:10:58] is the case with the Nike Alphafly. They reckon this shoe's going to weigh somewhere around 150 grams. Basically what it looks like this shoe is going to do is take over from the Metaspeed Sky and the Metaspeed Edge, the carbon-plate Asics shoes you've seen a lot of people running in — they reckon those become the lesser, or average marathon shoe, and this new shoe is going to compete

[01:11:29] with the Nike Alphafly now, and the Adidas fancy-pants shoe as well. What do you make of it, on appearance? On appearance, well, either you're onto something, or someone's gone and cut the heel off a Metaspeed, drawn a black stripe on the sole and is taking the piss here. No, I'm sure they're not, I'm sure they're not. It's always interesting — before we started doing this podcast I obviously took notice of

[01:11:59] shoes, but since we've been more engrained in looking at this stuff, it's amazing how there's this whole industry out there — it's like cars, isn't it, when they have to camouflage their cars so competing brands or customers don't know what's coming. I just love the idea of — who's the Aussie, Liam Adams, yes, who blacks out his shoes with texta because he doesn't have an official sponsor. Yeah, well, it worked at the Gold Coast Marathon last year, worked well for him. What have we got to finish with here, Courtney?

[01:12:29] Some goggles — Oakley Flex Sky, is that how you pronounce it? Flex Sky. It's a mouthful, mate, it's a little late today — half glasses, half goggles. I'll put these in the notes and post them on Instagram as well. Key feature, interchangeable goggle strap — you can remove the lower part of the frame, think of it like ski goggles

[01:13:00] or motocross goggles, and then when you want to go out to the club you just rip the bottom of the frame off, or go running, rip the bottom off, and you've got a traditional pair of sunnies for you. So it's a hybrid. Do you run in sunnies? I can't remember ever seeing you run in sunnies. No — and I raced for Oakley from the time I was 17 until post-London Olympics,

[01:13:30] so probably like a 15-year partnership with them. Still love the gear. Then after, let's just say, my Olympics thing, I quite enjoyed just going and trying a range of different sunnies and whatever else. Now if I do run in a pair, I'll just grab whatever casual glasses I've got. But generally, no — 90% of my running now is done pretty early in the mornings. Do you run in a pair?

[01:14:01] Not really, no. I've got a pair — literally a pair of less-specs, like the off-the-rack servo type sunnies I wear around, but I don't really run in them. I'm thinking about actually investing in a pair of Oakleys at the moment, because I wouldn't mind half-decent sunnies to run in. I don't actually have an answer for why I do or don't — it's probably why I've got all these wrinkles going on. But I do find running with sunglasses on trails is

[01:14:34] tricky, if you're under canopy — because you really have to concentrate, I find. Anything that dulls one of the senses — God, this sounds wanky, but anything that dulls hearing or sight — that's why. Yeah, that does sound like — I've already got crap eyesight, bad eyesight, so.

[01:15:04] Would you get a pair with prescription lenses? Should you, unless you put contacts in? In Noosa this year I wore contacts, because I've got a pair of big ugly sunglasses I got free off Instagram — got hooked by one of those 'get these for free' things, they're crap but I still wear them because they look silly. I have to wear contacts under them, otherwise when I'm going down Noosa Hill and get up to my brave speed of 60 kilometres an hour, I get nervous. We're talking about these ugly

[01:15:35] fakes — yes or no? Oh yeah, I'm here for them. Really? Yeah, no, they're great, make you look like RoboCop. Oakley have always done some really interesting — and a beta thing, I think Oakley's a cool brand, great marketing. That's us done for the week. Yep — how long did we go today? An hour seventeen, so if you're running to us, if you're out for your long run, we hope we've carried you through from start to finish. Enjoy, enjoy — all right, we'll see you next week.