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# EP 36 - CIGGIES, STERIODS & SUB-3 DREAMS ON ICE
- URL: https://www.inthebeginningpodcast.com/ep-36-ciggies-steriods-sub-3-dreams-on-ice/
- Published: 2025-05-23T06:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T10:20:30.000Z
- Description: Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Olympics & 2032, UTA & ultras, Strava culture — recorded on the Gold Coast.
- Author: Courtney Atkinson
- Tags: Episodes, Main Feed, Olympics, Ultra Running, Strava, Gold Coast Marathon, #Import 2026-07-28 20:58

*Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Olympics & 2032, UTA & ultras, Strava culture — recorded on the Gold Coast.*

## Listen

Listen on [Spotify](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthebeginningpodcast/episodes/EP-36---CIGGIES--STERIODS--SUB-3-DREAMS-ON-ICE-e338gbv?ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-36-ciggies-steriods-sub-3-dreams-on-ice/id1772010786?i=1000709616882&uo=4&ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com).

## Full transcript

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

**Read the full transcript** 

\[00:00\] Episode 36 of In The Beginning podcast. Courtney Atkinson, how are you? I'm good, Liam, I'm good. It's been a big week. I was back down in Sydney. You thought we had bad weather up here in Queensland the last few weeks? The weather down there was shocking. I went down and actually got out for a little trot at Coogee — it was so windy. You know when you're running and someone ankle-taps you and you don't fall over? Well, I did fall over — a few times one of my legs sort of clipped over onto the other leg, just

\[00:30\] because of the wind. Spare a thought for my dad and my brother, who through bad timing spent the last couple of days down at Bonville Golf Course, just south of Coffs Harbour. Bonville, for anybody who knows it, is one of Australia's nicest courses and consequently one of Australia's more expensive — you have to stay on the resort and it's not cheap to play there. They got nine holes in before the place essentially turned into a swimming pool, so much so that everybody else cleared out of the resort, and my dad and

\[01:03\] my brother were basically stuck there hanging out in Coffs Harbour at pubs because they couldn't play any golf. Well, that's not too bad, but I suppose that's what you get when you go play golf, right? Now, we've got some running stuff to get to — but first, I just want to say I've got a little surprise for you. You've been gifting me things left, right and centre. This isn't actually a tangible thing I can give you yet, but it's what I'd call giving you some hope. I've reached out to a couple of people,

\[01:34\] and what I'll tell you now is that we and the podcast are currently on a list — we're on a list. We're in a queue of sorts. A hopeful queue, not a guaranteed queue, but a hopeful queue for an interview with a very, very big name that's coming to town in a couple of months. Do you want anything more? I'll just assume you're not going to tell me. Well, I can, I mean, are

\[02:05\] you going to name-drop it? I think we should leave it there, 'cause you can't name-drop. Okay, I'll leave it there — we'll probably have learnt from this: don't name-drop unless we've got to. We'll leave it there. That is how's that for a start? Not with a big story, but with a big tease — this podcast is on a short list, a hopeful list, for a very significant interview. And we'll leave it there. Now, let's talk about something significant — the Enhanced Games. Howdy,

\[02:35\] James Magnussen — you're across this, this is in your wheelhouse. So if you haven't already, if you're running along or in your car and can't Google things right now, when you get a chance, jump on Google and look up James Magnussen and the Enhanced Games. He's huge at the moment, he's enormous. I think — and I might be paraphrasing, I might get some of the details wrong — but James Magnussen, when he was swimming at the Olympic Games, was weighing in at 95 kilos. So he's a big guy, but a powerful sprinter. I think he said that during his

\[03:07\] peptide period, where he was taking all this to get ready for the Enhanced Games, he got up to 115\. Wow, that's heavy for a swimmer. Peptides coupled with some steroids — testosterone. There you go, testosterone and peptide cocktails, everything that you as an Olympian would never have been allowed to touch. I see he's even trying to pull — he's pulling Cameron McEvoy's name into this, saying he should do this. That's a big call. I don't like that at all. Why don't you like that? Hey, each to their own — if he

\[03:37\] wants to play this game, that's fine, but don't be dragging other names into this space. That's for everyone to make their own decision, because as soon as you're talking about drugs and then talking about athletes, even just the correlation between the two — I'm not a big fan of that at all. What is funny, though, is when I saw 'peptides' I thought — because obviously this is about not testing — if you go back to that, all the AFL saga, you know, how long

\[04:07\] ago would that have been? Six years. The ASADA stuff — that was intense. I think the Cronulla Sharks got wrapped up in the ASADA stuff in 2013\. That long ago now — 2013, '14\. Not new, but the whole thing around it is there was no testing for it. They just got caught out, caught with their pants down. So it's kind of funny in a way — I think testing Australians is one thing, but the peptide side of it, I'm not across drug testing at the moment and how far they can go.

\[04:38\] But it's one of those topics where you're kind of like, jeez — quick back story: the reason I remember the year is because I started in radio as a producer in 2013, and I remember the day the news broke that the Sharks were being investigated. I was working on a sports show in Sydney, and I remember my boss going, 'Well, what are you doing with it on the show?' I was like, I don't know — I was literally just learning how to be a radio producer, and this story broke in early 2013, and the boss was going, 'So what are you doing about it on'

\[05:08\] the show? And I was like, I don't know what I'm meant to do. Thankfully I was working with an incredible broadcaster called Cam Denyer, who people might know from his voice on Fox Sports — an awesome commentator and a very smart radio guy. He said, 'Don't worry, I'll go down to the Sharks headquarters live, you just have the line set up in the studio, I'll take care of everything else.' Ah, how times change though — did I see you down with the Queensland Origin team? Yeah, I've learnt from the game — I was out making a nuisance of myself. Any

\[05:38\] good grabs I should have got? The audio — well, we'll get back to the Enhanced Games in a sec. If we're going to go down... yeah, no, listen, I explored — we'll get this up on the Instagram page — what's your pillow policy at night, Courtney Atkinson? Pillow policy? I wanted, I want to invest in a new pillow right now. Oh, here we go. See, we've got a bed full of — I reckon there's probably six to eight pillows on the bed, way too many, and none of them match. Some are probably twelve years old, some are way too big,

\[06:10\] some were probably bought at Kmart for twelve bucks, and then there might be a few good ones in there. And then I see these ads — you know, it's a hundred and twenty bucks or whatever for these pillows if you sleep on your side, and your head slots in there. I have all good intentions to just jump on Amazon, or I should go down to Myer and just buy one. Do you go the memory foam or the down? No, this is my problem — I've just got, you don't know, it's a mixed bag of all sorts depending on the night. So pillow policy in my house is a very stringent thing — my wife needs the firm pillow

\[06:43\] behind the head, then needs the softer pillow, the cuddle pillow. Anyway — because I'm not a serious journalist, I took these questions into Queensland State of Origin camp, and when I prep to do those fun videos in camp with the guys, I never really know what's going to work. Like twelve months ago when I went into camp for State of Origin, I had a list of silly questions to ask, and it sort of emerges once I start asking them — oh, this is working. Like last year it was — because around State of Origin there's

\[07:14\] always questions about eligibility, who's eligible to play for Queensland, who's eligible to play for New South Wales. I thought it would be fun to ask about eligibility, but everybody knows, 'Oh, I'm eligible for Queensland.' So instead I asked where they were conceived. Now, let's just say, if anybody out there doesn't understand, I'm asking where their parents conceived them. Some of the Queensland players last year didn't know what 'conceived' meant, so the joy of getting to ask Xavier Coates of the Melbourne Storm —

\[07:44\] 'Where were you conceived?' And he just looked at me blank. He looked at me and said, 'Port Moresby Hospital,' because he was born in PNG, in Port Moresby. And I said, 'No, no, that's where you were born — where were you conceived?' And he said, 'Port Moresby.' And I had to explain to Xavier what conceived means. Anyway, so that was fine, my follow-up — so anyway, that's what I did last year. This year I had a bunch of other questions, and which was the main hook — what was the hook? The pillow policy — because when you go into camp as a kid, sometimes you take your

\[08:15\] pillow. Yeah, so I asked all the boys who in the Origin team would be most likely to have brought their pillow to camp. Now, no one brought their pillow to camp, but what I unearthed with Tom Dearden, the North Queensland Cowboys half, was that he's a three-pillow operator — he rolls three pillows. One behind the head, one between the knees, one to cuddle. So he's got a three-pillow set-up, and if he cops a hotel room with two pillows, he's in trouble. And I said to Pat Carrigan, that should be his new nickname in the Queensland team — Pillows —

\[08:46\] because if he's rolling three pillows... but then Pat explained he wouldn't mind giving one of those pregnancy pillows a try, one of the long body ones. And then I asked Daly Cherry-Evans if he'd ever tried one, because Daly's got three kids, and he said, oh, his wife had one of those. I said, did you ever give it a try? And Daly said, yeah, it wasn't for him. But the point is, we're standing in Origin camp, everyone's asking serious questions about the pride of playing for Queensland, and I'm there asking them about their pillow polls. It was a lot of fun. So who do you go for in Origin? Because you're a — I'm a swing voter.

\[09:17\] I'm a swing voter. No, I started doing these silly videos all the way back in 2018 with New South Wales, when I was working down there on the show with MG, got to know some of those Blues players really well and felt compelled to support them. There's none of those players left in this New South Wales Blues team now. I've started to get to know some of these Queensland players a bit — you're on the Queensland side, I think. I'm certainly more on that side of the fence. We can continue then, Liam. Now, back to the Enhanced Games — so James Magnussen got real

\[09:47\] swole, really, really heavy. I've actually interviewed the creator of the Enhanced Games, Dr Aron D'Souza — he's an Aussie, but he works over in London. And I'll tell you, when you speak to him about the concept it's really interesting — I can see why he came up with it, I can see why he's pushed ahead with it, I can see why people invested money into it, because it is fascinating to explore the limits of human capability. Do you think it's — I mean, it's obviously happening. I didn't realise there was an event where this other guy — you want to pronounce it for

\[10:19\] me? Yeah, the Greek swimmer, Kristian Gkolomeev. So basically James Magnussen came out on the HaloSport podcast a few years ago and said if they paid him a million dollars to try and break the record, he'd do it. That was enough to dangle the million-dollar carrot: the first person that breaks the 50-metre world record gets a million dollars. James Magnussen went through this series of peptides all the way towards the end

\[10:49\] of last year, and then this Greek guy — Kristian — went and broke the record, taking his money by two-hundredths of a second. Now, he's not only been on the peptides and all the other performance-enhancing drugs, but he's also competing in the banned swimsuit — he raced in that full, now-banned suit. So let me get this right — has he broken just the 50-metre world record?

\[11:20\] I think it's Cesar Cielo's record. Done under legal conditions, he's just beaten it — with all this help, he's just beaten it. That doesn't say great things about this whole process — you'd hope if they went to this extent they'd absolutely smash it, even with the suit alone. And this is the thing, Kristian isn't some long-time retired swimmer who's suddenly broken this world record — I think he competed at the

\[11:53\] European Championships last year. Yeah, because I was expecting — I just saw this before — what did he break it by, what was the time he did? He swam a 20-point — 20.89\. The previous record was 20.91\. Yeah, I was expecting to see 19s. And I think this is where the concept of the Enhanced Games falls down a little — when people see a novelty like this, something new comes into our world, it's whoa, this has never been done before,

\[12:24\] it's illegal, it's X-rated, it's naughty, it's against the rules — I think what they're hoping for and expecting to see is a massive shock. But the reality is — I'm just going to call it — it's one big flop. Yeah, I'm with you, a massive flop. I think it's still going, there's other — track and field's going to be part of it, weightlifting's going to be part of it, combat sports and gymnastics. I think track and field will have a similar problem — unless someone goes and runs sub-8

\[12:56\] seconds in the 100 metres, I don't know if anyone's going to be very impressed. Now if someone breaks 9 seconds, that's a massive jump forward for the sport, but it's kind of — yeah, anyway. I'm with you — the more we talk about it, the more I'm just going, yeah. When I saw the picture of James I was like, oh, he's big, this is interesting, around that part — but when you start to look at the actual performances, it's like, mmm, yeah. So, back to running — yeah, let's go back to running.

\[13:26\] Yeah, lots and lots going on this weekend. I dropped down to see Bronte at the Gold Coast 30 — we won't go too in-depth because next Wednesday we'll talk to her and Benita about it, but she absolutely killed it, she was cruising. Big shout-out to her because she's not only running well, but she's also keeping our Marathon Series podcast alive. I'll give you more of an update a bit later on today's pod, but awesome event — I really love that event.

\[13:58\] I think I loved seeing the video you put together. I also just think 30Ks are a really fun distance for people to run — for all the reasons we spoke about with Bronte and Benita in the other episode, I think it's a great distance. Yeah, the idea of doing half trail, half road, that's great — it's an event that's different, in the sense that you don't have to focus 100% on your time. I know Benita was talking about, if you're leading up to the marathon, she likes to do a flat run

\[14:30\] where you can watch your pace and get into that real road kind of headspace, but if you're going to do a 30K before it, I like the sense that you don't know everything — it leaves a little to the imagination. I was down there watching some of my brother's mates having a bit of a race against each other, and that's the thing — you don't know, it's not a road race, so you can take a bit of form out of it, but you can still be foxing at the same time. And it's also just a nice way to get to know trail running a bit. If all you've done is run along the flats of the beaches or whatever — well, I was positioned in the

\[15:00\] spot where there was a big bog hole at the bottom, thinking everyone's going to have to bomb through here in the mud, and I don't reckon one person got their foot dirty — they all just went straight around the edge. Very, very disappointing. The other thing that happened over the weekend, and this is what I was engrossed in, was UTA Ultra-Trail Australia, happening in the Blue Mountains. Now, I've done the 50 a couple of times, you've raced it once — I've run the 22, placed in the 22 a few times. I love this event, and it makes me want to go again next

\[15:31\] year. I've run the 50 twice, but watching a lot of people I know compete in the various distances made me want to be there — I was really envious that I wasn't down there racing, because it's such a great event, such a great course. It's brutal, it's hard, but it's fantastic. Do you get more envious that you're not at that trail event, or that you're not at a marathon where all your mates are? I think I'd be more envious

\[16:01\] about the trail. The marathon, you could go out and run it tomorrow if you really wanted to experience 42K — but I don't think you could replicate what UTA gives you. If you went out and did those trails by yourself, you'd get it all, but you'd never have those moments at the aid stations, the fellow runners — the vibe on a trail, I think, is very different to the vibe you get in a mainstream marathon. It's popular.

\[16:31\] One thing I noticed — obviously great conditions down there on the weekend, amazing conditions for running, given they've had a few bad years of weather — there were queues. Have you experienced this when you've raced it? I had someone tell me they waited nearly three hours just to start descending or ascending one of the ladder sections.

\[17:01\] A mate of mine was attempting the 100K race, and they award belt buckles based on the time you finish — he missed his sub-fourteen time by a couple of minutes, but the UTA organisers actually came out and said, due to the hour-long hold-ups at that section of the course, they were adjusting the belt-buckle delivery times. And yeah, I think that's something all these courses — UTA in particular — are going to

\[17:32\] have to navigate as these events become more and more popular. We spoke to old mate from the Gold Coast Marathon last episode, on Wednesday, about how they have an algorithm, a guy sitting at a computer in Germany or wherever it was, managing the course flow. Yeah, Ryan McDonald said that a hundred percent. So what do you think — why isn't that a factor in these kinds of trail runs? Because it hasn't just happened this year, but this year it sounds like it was

\[18:03\] worse. I think someone sent me a photo of it and described it as — you know those famous photos of people lined up at the summit of Everest? They described it as, that looks like people waiting for Everest. We talked about how, now you've got to go and prove yourself somewhere else before you get to run in the big show, which I'd never want to see, because I think trails are about everyone getting out there and having a go. But it sounds like, hey, not our problem — but I would hate to be the event organisers this week. Can I read you a bit of a

\[18:33\] message? So, a friend of mine, Ben, ran the mile — the 160, the 100 mile — and I think this is the first time they've offered the mile at UTA, pretty sure it's the first time they've ever offered the 100-mile race. Ben took it on. Ben's part of the running group I'm involved with down in Sydney when I can be down there, and another one of the runners in the dark crew, Tim — who did coast to coast in New Zealand — was going to pace Ben for

\[19:06\] some of it, through the night section, when they're running at 1am. They allow that for the hundreds, the mile as well. So Tim sent out a message saying, hey, can anyone with stories to tell, anyone who wants to send voice notes, send them through and I'll play them to Ben through the night. So I sent him some stuff, but I asked Ben — I said, mate, would you mind sending me your thoughts on that race and how it was? So I just want to read you a little bit of what he sent me. He said that was, without question, the hardest thing I've

\[19:37\] ever done. I honestly can't fathom how you'd train for something like that without stepping back from full-time work and temporarily handing over most of your physical responsibilities as a dad. So that's the one — he ended up hobbling over the line with his knee bandaged up, he was in all sorts. He said physically he felt the fittest he'd ever been, thanks to a running program from — he had running coaching and a specific strength-training program. The first 50Ks through the Grose Valley was breathtaking. Starting in pitch black was

\[20:08\] surreal — running into the darkness with just your headlamp and your thoughts, oddly thrilling. It went on, describing more of the course, but then he said — I'll read this next line — he says he was getting gentle shoves along the way, and then he came into the checkpoint at the 90K mark, and the first face he saw was someone else from the running group, and the spirits just lifted. The idea of — he'd just spent 90Ks basically running by himself,

\[20:38\] and the feeling of walking into the checkpoint and seeing people there was just amazing. Scary, yeah — so yeah, it was an amazing read, I got quite emotional reading what he went through. I was like, this is a long way. So how long did it end up taking him? I don't even know what his time was — I think the fact that he said he wouldn't have finished without the support — there's no way he finishes that race without his support crew, without the pacers. His partner paced him for the

\[21:08\] final section as well. You feel some accountability if everyone's trying to help you too, you kind of don't want to — that's always the case, like with a coach or whatever it is, you don't want to pull the ripcord too early. But yeah, shout-out to Ben for getting that done — it was amazing to see the updates and everything. Congrats to everyone completing all these long, long races at the moment — both UTA and Gold Coast 30 was a great lead-up for Gold Coast Marathon. What's going on — yeah, now we've got some, we've got lots of messages coming through, and I think the big talking point

\[21:39\] — yeah, we have, and I haven't been able to get to all of them, so we'll always try to reply to everyone. There's a few people who've sent specific marathon-prep questions, which we'll hit in the next episode with Benita and Bronte — so if you've sent in specific questions about training for the marathon or marathon-related questions, we're going to hit those. We want to make sure Benita's around to answer that stuff specifically. These Saturday apps and more, me just talking rubbish — William Goodge, can we get to him? We can get to him.

\[22:09\] Ben Tennant has hit us with a couple of questions — he's got a question about shoes, which we'll get to in a sec. But this is the big story if you're following the world of running at the moment: William Goodge, the English fella who officially — or unofficially — holds the record for the fastest run across Australia. I've got the quick breakdown: he beat the previous record by four days, and he was asked — is this a

\[22:41\] new thing, and how many people are going to keep doing this? Well, let's back-track before we answer that question. There are questions about the run — there are people questioning whether or not he... because of the data. It's the data, right — basically there's been

\[23:12\] people looking at his heart rate, people looking at his GPS location, people analysing all this stuff and saying it doesn't match up, it doesn't actually match up with what he's doing. People saying his heart rate didn't make sense based on the elevation he was running, people analysing his per-K speed, some people suggesting he might have — I can't remember the phrase for it — but essentially been handing his watch to someone else to run. Sounds like people have got too much time on their hands. I believe it —

\[23:44\] I believe that he ran it, I believe that he ran the whole thing, I believe that he set the record. I think Occam's razor — the most likely answer is probably the true one. I think maybe his watch or the GPS was just a bit off, but I believe he's broken the record. The more interesting question is why he did it. You know, we've been at this, what, nearly six months or so — and if we were talking about this when we started this podcast, I would

\[24:15\] have had a lot more opinions on it. And what I've come to is — you know what, good on him. As simple as that. Yeah, I agree, I — this is happening, it's not just about the run across Australia now, everyone's making up feats to do, left, right and centre. And the reality is it doesn't matter how much effort you put into it — you just have to take it on face value. The fact he's beaten the

\[24:46\] old record by four days makes me start to think, okay, four days is a long time. I like the fact — and I'm looking at it more from a novelty-value angle — because I still think the reason people go out and do this type of self-fulfilling thing, making up their own challenge to go and do, is again for their own benefit. So it doesn't matter

\[25:16\] — often they're done for good causes and everything else, the big ones almost always have a benevolent, money-raising, charitable cause behind them. But the end outcome is the individual makes something out of it for themselves, and then goes on to corporatise, monetise it. To me, there's no getting around that as the end goal. So what I like about William is —

\[25:46\] William's — did you see the cigarette and the beer? You talk about theatre, and I don't know if it's real or not, but the ciggy and the beer each night — when you first showed me that, that they keep sitting there doing that, I laughed, I thought, this is great, you're bought into him. I actually at that point went, I'm bought in a little bit, because this is something different — and it's actually nearly quite piss-taking, because if you were an elite athlete trying to make it to the Olympics, I can guarantee you as a runner you wouldn't smoke.

\[26:16\] Yeah, come on. So I agree with you, I'm with you — good on you, I think, should be the first face-value response to anybody who goes and sets out, whether they achieve it or not. Good on you. Right, to what you said about the charitable cause — I know that when Nedd went out to do his We're All Mobilised run, he raised over two million dollars for that charity. Awesome, which is amazing. But that's not why Nedd did it, that's not why he set out to do

\[26:46\] that — he set out because he wanted to test himself, he set it out for selfish reasons, really. There was a benevolent, selfless outcome that resulted from it, but he set out to do it for his own reasons. Now, William — I think you could argue it's the same thing. He's raised money — I believe he lost his mum to cancer, so he's raising money for that — but that's not why he did it, he set out because he wanted to challenge himself. It's an inherently selfish mission that all of these — same as those two Lambros brothers, who run to raise money

\[27:17\] for cancer — they're not doing it for selfless reasons, it's an inherently selfish thing that everybody embarks on. When they go to do these things, they want to challenge themselves, they want to test themselves, they're doing it for themselves — and I would think it'd be naive to suggest otherwise, that there won't be something waiting for them at the end of this. Yeah, do you know what I mean? And that's not to take away from any of the fundraising — both things can be true

\[27:48\] at the same time, both things can be true. He looked like he was doing it easy — he did, he looked, I really like the way he runs, he just looked like he was cruising the whole time. When you see this style — I think someone was telling me there's a guy running the length of South Africa at the moment as well, or something, and they always look ragged. I wonder if that's part of it — let's talk about the theatre for a moment, let's pivot to the theatre of doing this.

\[28:18\] It's to create attention as well — so let's take the feed of it, the great running feed out of the moment, and just look at the theatre of the marketing of it. He's taken the approach of, I look easy, I'm doing it on beers and ciggies. And then you get other, you know, other people who've done it around the world, like literally, I've grown a freaking Forrest Gump beard because I've been going for so long I haven't shaved, and I've been doing it off baked beans. Everyone's got

\[28:49\] their niche of how they present themselves in a marketing sense when they do it — I'm not sure which one works best, it's bloody hard. Or in this case, it's like, I did it as a piece of cake and I'm having a ciggy doing it. But that's interesting — do you know the name Sean Bell? Have you heard of Sean Bell? No — well, this is interesting, because here we are talking about guys running across Australia and everything else. Sean, from my understanding, ran the circumference — broke the record for running the circumference of Australia. So forget running around the

\[29:20\] edge — no, forget running the straight line, he's gone one step further and gone around the thing. And a mate of mine went and saw him the other day — he's now gone and telling his story in the corporate speaking world. So making a buck out of doing that. Something at the end. So I don't even know where I want to go with this, Liam, but it comes back — I'm going to bring it back to that conversation of you've got one style of, let's say, endurance runners out there at the moment doing this style of feat, and off the back of that, just like someone who went and

\[29:54\] did a record up Everest or whatever else, coming back, getting on the corporate speaking circuit, making good money out of doing that — versus our top athletes who choose the path of, I'm trying to be the best, fastest runner in the world, win the Olympic Games, and by doing that I struggle to have the time to be able to do all these other things that actually create an income for me. It's a really interesting fork

\[30:24\] in the road — one scenario is that the people at the top of that game are bringing in — I'm assuming — some really good money. And not to say some of our top athletes aren't either, but generally there's a lot of athletes who are very close to the top and struggling to make a buck. Two points I want to make here, or two little tangents I want to go off on — I'll get back to the concept of the gig economy in a second.

\[30:55\] Have you heard of the idea, in business management, of the question — where does value flow? If you were to sit back and have a look at what you might do next in your life, or in your professional world — the idea that sometimes you can sit back and go, okay, where does the value flow? Where is value flowing in my business, in the world of running, or in the world of athletics right now? You could argue that value is flowing to these influencers, whether they deserve it or not — that's where value's flowing.

\[31:28\] Now, if you're an Olympian, or you're someone going down that path where value is not flowing, that's okay — you can still, but you can't get frustrated or angry, because the market has decided we're going to send value down here, this is what's valuable, this is what's important, this is where we're going to direct our money. And you can't pursue the Olympic path or that non-value-based path and get angry about it, because you can see it — you've got a choice, you've got a choice to make. Go and do that as

\[31:59\] well — it might not be what we all want, it might not be, 'oh, but that's not where it should flow' — maybe, but it's where it is flowing. So if you choose to try and fight against the tide, that's fine, but you've made that decision. Because when the majority talks — in a way, that's what if you're out corporate speaking or whatever it is, sure, the audience wants to hear that, and that seems to be more valuable, that's where the value is. Here's a second point around — what's interesting is you'd actually appear the nature of going out and doing a

\[32:29\] self-discovery challenge should be, in one sense, the purest way of doing that — and it's actually flipped, you'd nearly say. Sacrificing everything and having very little — that self-sacrifice that's trying to become what maybe in the past was seen as the highest level you could get to. It would be like if suddenly, in the surfing world — and I know we've gone on about surfing a little

\[32:59\] bit already — but if suddenly free surfers, that's where value started flowing. Well, it did, at one point, and probably still does to a degree. Exactly — so it's like suddenly the WSL was no longer the profitable area for these surfers to exist, suddenly all the money was going off into the free surfers, and why would you pursue the tour when you can make more money that way? The other part I wanted to explore, about these people essentially going out — whether they're elite athletes or not — having a crack

\[33:29\] at this sort of stuff, is the idea of the gig economy, right? The world is changing, the 9-to-5 is not what it once was, and some would say it's never going to get back to that again — the horse has bolted. Everybody's got a side hustle, a second job, works from home three days a week, all that sort of stuff. In a way, these runners — William, Nedd, the Lambros brothers, anybody going off and setting these challenges for themselves — is kind of embracing the gig economy, because they're

\[33:59\] saying, well, instead of going to uni, or instead of going to TAFE, or instead of doing a course and working my way up a corporate ladder, I'm going to go out and run the length of a continent, or set this challenge for myself — and that's going to be my ten thousand hours, that's going to be my qualification to get into this gig-economy world. And here's my CV — it's not a piece of paper that I hang on the wall that says I did four years of study, it's 'follow us on Instagram,' it's stories I can tell, and it now has a dollar value in

\[34:30\] the market. Well, you know what the good thing is — there's something for everyone out there, you can choose your own path. I'd say for every one of those, there'd be a lot of people trying to do that as well who we don't hear about. Absolutely — the cream, the ones best at marketing themselves, will come to the top as well, so I'm sure there's a lot of others out there. But look, let's leave it there — I enjoyed that chat, there is a place, you

\[35:00\] know, there's all different ways, and that's what the world is opening up to now — there's not one way to go about things, and running means a lot of things to a lot of different people. There's a lot more jobs in running than there used to be. That's true, there's a lot more money in running than there ever has been. Now, it's all about quirky running — I forgot who sent this to me, but have you ever seen this? Someone ran a race in two different running shoes, two different brands. So we've got an ASICS Metaspeed

\[35:30\] Sky and an Adidas Boston 10\. And did they win the race? So, a Kenyan got second at the Geneva Half Marathon in one-oh-five — sorry, one-oh-four. Him — Brian. Brian Kiptum, I think — he ran a 1:05:17 in two different shoes. What do you reckon — did you see the explanation? No — he packed the wrong shoes. Oh, this wasn't intentional — let's be — I was about to go right into how maybe he had a

\[36:03\] shorter leg than the other, or rolled differently — maybe he did, but the explanation given on the post is that a mistake was made packing his bag, where he accidentally took his right training shoe and his left competition shoe. That would be a bit embarrassing if he was sponsored by ASICS. Yeah, and then he had — well, it says he races for ASICS, but he trains in Adidas. Oh, this is a conversation we can have — those who are sponsored, how many runners out there

\[36:35\] do you reckon are sponsored and then compete in their sponsored shoe but train in something else? With the breadth of shoes coming into the market and the differences across so many ranges — how many out there would be doing that? That's a question — what's the answer? No, but it'd be a hypothetical question for you more than me, because I think the reality is — don't throw me under the bus. Well, how likely would it be — how important is the dollar versus the performance? You're a professional athlete — if someone said to you, hey Courtney, ride this bike, we'll pay you a hundred thousand dollars,

\[37:09\] but the reality is you were faster on — I don't know the different bike brands, I actually wouldn't be able to answer the dollar value, but there is a threshold. There's a threshold where you'd go — I'd be like, I'm not wearing them, you're not going to pay me to wear them because they're not up to scratch and they're going to affect performance. I'm not sure exactly where that threshold would be if you had two mid-range ones. Bikes are a great example though, because bike frames are very individual — think of a pro cyclist on a WorldTour team,

\[37:41\] they don't just get to pick any bike — you've been signed, just like you've been signed to Red Bull, Bora-Hansgrohe have been signed to ride Specialised. And when you were a young kid, you know, these things happened — you had a Specialised bike that just didn't work for you, you've always had this mental block around the frame, and then you've just got to ride it. Tough stuff. Yeah, running shoes — the dollar threshold could be the thing, but I wonder if anyone else knows anyone who runs, because the way that article read, I was thinking maybe a left

\[38:13\] leg difference to a right leg difference, or even the way the foot rolls, and they've actually found running in different shoes is optimal to perform better. Maybe — but this was just a packing mistake. Few loose ends to tie up before we get into some more listener stuff — we were talking about Strava last week and I was explaining to you about the pro tick. Yes, yes, they must have been listening — Strava must be

\[38:43\] listening. They've changed this week — can you see mine? They've changed — look how now they've actually gone beyond just showing a little double arrow or something, it's now saying 'Pro.' I'm not sure how I feel about this. So does that mean you're a pro, or you've got premium? No, they're considering — I'm still competing like a professional athlete, let's not get hung up on me — but what that means is, they're calling out —

\[39:13\] it's no longer just a little logo, they're actually calling it out — hey, are you a subscriber, are you a premium subscriber, are you a pro? I'm wondering, if someone can let us know, are you seeing in your feed that someone else is a premium member? Do you understand where I'm going with this? So I'm going to quickly go into my feed — who have I got here — Brett Robertson, Pro. Kai Wild, Pro — just coming up at the top. Glenn Jacobs, who's head of Blue World Trail —

\[39:46\] World Trail — nothing. Alex Hunt — one, Alex Hunt won Coast to Coast this year, I think he deserves to be — he's not a pro, he's not a pro. Alex, send an email to Strava and give yourself one. Please, no. So they're not shouting it out, but yeah, they've done that, made it really evident. So they're listening — nice, that's my point. Alright, thank you Strava — feel free to throw me a free premium account if you want, I still don't have it. Hopefully

\[40:16\] when your birthday's coming — yeah, it's not far away. So let's get into some of the listener stuff — there's been some interesting ones this week. Gordon Moffett, over — he's one of our UK listeners, shout-out Gordy — agrees with what I was talking about, walk-running, as I'm getting back into running and recovery and all those things — a great thing. As you know, he's in the UK, he's a coach. So in the UK we talk about parkrun a lot — they go one step further, they've got a free 5K —

\[40:46\] so what do they call it — it's a free 5K programme, essentially a 12-week run-walk programme for those in the country. I don't know if this is tied into parkrun as well, but that's a great initiative — do we have that here in Australia? If we don't, we should. I think you can — I think I've had friends do the Couch to 5K programme, I think it's just an online thing that someone's created. But that's — I'm thinking our government, because this is a government programme —

\[41:16\] that'd be an amazing initiative — why don't they spend money on that instead of getting Matt Hauser to tell us how to turn left and right? I think a better investment would be a Couch to 5K programme, whatever it is. I agree, and you've got the infrastructure built in with parkrun already, that's an easy thing the state or federal government should be looking to partner with. So he's saying, I love that 12 weeks ago I started a Couch to 5K programme here in Scotland — some of the groups finished their first 5K with times between 29 and 42 minutes,

\[41:47\] and now they're all — he's got them all listening to the pod. So thanks, Gordon, Gordy, spreading the international love — absolutely, thanks for that. And then he sent us a picture of some of his mob out and about. So to Gordy and his crew, thank you for getting on board and behind the podcast. For those of you getting into that Couch to 5K programme, well done, because I reckon there's still a percentage of the population who hear the idea of running 5K and think that's too hard,

\[42:18\] and I reckon the Couch to 5K programme, especially when it's supported by the government like that, is an awesome initiative — well done to everybody jumping into it. We got an anonymous message — hello friends, I heard about this podcast when the Gold Coast Marathon promoted you in an email. So well done, Gold Coast Marathon, sharing the love. This meant I had around 28 episodes to catch up on — he's a police officer, and he travels 50 minutes to work, so he's been religiously listening to the podcast daily.

\[42:49\] He says, to say I'm invested in the podcast and your running journeys and advice is an understatement — he finished at episode 34 and finds himself at a loss. Well, I'm glad we've managed to deliver another one for you. He's patiently waiting for the next episode, to talk about plans for the marathon, where he's at with his training, and the advice Courtney and Benita are giving. He's finding all the advice from Courtney, you, Benita and all the other experts we're having really insightful. Thank you for taking the time to do the podcast — he can't wait for the next

\[43:20\] episode. He uses the Runna app and loves it — 24Ks this weekend, well done. And he says, keep up the good work — if you use this message, please have me on as a — oh, I think that means if you read this message, please have me on as a — which we've done, so we know that. Thank you for the message, good feedback. You know, it's always good to know a police

\[43:52\] officer — what's that, always good to know a police officer? Yeah, but not if I don't know his name — can you tell me his name? Off here, I can tell you — okay, tell me his name off here. Just, when you think about it, like I always say, it's good to have a doctor, a few doctors — what are the things in life you're going to face, it's good to have some good connections. True, it's a good point — the more police officers listening in, if I ever get in trouble, the better. So, from police officers to Tom Boswell, who's in your area — Tommy Boswell, the sports editor for the Gold Coast Bulletin — loving the surf chats, mate. He's on the surf and on the ticketing talk. This is

\[44:24\] off the back — we talked about the idea of ticketing for the Olympics, Snapper versus Burleigh, the dilemma we talked about last week. So he's got some info on the last Olympics, the Paris Olympics, where they surfed in Tahiti — it was ticketed. The locals weren't allowed to drive their boats into the channel, on instructions from the local government — only official boats and photographers could go out into their home break. Because that was the idea we talked about, whether you could ticket the surfing if it was held at Snapper or Burleigh next year.

\[44:55\] And if people couldn't just walk down onto the beach — he's literally saying people had to buy a ticket to enter the fan zone where the road ends before they got out to Tahiti. Very anti-surfing — the locals had to watch it on the big screen. Love your work, Tom — thanks, Gold Coast Bulletin, and thanks for the support on the pod. Also Lucy, who's just in the pod, said she's listening to the latest episode where I threatened to stop the podcast because it was getting out of hand — she said don't stop the podcast, really enjoying it, would be

\[45:25\] sad if it stopped. Lucy, we're not stopping, we're only going from strength to strength. Now, I have some audio for you, Courtney. Are they still — that's probably enough, just to be clear, I'm okay. That

\[45:57\] is audio of me — I recorded it as I was lying down on the table at Gold Coast Physio, in Palm Beach — I was worried you were down at Mermaid Beach on the highway somewhere getting a special massage. I was face-down on the table at Gold Coast Physio with Trent shoving needles into my calves, because my calves suck — still no good. I'll talk with Benita in the next episode about this from the marathon perspective,

\[46:27\] but basically where I'm at is everything was kind of going well — I ran for an hour last weekend, so 12K, felt fine. Sunday, nothing felt fine. I was meant to go out and run for 40 minutes on Monday, slowed to half an hour, and I was like, this is hurting, my calf is hurting again. I stopped, and then I had an appointment with Trent the day after — he went and shoved

\[46:57\] needles in my legs, and I — he had to towel the table because as soon as he even touched the back of my leg, not even with the needle, I just broke out into a sweat because I know the needles are coming and I hate needles, and the psychology of it in my mind is oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. So I was just in a damp sweat — you don't watch him put them in? No, I don't watch him, but knowing they're going into the back of my calves is what killed me. Anyway, needles went in, helpful — I had kind of heavy legs for the

\[47:27\] rest of the afternoon. I was meant to try and run another hour the day after, got a kilometre in and — oh, so this has really gone downhill, this is in trouble. So I am back to cross-training for now. Benita and I are talking — yeah, what are we, six weeks out from the Goldie? That's not good at all. No. How are you feeling? Oh, my — look, you know, Alana, my wife,

\[47:57\] said to me, you should channel Courtney — Courtney seems to be dealing with, not me, how to run really well. I said to Alana, I'm like, Courtney will be back running before I am. Really frustrated, really, really frustrated. I'm having difficulty reconciling the fact that at this stage I might not even be able to do the marathon — the goal now is just to get to the start line. I'm fine with jogging

\[48:27\] through it, but I really want to be able to get there — but my body's just not happy with me at the moment. So we're now in that fight — we are in serious threat of having to withdraw from this whole bloody thing. You know, someone who listens to the podcast said to me the other day, it doesn't matter in the end, regardless, because other people are going to be going through the same thing and have to handle the same thing. We've got Bronte —

\[48:59\] she's the golden girl at the moment, right — but the thing is, we're still going over — we're talking about the things people need to know about the marathon. Hey, look, if you're going out there to run a 2:40, we may not have given you too much information that's going to help you, but for the majority of people out there doing their first marathon, we've got all the information coming in, and from anyone I've spoken to, they've been really happy with that information. From a personal perspective, I am

\[49:32\] annoyed, but I keep coming back to that message Benita said a couple of episodes back — the idea that not every race, and not every prep — if you run for long enough, you'll have your day, it's not every race and it's not every prep. This just isn't going to be my race, it's not going to be my prep, and that's okay. I'm still learning — I know I've learnt more about running and marathon training than I've ever known before in the lead-up to this, and I might not be able to run the race, but — have you gone through this before?

\[50:02\] In the sense of, have you stopped running before? That's what I'm saying — I had problems with this two years ago, I ran the Gold Coast Marathon last year, and the year prior to that I had to pull out of the marathon for the same thing — calf problem. And the lessons are probably around — because I remember having a very similar feeling — I'll be honest with you, I've thought maybe I just need to take a break from running, not just a short

\[50:32\] break, maybe I need to go do something else. That's where I was leading — maybe I need to go do something, like, my kids are doing surfing lessons at the moment, I'm like, man, I just need to go surfing for a while, maybe I just need to go play golf for a while, maybe I need to do something else. The difficulty for me is I know running is the exercise that makes my brain happiest. There's also the challenge — yes, it can be good to go away and have a break completely, but the strength challenge is

\[51:05\] still going to exist when you come back. Exactly — so there's one part of letting it heal and getting over it that way, but there's a fine line — if I leave it too long, I'm going to come back and be exposed to other issues, which might be, you know, knees, hamstring, whatever. So yeah, I don't know what advice to give you on this. No, and look, I'm okay — it's frustrating, it's disappointing, I've been a little disheartened, but I'm actually

\[51:36\] I'm okay with it, because I know my passion for running hasn't dulled — my frustration with my own personal running is high, but my passion for and enjoyment of running, the running boom, talking running with you, everything around running is still there. So I know that means, yeah, go for a surf, hit a golf ball, but I'll probably want to come back to running, and come back to chasing the marathon again — or has this maybe opened you up a bit more to, like you said

\[52:07\] this morning at UTA, you kind of miss that — are you? So the direct question is, would you be more interested in coming back to chase interesting or different things, or a race? No, no — the sub-three, that fire hasn't gone out. There you go — that fire hasn't gone out, it might take us a while, but we'll both be there. That fire is still burning bright. I will become part of the sub-three club — it's just not going to happen at Gold Coast Marathon this year. Okay, what about you, mate?

\[52:38\] I've got a question for you, Liam, because your livelihood is talking. You talk a lot — like today, as we're sitting here, you're probably good into your fifth hour of using that for talking. I was in Sydney earlier — my last three days, I was in Sydney Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday, Wednesday, I was speaking to a lot of people on Zoom.

\[53:08\] I've been talking for three days straight and I'm exhausted, I'm absolutely exhausted. How do you just keep — how do you have a strategy? We're not all running now, but this is my other livelihood — how do you just keep being able to talk to people? Well, if my calf muscles were as strong as my vocal cords, I'd be running sub-two-thirty. Ask questions of other people,

\[53:38\] take the burden off yourself. No, no, no, it's not the actual talking, I'm just physically — physically exhausted, exhausted by talking, like you said, vocal cords. Is it a trainable thing? I'm hoping this doesn't become a habit this week — hold on, is your throat hurting or are you mentally tired? Both, both — I love talking to people, I'm just mentally fatigued from — yeah, having, no, I get that.

\[54:08\] All the time — and all I wanted to do, which I did this morning, was just go out in the bush for an hour and a half on my own and not have to worry about it. So no, it's mentally fatiguing. But over time, does it train, or do you actually have more problems with it? Nah, it's probably a muscle — I've never really found my job fatiguing in the doing sense. The planning can become fatiguing, the hours can become fatiguing, but the doing, I've never found tiring, with radio,

\[54:39\] because I love doing it, and also because I've been like this since I was a kid — I've liked the idea of talking and presenting and giving uneducated opinions, I've been doing it since I was a kid, mate. So no, I understand what the mental fatigue is — it's real. At the end of a footy game, at the end of a big, exciting footy game I've been commentating, I can sometimes fall in a heap.

\[55:10\] Because it just stops, your brain stops firing, and you suddenly go, oh, that was tiring. Here's one — I am way more fatigued after a full day of doing that than I would be if I did a full day adventure race. Easy. Yeah, my mental fatigue is — but that comes back to, right, because everybody, it's a bit like the marathon talk — everybody's different, everybody's physical makeup is different, everybody's

\[55:40\] strengths and weaknesses, all that sort of stuff. And it's not a whinge, it was an honest question. No, do you have strategies around this? Because it's been a full-on three days, and I was stoked to get out in the bush today — I was out there for an hour and a half this morning on the mountain bike. We've had a few sunny days but every single time I've got out riding the last few weeks it's been wet — there's that much water on the ground, I've

\[56:11\] gone through a pair of brake pads just in those two weeks, just grinding in the clay and the gravel. How's the body feeling? Well, here's — I should be showing people this, shouldn't I, what I've been doing — I've been keeping it a bit private, I talk about it, but I feel like, you know, when you talk about Strava, I don't share it with people on Strava. I should share it, I should share it. I've been running — I sent what I did yesterday to Doctor Ben and he said, damn, too quick, way too

\[56:41\] quick. So what I'm up to at the moment — I did a 35-minute run, down along Currumbin, and I'm up to 3 minutes of running and then walking for 30 seconds. I'm feeling fantastic. Eight weeks of freshness — you don't know, I know, I'm now getting so excited, and you're on the other side, like I was a few weeks back. But no, you don't know — it's amazing what a break can do and how fresh you

\[57:12\] can feel, and then suddenly how bouncy you can be running. That's the phase — I'm only running every other day, and I'm still like — that was the longest run I've done, 7 and a half K. So I'm up to there, we're building, I'm still moving, I'm riding. That's exciting though — I would say I'm back. Would you consider that a run? Absolutely. Should I share that? Sure, absolutely, I think you should. Can I ask you this then — the freshness, the attitude, the

\[57:42\] jack-in-the-box mentality — have you started to look at a marathon yet? I have, but I'm not going to tell you, because I'm not at the stage of being able to commit. But I am looking at one — here's a hint, it's not going to be a fast one. So I've gone away from what I wanted to do at Gold Coast, because I've always said if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do a PB — I still want to, that's still on the cards, just like you, I still want to get to the marathon and the quick one. But Gold Coast is a long way off again, it's twelve months away, but

\[58:14\] yeah, I'm looking at what might not be a fast marathon, but it's a marathon I'd like to do. Southern Hemisphere? Southern Hemisphere — I'm not going to tell you, so stop guessing, comrades. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, okay, so I can rule that one out. So will you have to travel that far? Will you have to get on a plane? I would have to get on a plane. So here we go — it's not Noosa. There are a few other things, but no, it's not Noosa, definitely not Noosa. Okay, we're going to do Gold Coast in twelve months, I'm

\[58:44\] just checking things out. Anyway, I'm a jack-in-the-box, things are happening. Talking about a race I do want to do — so we were going to spook local races, this isn't so local, but this is a race I want to do, I can't believe I missed it, I wouldn't have been able to run it this year anyway. That race that hurt you at the Golden Trail down in Tassie — as part of that series, there's a race on the Great Wall of China. These books, freaking amazing — not only do they use the Great Wall, they

\[59:15\] go into sections of the Great Wall and then go off into some good trail. Chinese — have you been to the Great Wall? I have, when we went around, we did some dinners out there around the Olympic campaign — Beijing, went out there as a tourist, went as a tourist with family in 2012, with mum and dad and my brother, and got to experience some of it, and yeah, that would be incredible. This one's 24K, so it's not like you've got to go and run 50 or 100K, it's a shorter race, but brutal — those stairs on

\[59:47\] that — the videos I've seen of it, I was like, how did I miss this? So next year, that's one I'm putting on the list. Well, it depends, but you talk about races I want to do, and interesting things — that's cool, way to the top. Put it on the Great Wall. Alright, very nice. Alright, well, there we go — we're back, one of us running a bit, the other one's not running at all, which is not what you want for a running pod. If you haven't listened to last Wednesday's episode, we had Ryan McDonald on —

\[01:00:20\] so anyone running Gold Coast Marathon, go back and have a listen. Really interesting — all about the course and changes, and the reasoning, giving you a bit of information about why decisions are made. Yeah, well, we can all guess, but we've got some hard truths. I haven't gone and let you all know about that episode too much, but go back and have a listen. Alright, until then, we'll see you next week.