EP 23 - THE #1 RUN SHOE ON STRAVA

[00:00] In the beginning, episode 23, and we're rushed. We're rushed, we're rushed, it's my fault. Liam, we're going to get to why we're rushed. We are, but let's start with something different, let's have a listen to this. My opinion: you should name your child after something you love. Marathon, come here! Novablast, come here! Speed, come inside! Do you know anyone who's ever named their kid after something

[00:30] to do with sport or running? I mean, there's plenty of trees and that out there, but yeah. I'm trying to think if I know anybody who's named their kid Usain or something. No, look, we've both got two kids, you have to name your kids with running at the forefront. No, with my name, yeah. All I made sure of with my kids is that I gave them two strong male names and one strong female name so they never got mixed up. Really? Oh mate, I've lived my whole life with a unisex name. Of course, it's like I'll go to check into

[01:01] a hotel tonight and I'll never know whether I'm going to get Mr or Mrs. So, tangent, this is really interesting, right? Because my daughter's name is Quinn, which is a unisex name. Could be Quinn Dara, yep, great swimmer, swam the English Channel. My daughter Quinn is a girl, and interestingly, when the final of the Shoreham Partners Iron Series was on recently at North Burleigh, Quinn was a nipper there at North Burleigh, like you were, and the North Burleigh Nippers had the chance to run out with

[01:32] the athletes on the sand for the final event, really excited. And all the girl nippers were getting matched up with the female athletes and all the little boy nippers were getting matched up with the male athletes. And Quinn, my daughter, was lumped in with all the little boy nippers and the male athletes because whoever was putting the list together just assumed Quinn was a boy. I feel her pain, you can let her know I feel her pain, this has been my daily life. So that's what I did for my kids. I wasn't having a go at you, Liam. No, no, no.

[02:02] But it's interesting, I've learned from that experience, I'm still living it every day. To go back to the original hypothetical, if you named your kids after something you loved, running-wise my first would have been Negative Split, Maggie, come over here, Neggie, Neggie! And the second one would have been Threshold, Toy, come over here, Toy! Anyway, running names, hey. Talk about quick, talk about toy runners.

[02:33] Let's talk about toy runners. We've got some running news to get through, we don't normally start off with running news, but there have been some results we need to talk about. First of all, we have a new half marathon world record. This is mind-boggling. The previous record was held by Yomif Kejelcha, I'm not sure if I'm saying his surname right, but I know Courtney will get nowhere near it. Yep. But it's been broken by Jacob Kiplimo, who I think held the

[03:03] record before Yomif, 56 minutes and 42 seconds. He's the first human ever to break 57 minutes. It doesn't sound like a half marathon time when you start talking 56 and a half minutes. Yeah, for context, have you seen the 5K breakdowns for this run? I haven't, I haven't, you're obviously in the data a lot more than me. What's your 5K PB, Courtney Atkinson, two-time

[03:35] elite, I honestly, I swear to God, I don't know, but at that time I'd run a mid-14. Mid-14, yeah. Jacob Kiplimo, in setting this new world record, has run his 10-to-15K split in 12:57. He's 10Ks deep into this and then he's dropped a sub-13-minute 5 kilometre. It's wild.

[04:06] He's gone 13:38, his first 5K's as slow as that. He's gone 13:38 through the first 5K, he's gone 13:12 through the next 5K, then he's dropped the 12:57, and then he's come home with a 13:23. Negative split, he's negative split, yeah. That's what he should call his first kid, Negative Split Kiplimo. But this is, and we've talked previously about when the women's marathon world record

[04:36] was set earlier this year, I think, or late last year potentially, and sadly we've had this conversation before so we don't need to have it again, about the question marks that hang when these sorts of leaps get made, were there question marks on this one? Well, I don't know if there's a lot of news on this, but he's essentially improved the world record by 48 seconds, which is massive. Which is a massive, massive

[05:06] amount. And look, amazing, not questioning it, but we're now, as you said, talking about half marathons being run at, his average is 22.3 kilometres an hour. I just know how quick that is on a treadmill trying to test, that's my max when I'm running fast. It's wild. It is wild. Do you, I actually want to move on because this is depressing me. No, no.

[05:36] No, that is incredible, crazy. We've got some other results to talk about, because I think the other thing I'm getting a sense of at the moment through my running friends is that race season's kind of here. Like, there have been events and all the rest of it over the last couple of months, but I feel like the Tarawera, over in New Zealand, happened over the last weekend, which is the equivalent of our UTA. And I just found myself in all my WhatsApp groups and social media feeds starting to

[06:07] get caught up in running season. And now I've got friends in Sydney who are beginning 12-week programmes for a half marathon coming up, and I'm like, oh, this is exciting, marathon season's here. And the winners of the Tarawera were Daniel Jones and Ruth Croft, yep, big shout out to them. Beth McKenzie, my teammate from the Noosa Triathlon Legends race, was a podium finisher, she also finished third in the women's race up at Tarawera. That's right, she won UTA last

[06:38] year, she won UTA 100 last year, she's finished third in the Tarawera race this year, she's on fire. She and her husband Luke run Win Racing, which is a great brand doing great stuff, supporting athletes as well. But yeah, I've just found myself in a bit of running season fever at the moment. Yeah, Dan Jones is an interesting one, because Dan came from an adventure racing background, I've raced pretty much, I don't think I've raced with him. No, I've raced against him, he's been in Kiwi teams, I've been in Aussie teams, and raced

[07:09] through China in adventure racing with him. And then he went all in on the long trail stuff and he's killing it. It's so exciting, he'll be at Western States and all of that. So shout out to everybody that took part in Tarawera over the weekend, and as I said, I hope we get to share more racing news with you because it feels like we're starting to head into the season. Before we move on, some books I have in front of me here, last one you mightn't have heard of, but I think it needs to be

[07:40] shared here on In the Beginning. The pint-sized running prodigy has made history in a race he didn't mean to enter, the 11-year-old from Box Hill has set a blistering new fastest time for three kilometres, with his sights set on the Brisbane Olympics. He's half the size of his competition but strides ahead, 2:46 for James Hall, absolutely flying. 11-year-old James Hall is now the fastest 3-kilometre runner for his age in the world,

[08:13] gaining that title in part by accident, not realising the distance he'd signed up for, 'I actually didn't know it was going to be seven-and-a-half laps.' He started the race fast and held his pace, finishing after 9 minutes and 7 seconds, the equivalent of three-minute kilometres. This is an 11-year-old from Melbourne who's just clocked 9 minutes over 3K. That's super impressive.

[08:44] I know a little bit about schoolboy running, and even guys like Craig Mottram, you know, in his heyday, I'd race around our school titles and at national level, and I can tell you, 9 minutes was a good benchmark when you're in grade 10, about 15. He's 11, he's 11, he's first in the world. Like, how do you reckon, where do you reckon he goes from here as an 11-year-old?

[09:14] Well, there's a better question, I've got no idea. I never got put into pathways or programmes or any sort of high-achieving type stuff. It's a question for you, because you were identified as someone with potential in high school, right? So let me put you in the position of being this young man's coach, how do you manage him from here? He's 11 years old, mind you, and we've seen with Gout Gout the way he's being managed by his

[09:44] team, they're saying, well, we know what you're good at, we're just going to focus you, we're going to let you be you, we're going to let you develop naturally. They're doing a really good job of managing him right now. How would you, or how are people around this kid talking about managing him through pathways from here? Because this ain't a fluke, 11 years old and you're the fastest kid over 3Ks in the world, there's potential, how do you best nurture it? I mean, the challenge for anyone this age is going to be

[10:15] enjoyment, right? Because the tendency will be, there'll be a lot of, I'd say there'd be people, hopefully not, but I'd suggest there's probably people circling going, 'I'll get hold of this kid, I'm going to be able to take him right through to great heights,' or 'he's a young Olympian,' or whatever it is. But I mean, at 11, first thing is he obviously enjoys running if he can do that. The second thing is you still want to be able to, at that age, experience a whole range of things. I think running, especially

[10:47] in distance running, he's got a lot of development to go through, a lot of growth, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. So I'd say caution would be the thing. I did say this has all happened through a school down there, very similar to the schools on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane that look after runners and have really professional coaching around them, I'd say he's in that boat. But I love that later on in that clip, 'cause I watched the whole thing, he said, 'I don't really look up to any other runners, I look up to the grade 11s and 12s'

[11:18] at the school, yes, 'cause you do when you're a kid, because when you're 14 you think 16, 17 is as far as you see in life. Yeah, it's the other thing, I love the idea that for every Tiger Woods who specialised early, and for every Williams sister who specialised early, there's probably hundreds of thousands of kids who tried to specialise and couldn't sustain it. The generalisation over

[11:52] specialisation, the diversification, as a kid in sport, I love that attitude. And I wonder, well, I wonder what else he's doing. I mean, we don't know, but I wonder whether he's got a background in swimming, something that's created that aerobic base, just because at 11 to be able to maintain that over 9 minutes, like, 3K for an 11-year-old's a long way, 1500 metres or 800 can be a long way for a 10- or 11-year-old. So I'm going to take a guess that he's done something leading up to this where he's built a good aerobic engine, he's built the

[12:24] heart, built the, you know, built all the capillaries already, starting that process. So if that's the case, you don't want to deviate from that, you want to continue that progression and then slowly, obviously, specialise in running, 'cause that's, but that's something to be said. World's best at 11. And, you know, what do we, do the maths, Brisbane's nine years out, this kid will be 20 when Brisbane rolls around. Talk to me about, well, it's a perfect age, that's what.

[12:57] Is it the perfect age? Yeah, 100%. That's what I've been saying about the Brisbane Olympics all along since we started doing the podcast, the great thing about the Olympics is young kids watch it at home and they have that view where they're not like us. They haven't been through life to a degree that, they're not bitter, they're not shaded. They're just watching a race, seeing a hero, and hopefully wanting to emulate them.

[13:27] And we're looking at those eight-, nine-, ten-year-olds who are going to be the Brisbane Olympians, they don't even know that yet, but they're the ones we've got to nurture, and that's why you keep needing the Olympic cycle to happen, so you bring on these new kids and it keeps going. But talking about young kids and training, oh, I've got it in front of me. I'm a little bit old, but I promised last week I'd go and search for an old journal I wrote. I said last week when we were talking about Will Ashcroft, I said I don't journal, I'd rather go and watch Netflix.

[13:58] Yeah, at this stage of my life I couldn't think of anything worse than journaling. But I opened a random page in that journal I've given you, and I don't even know what year it is, I'm probably a teenager when I'm writing it. So what I'm holding here, if you can't watch the clips or check out the video footage of this and you're just listening, is a shiny silver spiral notebook. It's in pretty good nick, considering you wrote this as a teenager, a bit of a nerd. And as I flip through it, you've

[14:30] got very good handwriting, by the way, thank you, I will say you've got very good handwriting. But my God, you're an athletic nerd. Because this is, alright, so pick a random page and look, hopefully it's not a big date, no, no, no or anything, big night on the juice, I've got this somewhere. It's data-driven, and then there's a page I've just found which is more notes, words. Monday, 16th of April, and again we're not sure what

[15:02] year this, oh, here we go, this is your 2000 notebook, so 2001. Sydney 2000 Olympics, I would have been a teenager, so nearly cracked the Olympics as a teenager accidentally, and then it took me another few rounds to get into it. First page of this is Saturday 9th of December 2000, so it's late 2000 after the Sydney Olympics, and then I'm going to jump to the 16th of April, presumably 2001, Monday 16th of April, beautifully handwritten: 'Ride 81 and a half kilometres, 2 hours 40, average 30 and a half Ks an hour.'

[15:34] Then you've got the route you rode, which was Nerang to Gillingbah, Chillingham, maybe Chillingham twice, Hinze Dam loop, Gilston to home. Hinze Dam, for those goals, sorry, yes, run off bike, still got my Adelaide accent, run off bike, 6Ks, approximately 25 minutes. Swim 4 and a half Ks, no warm-up, 2K time trial, 24 minutes. 'Swim 24:24,' you've broken it down into splits: 12x100 kick, 10x100 flippers kick, swim drill, 4x100 back, warm

[16:08] down with fins. Asterisk: BBQ with mum's side of family after Darren's wedding, came over late. Oh, that's why you're not meant to read that, mate. I was particular, that is so funny, Courtney. How old are you in 2001? Twenty-two. I mean, I'm in my heyday. It's just hilarious.

[16:39] Oh, now I've got it, now, hold on, hold on, just quickly, though. That was a Monday for you, and you've done an 81-and-a-half-K ride, you've run 6K off the bike, and then you've done a four-and-a-half-K swim, that's just your journalling, just quickly. That's doing all right for a Monday. Yeah, and just, and day more, just days of this. I'm going to take this home and read it with me because it's fascinating reading. You've also brought two other books that you haven't written. No, I definitely haven't written these, you haven't written these books, but you wanted to bring them up

[17:10] as I try and pick them up without bumping the microphone. So that's the reason I wanted to show you the journal, I think behind the scenes, that's the type of thing no one sees. I think I was 19 or something, and I was being coached at that time too, but the attention to detail that goes into thinking about every single little thing that goes into your performance, analysing it,

[17:42] reworking it year on year, comparing it, so year to year, or month to month, would you go back and review this stuff? On top of that we'd have volume graphs, so this is before training peaks, I'm pretty sure, maybe just before Training Peaks. So we'd have volume graphs, we'd be managing it each day. I'm just looking right at the back, you've got your weekly totals. Oh well, there you go, so here, literally at the back, at least I wasn't hideous with what we do. No, no, no.

[18:12] Wow, this is, you've got your prize money listed here at the very bottom. I'm happy for you to share the prize money. What are we doing with that? Prize money 2001 to 2002 season, OK, financial year. Brisbane Bridge Run, you won 600 bucks. Bridge to Brisbane, I wonder if they still pay prize money for that. You won 600 bucks, I wouldn't have won it either. Huka Falls Ironman, no, hold on, you won $1100, it's been a dodgy race that one.

[18:42] It must have come back a bit. Springfield Run, this is all local stuff, you won 100 bucks. Japan Sprint champs, you won five grand. Yep. Wollongong, Wollongong tri, you won $200. Bribie Island tri, you won $140. Noosa Aquathon, you won $1000. So for the year, that's all I've, jeez, I mustn't have been surviving. Is there another page? No, I've obviously haven't, oh wow, this is now, I feel like.

[19:15] What happened? No, you've just got more stuff I want to share here, this is, you've got 'Training lessons, you'll regret this.' No, no, no, you've got 'Training lessons learnt.' Oh, can I read these? Sure, I can always edit. 'Training lessons learnt,' I want you to jump in as these come to you. OK: bike TT on win trainer to get strong quick, that's why everyone's on Zwift today. Specific training for triathlon, run off bike, makes sense. Bike position forward, nearly over the BB for TT.

[19:47] That's what all the Tour riders are doing now, 20 years ahead. Monitor heart rate, aim to lower heart rate running off bike. Yep, heart rate, so looking to become more efficient. Run with faster cadence, specific to running off bike. Yep, so pick up cadence, that would have been like aiming around that 180, using metronomes. Don't concentrate too much on one discipline, specific run training won't make running off bike easy. Mmm, that's an interesting one. Definitely, work, I always talk about the jigsaw puzzle in triathlon, but we're starting to see how good the triathlete runners are as

[20:19] individuals. Yeah, and it'd be interesting to know how their, yeah, their jigsaw puzzle looks now. Flexibility, easy improvement, i.e. yoga. Yeah, we used to do a fair bit of yoga. I still, I still would like to do a lot more yoga, it's just the time. Stability, for brackets, rob circuits plus, remember, back, must have been in the gym at that stage, down at the QAS I reckon. 'Extra weight makes it harder to'

[20:50] run off bike, no fats. We've talked a lot about skin folds, this is, there we go, we're working it out, this is early days for me, so I'm working out where my optimal race weight lies. This is interesting. Swim least importantly, ride biggest portion, then run. So this really is, like, I wouldn't remember

[21:20] any of that. You know what this is, Courtney? In the Beginning, this is In the Beginning stuff. '60-second surge at end of long run to improve kick over distance, run off bike equal, i.e. 12Ks.' Oh, so that's you telling yourself to run further than the 10K you would've been racing in tris, yes. 'Rides solid in races, warms legs up for run.' Yeah, OK, that's interesting, I wouldn't have remembered that. 'One racing is easy way for specific training session.'

[21:52] Yep, of course. Tempo, medium-distance running specific for off bike, well, that was kind of like threshold running. And then, 'after sitting before a race for extended periods, i.e. plane or car, get into facet joints with a T-ball.' That was me having trouble with my lower back when I was travelling a lot, we'd fly sometimes 24 hours to get to a race. And then, as I said, you've got dates with your training log, your distance log,

[22:22] you've got swim, ride, run, the months, or sorry, it's a weekly distance calculator. No, this is so interesting, it's old-school, isn't it, this is really fascinating stuff. We're going to get onto Strava in a minute, but this is pre-Strava, how it was done. I'll say this to you, OK, because there's pages in this book and notes in this book that I won't share for the podcast. But here's what I'll say

[22:52] to you, Courtney Atkinson, at some point, many, many, many, many years from now, decades from now, multiple decades from now, you won't be around, right? If there's things in this book that you don't want made public, get rid of them, because otherwise someone will start a podcast called The Life and Times of Courtney Atkinson, they'll get all this and read it out. Hey, look, maybe I thought I was going to be a lot more famous than I turned out to be, maybe I really thought I was going to win that gold medal,

[23:23] Liam, so interesting, and I had books ready to go. That's so interesting. Now talk to me about these two other books that you brought, the ones you didn't write. When I went looking for these old journals up in a box upstairs, I found these two, I've only ever kept two books, they're running books. One is Deek, 'The Making of Australia's World Marathon Champion.' I spent a lot of my youth following very similar programmes to Deek, because I ran with Pat Clohessy, who was Deek's coach.

[23:56] So when Deek won that famous Brisbane Marathon and all of that, Pat was coaching him, and we pretty much did the same sessions, I read this book and could just see all the same training sessions. There was a famous one he'd do, an 8x400 session with a 200 float, a lot of runners still do it today. That all came from, I mean, it was Australian running culture, but Pat Clohessy had a lot to do with all that. I was running up at the University of Queensland in my early days, actually probably around that journalling time,

[24:27] and yeah, I learnt my trade doing that. Now Pat and Deek learnt their trade, to a degree, from a guy that a lot of older runners will know as Arthur Lydiard. 'Running to the Top' is a programme based on Arthur Lydiard's principles of running, you'll read nutrition stuff in there where he talks about, and I can't remember exactly, but how, before gels existed, you'd use honey in races, right.

[24:57] This is like a history lesson, Liam, this is fascinating, honey in races. But what he's got in 'Running to the Top,' by Arthur Lydiard, is structured programmes for how you periodise your training blocks going up to a 10K, a half marathon, I can't remember the exact wording he uses, but when you should do your test races before the races. It was all about periodisation, building massive mileage up. It included a little bit of fartlek, as always, to keep your speed base.

[25:28] He'd put in a strength training block, so a specific block of hills, then he'd go into his speed phase, then he'd go into his taper. And I can see I've actually highlighted pages, so a lot of these, I had coaches all through this time. Well, when the books are good you just end up highlighting every bit of it. Pick one and read, I don't know if anyone's interested. You reckon people are interested in this? Absolutely, absolutely, because, I'll come back to

[26:00] this, I've got, remind me to give you my thoughts on why I think runners would find this stuff interesting. OK, just quickly, chapter 13 of Arthur's book, 'Running to the Top,' chapter 13 is the marathon. Some of the stuff you've highlighted in here: 'Push when you feel tired and you could suffer muscle breakdown which will waste all your effort,' great lesson. 'The best results come when you train to a comfortably tired state. The greatest benefit will come from the run itself, in a sharp improvement in your racing'

[26:32] 'fitness. Retain that by keeping all further training relatively easy, and by resisting the temptation to run too much in the final week.' So this is in the lead-up to the race, but what's interesting is he's essentially got a 12-week programme in here for runners. Yeah, and I think, I didn't follow the programme exactly because I was doing triathlon, but I think there was a phase where I was probably in between coaches, where I would have done a lot of trial and error around that training style. And in the end the best

[27:04] years I had were built on periodisation, building up to a block of racing, because it wouldn't just be one race, but being able to race well over a season. It was simple: the longer the base, the better the outcome. Yeah, and that is Lydiard's principle down to a tee. The reason I think, and you sit there and go, 'I don't know if anyone would find this interesting,' the reason I think people would find this interesting, and I now want to read both these books, is because, and this goes back to something you and I have talked about quite a bit, the amount of

[27:35] noise that exists in running these days, the noisiness of the running industry, from the elite level down to the amateur level, and we're a part of that noise. But the noisiness, and the general consensus, and the confluence of thoughts that exists in all of it, right, I don't know exactly when these two were published, but I imagine both these books were published in a much simpler time, a much quieter time, I guess in the 90s.

[28:05] So it's published in a much quieter time, when the amount of people jumping up and down saying 'I'm an expert, look at me' was few and far between. And as a result, I haven't read these, well, the only people who would publish a book would be someone who's achieved at the highest level already. I mean, Arthur Lydiard coached, you know, multiple, I think Snell, Peter Snell, three-times gold, or Lasse Virén, four-times gold medallist.

[28:35] One of the best runners ever, Scandinavian runner. So to this point, not to say getting published is the equivalent of a blue checkmark, but he's got some expertise, this fella. Yeah, we talk about running schooling, who do you trust, who should you trust, if they're giving you run advice? It's probably a pretty good person to trust. Robert de Castella, reckon you could probably trust his thoughts on running. Well, it's funny you say that, if you went and picked up that Arthur Lydiard book and read it, I reckon nine times out of ten you're probably going to do

[29:05] better than most of what's going out there on the information web today. And it's because it's simple, right, it's not overcomplicated, no one's trying to sell you anything, it's structured, it's easy. And that wouldn't sell because it's too basic, but it just does the simple things right, it's periodised right, it gives you a training plan. And I'm going to say you couldn't go too far wrong, but having someone to help you on top of that, whose expertise in coaching would help even more. And can I just, if you talk

[29:36] amongst yourselves for a moment, what do you reckon, do you think you're going, you can buy this book for 25 bucks online right now. Amazing, you could go and buy that wealth of knowledge, this book that you, Courtney Atkinson, two-time Olympian, one of our greats, calls a running Bible for you, right, from a training perspective, it's a training Bible for you. And you can get that for 25 bucks right now online, and you

[30:09] can go away and silence all the noise of the running industry, and just sit down and read that book. But it's more than a Bible, what's the word for it when it's not even a theory, it's a, manifesto, yeah. It's an attitude towards running, it's what I believe, and the reason I believe it is 'cause it's worked. It's worked, it worked, I mean, no Olympic gold medal, but it reasonably worked. Geez, Deek's isn't cheap, it's Deek's.

[30:41] I mean, they mightn't have published that many of those Deek books, I could be sitting on a gold mine, I kid you not, do you know how much it is? I hope I didn't nick it off someone else. I'm on Amazon right now, 'Deek, the Making of Australia's World Champion,' there's one left in stock, that's $121. Have a look in the inside cover. Yeah, it got gifted to you by someone, did it? Yeah, who? Who have you stolen this from?

[31:11] It actually says, maybe it's, it's not Mike Shelley, this is, 'To Michael, all the best for '88, you will certainly remember '87, from Chris and Jen,' or Jim. Who have you stolen this book from? Well, I'm happy to give it back to whoever it is. That's amazing, this is the last time I ever bring out books, Liam, I'm getting found out left, right and centre here. So, running to the top, available for purchase widely, 25 bucks, Deek a little bit more expensive if you really want to

[31:44] get one. Courtney Atkinson's private journal, priceless. Well, mate, I can't say all that was enjoyable for me, but I'm glad you got something out of it, hope everyone else did too. That was amazing. Yeah, maybe we'll pull out some old stuff again. Well, from your private journal to the app version of the data that we have moved into the digital age, so, you would know, Strava, for those who have Strava premium or not,

[32:14] at the end of the year they send you your stats, who you're in with the most, a whole range of stuff. Did you look at that this year for yourself? A little bit, a little bit, right. So what I've got here is a few months on, it's the business version. So when you see on Strava you have challenges, for example, Nike, or whoever the brand is, the one we talked about the other week, the name I couldn't pronounce, the Burrito Challenge, 100%. All of these challenges that are on Strava, they're businesses investing there. Yeah, this is for businesses

[32:45] to understand what to look at, where the trends are, what's happening on Strava for the year '24, and what you should be looking at for '25. So this is a bit of inside information, but it's public knowledge as well, so it's fine to share. I'm going to go through a few things, and like your journal, it is a little bit like my journal, because the first thing that pops up, the number one trend, is 'getting social, we sweat now,' they're saying one in five Gen Z surveyed have been on a date with someone they met at a

[33:18] group fitness activity, this dating, say the number again, one in five Gen Zs, yep, have been on a date with someone they met at a group fitness activity in 2024. OK, so one in five, if you want to get a date. Is that right? I guess that's a pretty good hit rate. No, no, it's not a one-in-five strike rate, it's, 20% of the population, or 20% of Gen

[33:50] Z, have met, have been on a date off the back of a run group, or a gym group, or something like that, or a fun run, or a walk, or whatever it is, HYROX. Yep, which would suggest that, I guess it makes sense because, you know, you're up and out of bed. What was this version of yourself? I've seen the news talk about run clubs being the new dating apps, but this, you know, that makes sense, some information that's come through that suggests one in five seems about right too. Yeah, 20% of people, you know a few people who've met and then absolutely kicked on

[34:22] off run clubs. Second one: 'run clubs greater than nightclubs,' four times more people say they want to meet new people through a fitness group than at a bar. That doesn't surprise me at all, that also feels like a reflection of not only the nightlife scene in Australia in particular, but also the fitness-booming scene, so that one doesn't overly surprise me. Yeah, and we chatted a while back about how do you make the new nightclub, the new nightclub, and Nike

[34:52] tried it with the sunset runs, yeah. Let me, some of this stuff is probably not as interesting. OK, this is an interesting stat, how quick do you think the average of all the people I've looked at on Strava running, what do you think their average speed is in minutes per kilometre? What do you think the average person runs on? Can you say, on average, 6:22 minutes per kilometre.

[35:23] Interesting, interesting, which tells me there's a lot of runners out there who are jogging. Yeah, a lot of joggers, a lot of hobby joggers, and I think that's a nice number to remember if you're one of those people out there just starting out, not only just starting out, but maybe getting caught up in allowing other people's times and distances to affect you mentally and discourage you from posting or sharing or recording your data.

[35:54] I'll be guilty of this, I'm saying this as somebody who went through it. I went through a phase on Strava of not ever wanting to share runs that were slower than 5-minute pace, because everyone I was running with in Sydney was consistently running low-4-minute-K pace, and I was just like, why am I not getting faster, why am I running slower, but remember, 6:22 is right on average. Now if you run slower than 6:22,

[36:25] that's still OK, well, this is average, so you're going to run slower than that, you're going to run quicker than that, but that's just the average pace over all the users. Now here we get into some of the Gen Z demographics and what people think, for Gen Z, mental health was the main goal for 2025. So when I say the main goal, 65% of Gen Z have mental health as a goal for 2025

[37:00] in exercising, OK, versus Gen X, now what's Gen X, that's the age group above me, I'm a millennial, I think, oh, no, I might be Gen X, I think I'm on the border of Gen X as well. Gen X years are 1965 to 1980. Yeah, so that's, it's the demo above. Mental health is less important to that generation, that's inverse to Gen Z, kind of makes sense of what's going on today, and then vice versa, longevity of being able to

[37:32] exercise, that seems right on. Yeah, obviously Gen X then starts to really think about it, whereas those younger people, Gen Z, aren't actually at the point of thinking about their mortality and ability to move around. But I also think it's great that they've realised it, whether it's through social media attracting them or telling them to do that. But I think it's also a good thing to realise that exercise is healthy for you, not just physically, the same reason we always say we love getting out running, it's more than just purely the endorphins you get out of it.

[38:07] Alright, let's move on a little bit because I want to get to the shoes. I want to get to the shoes, they always talk about shoes. OK, what do you think is the number one shoe and model on Strava? So when you do your Strava run, you can choose a shoe, plug it in, what would you say the number one shoe is? So if you're playing along at home or on your phone, what do you think, you're on your own right now, lock it in, we'll give you a few seconds. In your mind, number one shoe on Strava, in Australia, or is this

[38:42] globally? It's global. Globally, I'm going to say it's Nike, Nike Pegasus. Bang on the money, is it? 100%. Why? Had we said Australia, I don't know if you can break that down, but I'd pivot and say ASICS. I can't, I can't, this is just me thinking

[39:13] out loud, but I'd say Nike's just too big. Yep, too big, OK. Strava would love a breakdown per country, and to that point, 'cause I've got a pair of the Pegasus, it's a really easy entry shoe, it's your everyday runner, it's your everyday trainer, for most people who might be running 6:22 pace, it's probably a great shoe to run in, yeah. So anyone who thought it might have been the Hoka Clifton that was second, but what really surprised me more than anything, and this is starting to become less of a surprise as we keep talking week

[39:43] to week, is that the Brooks Ghost is number three. Number three, wow, Brooks. I think of Brooks, I think of Footlocker, yep, like, my kid needs a pair of shoes to bash around in the schoolyard, probably Brooks Ghost. Brooks are doing a lot around the influencer market, right,

[40:13] they don't concentrate up there in the elite area, and maybe this is why it's showing through, but yeah, Brooks Ghost was number three. OK, we'll share that, Brooks, definitely not having a go, I was just surprised, surprised me. I would have thought, I probably would have guessed, what would you have said the other two may have been? I would have had, you would have had an ASICS in there, I would have had an ASICS Novablast or something like that, just because it's a good running shoe, and I might have thought a few more runners, and then I probably would have actually gone to New Balance.

[40:45] New Balance aren't in there, even, like Europeans, being such a high population, I would have had an Adidas, like I don't know enough about Brooks as a brand, but I'm guessing it's American. I would say that's a large proportion of it. Maybe we've got to start doing a little bit more research around here, because they keep popping up. Top tracking devices, so what you use, and this is by model again, what would you say is the most popular watch, Apple Watch?

[41:17] Yep, the Apple Watch series takes out number one, and number two, what do you think the most popular non-Apple product is? Garmin. Yeah, anymore, I don't really know enough, I know I've got a Forerunner 955, OK, but that's about the extent of my, I can see why this is number three, because remember when I talked about what I want out of a watch, I want simplicity, I want music, and I just want it to do what I need it to do, and relatively cheap, the Forerunner 245.

[41:49] This isn't the music version, but it's literally the lightest, simplest, I haven't got it around here, the lightest, simplest Garmin that isn't like a basic model. I wouldn't, I don't know their model names off-hand, but they've got like an 80 or one, all these different ones. This is kind of the basic one I'd trust for running, still does labs, still does a whole range of stuff, and you can get a music version of it. I don't advocate for it like my Sunto, like, have way more stuff going on in them, but I

[42:20] use that one more. But we've talked about this and the need for what you really need in a watch, and how many people, 12 months on from owning something whizbang, might look back and go, 'jeez, I don't need 80% of this.' I wonder if everyone's guessing right now, this is, we go to the top running shoes overall, so this might be closer to what you're talking about. OK, top three, so these are the top running shoe brands overall, for you, this might be more, sorry, this is UK runners. Oh, OK, so this.

[42:52] Is that why they threw the UK in here all of a sudden? Hopefully I haven't got this all wrong now, this is just the one for the UK, the rest of it's, OK, so we're dividing, OK, well I'm just trying to think, I would still probably, but this is global, like, I would still probably have Nike at number one. Nike, number one. I would have Nike at number one, UK, I'd go Adidas, number two. ASICS, ASICS number two, you were right in thinking ASICS was up there. Number three, ASICS would be number three. Yeah, no, no, okay. So ASICS clearly has that

[43:24] British market, which is interesting. Yeah, it's weird why they'd put Britain in just for that one, and then now they go back to, anyway, OK, for those, because there are some triathletes who listen to this, I know from, people think, so we'll talk, I'll throw the bikes in there. Do you know much about your bike brands? Trek, number one, Trek, bang on the money. I wouldn't have said that, I would have said, who's number two? Giant. Specialized. Specialized and Giant come in at number three. I'm pretty happy to have got two out of the top three.

[43:54] What do you ride, Liam? I ride a Cannondale, I don't know what model, it's about that. Can I tell you about my bike, for those triathletes listening in? My bike is too big for me because I bought it second-hand off somebody in Sydney in 2012 for 1500 bucks, and I've had it for 12 years now, it's done ten Ironman triathlons, served me a treat, never once carried a single spare tube, flat kit or puncture repair kit in any Ironman triathlon I've done.

[44:24] My attitude has always been, if I get a puncture, I'm not meant to finish. It's a Cannondale, right? Yeah. I'm just trying to think, I've got a feeling, so maybe this is what I can bring out when I get back, a CAAD9. Well, I kid you not, I think one of my Olympic frames that's in that cupboard next to us is a Cannondale. There you go, have you got your frames here still? Have you got your Olympic bike frames? Two Olympic bike frames are just sitting in here. Really? Maybe that's another show and tell for next week, but.

[44:55] Can we just quickly, I'm making a mental note, and a note for the In the Beginning Podcast family, don't let me forget to create the audio version of the Courtney Atkinson Museum. We've already explored a little bit with your journals, we've dipped into your shoe museum a little bit, but I think it's, you never see it anywhere. But no, this is an audio product, yes, I think you probably underestimate how fascinating it is for the everyday person, like me, to hear, to take a walk down memory lane of your

[45:28] athletic career with you in person, by tangibly touching things like your journals and your shoes and all that. So it's just a mental note and an audio note for everybody listening, don't let me forget to open the Courtney Atkinson Museum. Yeah, well, we'll talk about, I only ever kept three, OK, and stripped them down 'cause I didn't, now's not the time to go into the museum, you keep going with your presentation. Yeah, my presentation, I sound like I'm at work, let's move through a few of these a bit quicker. But more people use their phone

[45:58] for Strava than watches, 72% of uploads are from their phone. That doesn't surprise me, that seems about right. Surprise me, really? Yeah, I mean, I suppose you're talking about all activities, we're not just talking about running in that space. But when it comes to running, here we go, I'll just answer my question, when it comes to running, it goes over to GPS watch. So marathoning is 92% GPS watch. I like this one, 'Hot or not in 2025,' we always talk about trends, which respondents approve of.

[46:32] OK, coordinated workout outfits, this happened, this is Gold Coast Esplanade, yeah, like this every day. That's hot in 2025, is it coordinating your workout outfits? Well, this one's split by men and women, so 69% of women want coordinated outfits, 51% of men want to coordinate. That's higher than I thought, that's weird, that's basically, for me, that's weird. Well, out of that, basically that means out of you and me, one of us wants the workout outfit

[47:02] coordinated, it's not me. It's hard to coordinate your workout when you take your shirt off all the time. Yeah, high socks or ankle socks? I know high socks are in. Gen Z, 57%, high, they're all about the high side. The older gens still run the ankles, a little bit like the short shorts, I reckon. Yep. What have we got, old and oversized T-shirts?

[47:33] This will all be, it's Gen Z, box, loose fit, that's not, we're not in the muscle band era, we're not in the, it's generational again, mate. So when we talk about trends, we know it's the younger crowd who like the trends, I think the older ages here are just wanting to get out and run, not surprising, no. Anyway, that's really interesting, 2024, a bit of a wrap-up. I would love to get that six-monthly, that's something

[48:05] I'd genuinely like every quarter, I'd be fascinated to know that sort of data about the running industry. Well, even the personal data that comes out around your own Strava stuff at the end of the year, it's just fascinating, like, they know everything, right, they probably know more than the social media stuff half the time, because you're showing them where you are nearly every day, where you run. Did you, I heard something fascinating, and this is the reality of the internet and social media

[48:38] and all the apps and all your phones and everything, it might be serving you a purpose, like Strava, but ultimately the true agenda of it is something else, serving their own purpose more. I heard on a podcast about Pokemon Go, remember when there was that phase back in, what, 2012 or something, 2014, when everyone started playing Pokemon Go and walking around the streets trying to catch these things? I don't know how true this is, I haven't checked it, but the true reason for it was geo-mapping, right,

[49:15] they were utilising the world, the population, everyone playing these games, to geo-map the world. I mean, it makes sense, right? Interesting. Have you heard of this interval app? No, I don't know where to bring this up, so Louis Phillips has got something to do with it. Oh yes, and it's, no, it's Pokemon-adjacent. You shared this with me, did I share it? I think so, Louis, the Melbourne fella. Yep, the runner. Yep, yep, the Big Brother contestant turned runner.

[49:47] Was he on Big Brother? Are you sure he was on Big Brother? I'm not sure, but what I do know, as much as I know about it, I mean, it doesn't really appeal to me, but it's making running interesting for those who just want to get out there and run. It sounds like you can capture an area if you run there more, and then you own that zone, and then someone can steal it off you. So I kind of saw it a bit like this, Pokemon Go, go out and run somewhere, and then you're trying to capture all these spots, and there's a competition, that's probably a really bad.

[50:18] Ultimate free-running game, to explain it, yeah, it's a running game. What do you reckon of this? For me, this won't catch on, no, and I can't explain why. I did have a look at it when you first sent it through to me, and good luck to anybody who's involved in it and wants to get around it, I think there's a disconnect between playing games, like, I think it's kind of like, you either want to game or you want to train.

[50:48] Oh, there's a nice little catchphrase, put that on a T-shirt, 'you either want to game or you want to train.' And I don't know if there's enough of a crossover between the people who want to train and people who might want to game at the same time, and that's what this seems to be trying to achieve. There might be, I mean, there's obviously an audience out there or you wouldn't get on that road, I'm sure they've done some testing, but, he was in season 15 of Big Brother.

[51:18] Really? 'Cause you're wondering, yeah, I wonder if I've met him, I'm not a good, I think I've told this story, like, I drove from Uluru to King's Canyon with him one day, and Big Brother never came up. I was quizzing him on a whole range of things, a lot of nutrition talk, but there you go, there's a new topic for next time. Hey, I need to be honest with you and the In the Beginning family, I haven't run in the shoes yet.

[51:49] These, um, made-in-China carbon shoes, I haven't run in them yet. That is half my fault though, because I brought this episode forward, well, we're rushed, we're rushed. In fact, let's talk about why we're rushed now. We're rushed, we're recording this a lot earlier in the week than we would because, we want to be in person, and I'm last-minute flying to Mauritius. Yeah, for those of you, like Courtney, who didn't know where Mauritius was when he asked yesterday. Well, look, hey, I knew it was over near Africa somewhere, but

[52:19] I didn't know exactly where it was. That doesn't count. At least I knew what ocean it was in. So, east coast of Africa, there's a country called Madagascar, a big island, I do know Madagascar. Yeah, it's about the same distance off the east coast of Madagascar as Madagascar is off the east coast of Africa. OK, you're flying to this tiny little island. Yep, for what, out of the blue? I mean, this is why I love Red

[52:49] Bull, this is, you know what, I told you at the beginning when we did this, you're never going to be out of a lot, you never know what's coming up week to week, this is why I love Red Bull. Yep, and I don't work for them, but in this case I'm running for them this week, because what I'm going over there to do is have a look at an event they're looking at running. Once I get over there, let's say in the next episode I'll go a lot more in depth because I'll have the information, I don't have a lot of

[53:21] information, I just got told, 'can you come over,' this was a few days ago, can you get over here, I said, amazingly, of course, what are we doing? So partly, we're going to promote an event. So the hardest part of my job would be to look good on film, the easy part of my job is also probably to go and have a look at the course. There's a trail run involved in this event, for my understanding, and I mean, I hope it's an epic trail run, but look at it from a safety point of

[53:51] view, look at it from a running point of view, a flow point of view, and help make sure that when this event goes live, everything's ticked off nice and dandy. You probably don't appreciate this, but, we were talking about this before we started to record, you are uniquely positioned, probably globally, there's probably not a lot of you that can actually do what you do, which is to A, evaluate a course from a safety perspective, B, evaluate a course from a race

[54:21] perspective, as in run-ability and performance, interesting. How, mate, is it interesting? Film it, and then also run it to the level that the winners will run it. You are uniquely, you're, you have a very, you're like Liam Neeson, you have a unique set of skills, a very particular set of skills, yeah. You're like Liam Neeson's character in Taken. You've built up a unique set of

[54:51] skills, which now has you positioned so that when Red Bull calls and says, 'we need you in Mauritius,' you can say yes to this, you are a lot like Liam Neeson's character in Taken. And again, I don't work for Red Bull, I love Red Bull for this reason, that they pick up the phone to you and say, 'hey, we need you to get to Mauritius to evaluate this race we're going to put on,' and I get excited on these ones, it's awesome, where it's just like, you know, I was going about my day one day, and the next day you're like, 'have you got enough time to'

[55:21] get over there,' and then, 'gotta be back next week at a certain time,' but yeah, we can make it work. It's so exciting, and now I'm already excited for next week. That's next week, but that's why you haven't done your, that's why, because I said, before I get on a plane tonight, let's jump on and get this done, so, I haven't yet run in the Chinese carbons, I've had a lot of people ask me about them though, but they're in my car ready to go. I'm going to go out and do an interval session. OK, well, while we're talking about shoes, I'm going to keep stocking you up, because I said the joke gift was the shoes.

[55:52] Well, they may not turn out to be a joke, who knows, but the real gift was still in the mail, and I'll give it, a good pair of Salomon have sent you, and this is in the lead-up to our Salomon Golden Trail Series at kunanyi that we're running. So this is the new, I saw you post about these, so these are the, what are they called, Ultra Glide 3, this is their new trail shoe. This is the Ultra Glide, this is the third version of their trail shoe. Now it's got this, in French, 'blue lunar rock and cherry tomato,' yeah. Do you like the colour?

[56:23] I do, yeah. Talk to me about, so what I was posting was the S-Lab version of this shoe, which is like the top of their range, $400-plus shoe. This is the more stock-standard one that I want you to try first, I'm also running in these to give them a go, and if you like these and want to run in them, then we're going to get you into the elite version, no absolutely no excuses. But the purpose of it, if you can see on camera, is it's got this sole, and the

[56:53] purpose around it is that as you're running over trail, rocks and roots, the sole will actually conform a little bit more. Think, like when you go four-wheel-driving and you let your tyres down on sand, or let your tyres down on mud, or let your tyres down to be able to go across roots and that type of thing a lot easier, this is a super-responsive sole with a lot of rubber, but it also has that same purpose of being able to give you good contact on the trail. This is a very different shoe.

[57:23] It is very different. I'm interested to see what you think. I've run in it, not a lot, and I was out on a kind of flatter trail, so I didn't give it a great test. I ran in it on the weekend for the first time out at the property, out on the farm, where I was riding bikes, and initially when I first ran in it, I take that back, sometimes you know what a shoe is going to be like when you put it on, and I was actually like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. By the end of that run I was falling forward and running well, it's soft, and I'm looking

[57:54] forward to taking it on some technical trails to try. I'm really interested to try this, because it feels very, just in my hand, I don't even know about my shoe yet, but it feels very different to the Sense Ride, is that what I've been running in? Sense Ride, the Sense Ride was quite hard, yeah, the Sense Ride, which I liked running in. Different, this feels like a different generation, a different generation of shoe. So you're looking at probably more what you're seeing coming out in road shoes from Novablasts and ASICS and a whole range of things, like the big, you know,

[58:25] there's a lot of rubber, and it's really responsive, and I'm really interested to see how this sole goes, because it's, it's got like golf ball dimples all over it, yeah, it's quite an innovative shoe. It's like, the sole of it has been hail-damaged, yes, but you know, that's what I'd expect the bonnet of a car to look like after a hailstorm. Yeah, and from a trail running perspective, the tread pattern isn't overly aggressive, so there's not big thick lugs on that.

[58:55] There's a lot of, huge, you know, it's not super-aggressive, so whether those dimples, or 'hail damage,' as you called it, actually add to the grippiness, because underneath the lugs the sole of the shoe isn't flat, tell you what, tell the good people at Salomon feel free to use that as the descriptive. I'm not sure, was that the hail damage? The hail damage. Got the hail damage, so I think the golf ball dimples probably, that's amazing, and I'll get out and have a try. We do want to hear about the Chinese ones, I've now got shoes to review.

[59:26] You're starting to, travels, and I've got the Chinese ones. I'm genuinely excited running in the Chinese carbon-plate shoes, and we had somebody hit us up, I don't have his details to hand, who uses just the training version of those Mix One Chinese carbon-plate shoes, 95 bucks for the training version, loves them, so there's something to it. We haven't got, well, we haven't had a full week, but what have you been doing running-wise, run week? Just quickly, I'll jump into this, because I think it was last

[59:57] week or the week before, I mentioned I'd hit a bit of a dead end with my threshold runs, I'd been sort of essentially reluctant to jump into anything quick. And then I went and did a quick run and felt great. Off the back of the most recent week, I've now got a similar mental block around long runs, because I've got another 4-and-a-half-hour week of running behind me. I'm being fairly

[01:00:27] consistent, I think probably the last month I'm stacking up 50K weeks, anywhere between four-and-a-half to five hours depending on how much trail running I'm doing as part of that. So my training's actually quite consistent from a kilometres and time-on-feet perspective, but on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, I had the intention of doing a long run both days, so two long runs. The

[01:00:57] intention was to run longer on Sunday morning, OK, and I ended up pulling up at about 14Ks, I'd run for an hour and 10 minutes or thereabouts, I'd done 14Ks, I had to get to the kids' swimming lessons, I'd slept in, had a bit of a sleep-in, and so I called it right there. But then I walked away and I kind of went, well, I haven't really done a long run. And then Sunday arrives, and I was on BBQ duty at the Nippers with my kids, so after Nippers I went back home and had a bunch of house

[01:01:29] stuff to do, I think there was another chore in there or something, but then ended up going around to my in-laws' for my mother-in-law's birthday, and basically it got to Sunday evening and I still hadn't run. So I took my shoes and stuff with me to my in-laws' house, thinking, well, I'll run home and try and turn this into a long run, I saw this on Strava and wondered, running from Tweed Heads back to my place, and it ended up being a 16K run, right, but still not really a long run.

[01:01:59] And I think I could have kept going and turned it into a 20K session, or an hour-45 run, but again, I pulled up, and I don't quite know why, short of going, there's just a bit of a mental block at the moment in my head about running, unless I'm out on the trail. Because I've been up in the rain the last couple of weekends, on and off, and there's that 17K loop in there, which takes me somewhere around an hour 45, an hour 50.

[01:02:29] And that's fine, it's a loop and I know I'm going to complete it and get back. But this mental block I've got in my head at the moment, which I need to get past, because I want to do marathons this year and I want to run well through that sort of 20K, two-hour barrier, I'm just having to process it in my head at the moment, working through it. And I don't really have a reason for it, other than I just haven't been able to make the time and concentrated effort to say, 'this has to be a two-hour-plus run,'

[01:03:00] or 'this has to be a 20K-plus run.' But I think the way to get around that is to find someone, as soon as you go out and run with someone and you're accountable to, you know, you said the other week when you ran with Rosie out in the forest and you ran 17K, and then we were going to run last weekend and I said you wanted to do two hours, well, if I was running with you, that's a good point, you would've done the two hours, I'd drag you through it, but that's the accountability of having someone to run with, especially on long runs. I think we made that point last week when we were talking about why is everyone doing them on a

[01:03:32] Sunday, well, part of it, great answer, is that it's better doing it with others sometimes, and most people do it on a Sunday because that's what makes sense. But you can always find someone else to keep you accountable, and I think that's how you'll get over that little bit of a hump. Thank you. How's your running week, we'll talk about long runs, you went on a 30K, I know, on Sunday. Yeah, 30Ks on the dirt, on the dirt, so I was out, I actually went out to my brother-in-law's property.

[01:04:04] Main reason was, I got my motorbike back, where, the motor, yep, blown the engine, so I took my son out, and the family, and we went out riding. But it's also an amazing place to run, because you're out the back of Warwick, on dirt roads throughout the properties out there. Now I've looked a few times at where this particular property area is, and there's a loop that goes around, and if I want to do the loop, I know it's 30K. So the decision then becomes, do

[01:04:36] I run down the road 10K and back, 10K, and I can handle 20K, but I'd really been wanting to run, so this weekend, I'm going to get up early, I'm going to get this done. But then I'm thinking, 30K is a damn long way, and this is undulating, OK, let's make this a bit easier, let's do 5K easy, and then let's do 5K at a bit better tempo. So I had a goal, I wanted my heart rate to be between 130 to 140 for the first 5K, and then between 140 to

[01:05:07] 150 for the next 5K, three times, so bring it back down. Yeah, I wanted to do 5K easy, 5K tempo, 5K easy, 5K tempo, 5K easy, ideally 5K tempo. Can I just quickly, where you're talking heart rate there for a moment, how hard is it for you, once you've elevated into that 140-150 range, to bring it back down? Like, how dramatic was your third 5K, time-wise, from your first five?

[01:05:38] K, well, a little bit of the story was, I haven't, I've driven around this loop, I've never run it, and I didn't realise this, the way back on the other side of this loop is uphill the whole way. So I was running, I was obviously running easy to begin with because it was slightly downhill, but all the time, to answer your question around how significant the change was between the tempo beats and the easier running, I was clocking along at probably around that 4:30 to four-minute, like a 4:15-to-4:30 pace.

[01:06:13] Now, in that first 5K tempo, I did see a 3:32 split in there, a little bit quick, because my, the wheels fell off. I haven't gone out and run, we've run two hours in the forest, even two hours ten, where we're just jogging around the trails, but I haven't really got out there and done that kind of long run just on the flat, you know, kind of like just on a road where you've just got to keep turning the legs, turning the legs. So I was a bit hunger-flogged by the end of it, I had a gel at about an hour 30, still didn't really help.

[01:06:43] The last few Ks were pretty disgusting, to be honest. What did you run out there with, nutrition-wise? Oh, nothing, I just got up, had a coffee, and then I had a gel with me at an hour and a half into the run, or an hour 40 into the run, that's it. You didn't have any hydration? No, jeez, I paid for it, to a degree. There it is, I got back on the bikes, we rode all day, and then when I finally got home to unpack, I started getting head spins and

[01:07:14] stuff like that. Now, where I'm going with this, like, I'm glad I got out there because it gives me a bit of a benchmark to know, yep, I haven't done that for a long time, so it gave me a benchmark. Benchmarking run, you've heard that before. Yep, and what it made me think was, the next two mornings I got up, I've been hungry, that run has affected me over a few days now, I'm still trying to play catch-up. So what happened on that run, and depleting myself on that run, has now caused me two days of pain.

[01:07:48] And when I say pain, not painful pain, but in the sense that I haven't been able to do what I wanted to do for the next two mornings. So this morning, on a Tuesday, when I wanted to go down and run fartlek with the boys at the Spit, I had to take it easy and pull up, I'm a bit sore, and there's a whole range of things going on which I'm kind of annoyed about. But at the same time, if you don't do it, you don't know. This is, do you know what's coming back to me, somebody told me, after I ran a half marathon in September last year and set a PB, and then found

[01:08:19] myself frustrated about my running a week later, somebody told me, yeah, that's because you pushed your body somewhere it hasn't been before, or been in a while. Been in a while, so, I think that person was Courtney Atkinson. That was pretty much it, mate. What I, yeah, so, great place to run, got out for a long run and I'm kind of paying for it a little bit now, but yeah, wouldn't change it. No, now I want to go and run, now I've got to find someone to run long with. So this week, I have no idea what running will look like this week. You're literally getting on a plane after we finish this.

[01:08:51] Yep, we press stop and you're off to the airport straight up to Brizzy, going, some of it we didn't know last, but I don't even know, I did have a quick look at the map and I see there's a big national park there, so I'm hoping it's pretty great running through there. I speak French there, by the way, that's the reason they're going. I speak French, that's not going to help me. The capital is Port Louis, or Port Louis, probably, as they say. Have I told you one of my big regrets around French? No, are we, is it in this journal?

[01:09:22] No, it's, because I feel like everything else, it's later, later than the journal. Now look, because I was residing in France for about six years, like six months here, six months there, back and forth, but because we were with all the Aussies, and had Aussie masseurs, Aussie physios, coaches to talk to at the pool and everything, I never, except for a bit of restaurant French when we had to go and eat, I never bothered. You know, there's all those

[01:09:52] times you look back and go, you know, I said how excited I am to get to go away and do these things, but then there's also a lot of things I look back at and go, 'oh, if I only had my time over again,' like, you take it for granted at the time, I suppose is what I'm trying to say. And now I'm kind of looking at those opportunities with a bit of a longer view, going, yeah, they're too good to miss. What I'll say to you, the French stuff, it's not too late, not too late to learn some French, not too late to do all that sort of stuff. I did French at high school for seven years, did it

[01:10:24] through to year 12, and I remember, I'll tell the story very quickly, because we've gone how long, we've gone alright, alright, it was over in Biarritz, down the south of France, with Alana, and we were down there for the surfing. There'd been a series of errors from a planning perspective, the campsite we were staying at was miles away from the beach, and we ended up basically having to hitchhike everywhere the entire time we were down there. Now, when we first got to Biarritz, my French extended as

[01:10:55] far as asking everybody, 'do you speak English,' in French, and most of them all spoke English, so we just spoke in English. As it turned out, when we were flying back to London, where we were living at the time, we needed to fly out of Biarritz, we were staying up the coast in Hossegor, about two hours away, and then as we got to the bus stop on the Sunday, I read the sign in French and went, 'I'm pretty sure that says buses don't run on Sundays.' We then had to hitchhike, make a sign up, and hitchhike properly back down to the airport.

[01:11:28] And we ended up, by this point we'd both hit our limits and we were hysterical, and, not angry or frustrated, we were just laughing about how silly the whole situation was, this couple picked us up in the car. Now, he spoke English like I spoke French, and Alana didn't speak French, and this bloke's wife didn't speak English, so I'm in the front with him, Alana and the wife are in the back not talking to each other, smiling. And he and I, and remember, three or four days earlier the extent of my French was 'do you speak English?'

[01:12:00] By the end of this car trip, I was talking with him about the idea of Quebec seceding from Canada and becoming its own country. That's how quickly the French comes back when necessity dictates that part of your brain reactivate. So I would say to you, mate, you're about to go to Mauritius, just jump into some French, you reckon five days I'll come back fluent? Just try it, mate, try your hand. What is it, 'parlez-vous anglais'? Yeah, 'parlez-vous anglais.'

[01:12:31] There you go, you start, and you're away, and you're bilingual now, Courtney. This is great, this is great, I'm genuinely so excited for you to get to Mauritius, I can't wait to hear about this next week on the podcast. Quickly, before we go, I've got one more thing, sorry, OK, this idea, I want to put it out to the podcast family very quickly. I texted you about this the other day, a video series, an extension of the podcast, called 'Courtney vs. Liam.' This is the idea of explaining,

[01:13:03] wow, I haven't quite figured it out in my head yet, I probably should have thought about it more, but the idea being, you and I race, now, we can't race, match race, right, we can't race head-to-head because we know how that race ends every time. But what I'm thinking is, in my head, it's like a game of golf, well, I know where we can start, Liam, I know exactly where you're going with this, kunanyi, Salomon Golden Trail, kunanyi.

[01:13:35] Well, we have a handicap race, right, we work out a time, and I'm going to say I'm going to outrun you by, yep, whatever minutes, I haven't even looked at the course of the application, but this, in my head, we can do this from everything from parkrun, to the Nerang trail, to the marathon later this year, we can do it over every, we can do all these things. But I do like the idea of, I think it was because you sent me that video of the pro chasing down all those amateur runners in that uphill Japan race,

[01:14:05] all the, up the mountain up the stage jump, and there's that one guy trying to chase down all the amateurs, trying to get through them, in my head I went, oh, that would be a fun race idea, if Courtney has to start parkrun four minutes behind me and see if he can chase me down. Sounds like a plan. Anyway, I'm going to keep working on that, we'll keep working on that idea. Before we go, have you seen this trend where people are wearing their Apple

[01:14:35] watches on their ankle? No, and I don't want to, what do you mean, they're wearing it on their ankle? It's a trend, a trend, a trend of gym-goers putting the Apple Watch on their ankle. Why? This is a full-on trend happening. Why, even your dog's upset about it. Yeah, the dog's gone nuts. Yeah, he is upset about it.

[01:15:05] I'm upset, I'm upset about it. Is there a reason? I think it's got, so I've read that it's got to do with someone's come out and said, when I wear my Apple Watch, I want it on my wrist, if I'm lifting weights and that type of thing, it can get in the way, we'll take it off. But here's five reasons, OK, can I run through these five reasons? Five reasons why, OK, it defeats the whole purpose. Oh, these are the five reasons, it defeats

[01:15:35] the, are you? No, no, well, it defeats the whole purpose. Well, I don't know, I've got five reasons, I'll just pick that out of the air, but well, so the only reason I can see it being purposeful is, yeah, for steps, but if you only want your steps out of a watch, then keep it on your wrist, or go and get one of those trackers that don't do anything other than that. The heart rate works better on the wrist, I can't see it working great on the ankle for most people, I don't think it actually, you'd have to change the band to be larger to fit around your ankle.

[01:16:05] Yep, you'd damage that watch at some point. Yep, and which Apple Watches aren't cheap. Nope. And then finally, and I did steal this one, 'you'll look like you just come out of prison.' Don't wear your Apple Watch, don't wear, don't get a marathon tattoo, or wear your Apple Watch around your ankle, right? We don't like, we don't like dictating here on In the

[01:16:35] Beginning Pod, we're never going to tell you how to run or what to wear, we're corny, I love that, you'll only ever give your advice based on what works for you, but here's some things we will definitely say, I'm definitely saying, just don't wear it on your ankle. Anyway, mate, well, we'll see where we get to. Travels, yep, so when are you back? I'll be back next, I've got to be down in Sydney next Wednesday the 26th. Yep, so, when are you back here?

[01:17:05] Friday, Saturday, OK, so we'll do an ep next week. We will probably be online next, but it might be maybe on the, computers, let's see, let's see where we end up. But hopefully I've got some interesting stories to tell. Can I please have a fridge magnet from Mauritius? I'll see what I can do. Thanks, mate, we'll see you next week. See you next week.