> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.inthebeginningpodcast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # EP 41 - RISK, REWARD & RACE-DAY RIVALRIES - URL: https://www.inthebeginningpodcast.com/ep-41-risk-reward-race-day-rivalries/ - Published: 2025-06-27T06:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T10:39:16.000Z - Description: Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Gold Coast Marathon, parkrun, Strava culture — recorded on the Gold Coast. - Author: Courtney Atkinson - Tags: Episodes, Main Feed, Gold Coast Marathon, Running Training, Strava, Triathlon, #Import 2026-07-28 20:58 *Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Gold Coast Marathon, parkrun, Strava culture — recorded on the Gold Coast.* ## Listen Listen on [Spotify](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthebeginningpodcast/episodes/EP-41---RISK--REWARD--RACE-DAY-RIVALRIES-e34n2j0?ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-41-risk-reward-race-day-rivalries/id1772010786?i=1000714847158&uo=4&ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com). ## Full transcript Auto-generated transcript. Timestamps approximate. Hosts: Courtney Atkinson & Liam Flanagan. **Read the full transcript** \[00:00\] In the beginning episode 41, we're coming close to a year — it'll be 50-50\. We're getting there, but 52 episodes and we haven't missed one. It's been pretty good so far. Dedication. Hey, can we start off with the marathon thing? I know In The Beginning runs the Gold Coast Marathon series, but I want to bring this outside the marathon for a moment. I got a text message from a friend of mine, Matt, who's coming up from Adelaide to run the marathon, and he said, you \[00:31\] guys doing an episode on pacing strategies? Now I feel like we've kind of covered it off, not in a direct fashion, because by this stage of a training block I feel like most people have figured out their pace. But I wrote back to him — feel free to amend this — I said don't start too fast, stay steady till 32 kilometres, empty the tank at 41\. That was my pacing strategy. \[01:03\] That's your strategy. You know, it's funny — I reckon if you're in groups running the marathon at the moment, that is probably one of the biggest topics you talk about day to day. Have you been prepping for this, not just Gold Coast Marathon, any marathon? One of the discussions you have every day is what can I run, what pace am I going to set out, and can I run that? A good example is my brother and his mates — they're all \[01:35\] got their goals, they want to beat each other and race. But in the end, the time you go out at is going to determine who ends up winning. So can I run under 2:40? You've actually got to think about it. Even if you even-split that, you have to run out at a set pace, and if that's too quick, then you're going to blow up and the whole kind of race against your mates goes out the door — you're going to lose. So do you go out at a pace that maybe feels a little bit too quick, \[02:07\] but at the risk of really blowing up? Or do you go conservative? But then if you go conservative, you've got no shot at getting that goal time you really want. So if you put it in the context of a three-hour mark, if you split that three hours in half, what do you need to go through halfway in? But you're tentative as to whether you can actually do that. If it goes wrong, it's really going to hit the fan. So they're discussing this every day. What can he run? \[02:37\] What can she run? What do you reckon, mate? It's tough. And you reckon they're still talking about this, this close to the Gold Coast Marathon? It's going to be a continual — it's literally a mind-fuck, where they're going, I want to run this pace, I think I'm about here, but there's a risk in going that little bit harder that isn't going to pay off. \[03:08\] Would I take that risk? So we're talking about a risk-versus-reward strategy here. I can see that play out. All right, Matt, listen up to this episode — we're talking risk v reward. What are you prepared to risk for the reward you're chasing? I actually spoke to him about this, because he was showing me his 30K runs that he'd been putting in. He said, I'm feeling great at the end of this, and I said, great, it's good you're feeling great at the end of that — it shows that when you get to marathon day at that pace, you've got something to give when you hit that stage of the race. And he was tossing up \[03:39\] exactly what you're talking about — the risk-for-reward thing. And I know I'm not running this marathon, but in past races too, I've never had that ongoing debate in my own head, or out-loud discussion, about timings. For example, the most recent race I did where I had a time in mind was the half marathon in Adelaide last year in September. \[04:11\] I said I want to run a sub-90-minute half marathon. I simply plugged a pace plan into my Garmin, told it I wanted to negative split — not a big negative split, a gradual one. It gave me the times and I ran to that. It wasn't a risk-for-reward thing. I set it at 1:29 to buy myself a minute of gap, and then I ran to the pace. There wasn't a constant eye on \[04:41\] whether I could go a bit faster — it was just, here's the time objective, let's input what's needed to achieve that. No, I get that, but how do you know that time or that strategy is the right one? If you're out there doing long sessions each week and you're starting to know your body really well, there's a point where you're running some type of threshold run, or within a longer run, and you're around that race pace, and you know it in your breathing, you know it in your heart rate, you know when \[05:14\] you've crossed that line and you're like, I can't go any faster — you're redlining. Well, not even redlining, but heading toward redlining in the sense of marathon pace, where you're like, I can't continually hold this. At that point you have a pace, and in your head you know realistically that if I go above that pace, nothing's going to change in the race — I'm going to be in trouble. But I want more. Do I take the risk that — new shoes, race conditions, tapered, fresh — \[05:49\] I could hold that pace a few seconds a kilometre quicker and get under that goal time? Do I risk that, or do I take the safe bet and run the pace I know I can do in training and see if I can bring it home? I know I'm testing your memory, but do you recall any stage during your professional career having one of those moments — pushing beyond, knowingly, in a race, going, I've passed that point now. \[06:19\] All the time. A lot, but probably not from a time-strategy point of view — a lot of it was pacing strategy from a competitive standpoint. I'd be trying to hang on to someone, hang on to a pack, not lose contact. Even though I knew that day this was above me, and the outcome would be better if I just backed off now and managed \[06:50\] my pace, I always had this notion of, I'm in it to win it. I'll put all the risk on the line to try and get the reward of staying there. It might not have paid off, and it never did, by the way. So there's the lesson — risk versus reward. It really rarely pays off. But I know a lot of people listening to us have had the same discussion. I was running yesterday with a \[07:20\] group having the same discussion — can I go that hard, can I do this, can I do that. What I can also guarantee is the people listening to this who aren't at your level, closer to my level, maybe slower, still think, oh yeah, but I'm different, I can push it. Courtney mightn't have got the reward for the risk, but I will. Well, there's \[07:50\] optimism — yeah, there's optimism. And you know, they say you've got to be in it to win it. And again, to reference the marathon series we've been doing — Bronte doesn't have that. Bronte is very much, tell me what to run, I'm not going to extend myself here, I don't want to over-risk for the reward. Well, she's come around to that. But remember in the early days she'd run out and go way too fast. \[08:20\] That's true, she would. There's also — I've had plenty of conversations with people doing both triathlons and marathons who have a plan in their head and stick to it, they know their pace, and that goes out the door very quickly, especially when mates are involved and you're racing someone and they've gone down the road on a pace quicker than they said they would. Hey, you know, Liam, you and I were racing and I've said \[08:50\] I'm on a three-hour strategy, I need to run this, and then suddenly you're with me, I'm on it too, we're going to do this together — and then I run out, get a bit excited, and I'm on like a 2:50 strategy. What do you do then? Bear with me here for a second — I've got a half-baked idea brewing, because what you just talked about, the idea of racing mates. Is there a way that, as a race director, when you \[09:22\] enter for News or marathons or anything like that, they always ask why you're racing and all that — they're looking for information, obviously trying to feed their database. But is there some way, whether it's on your race bib or otherwise, that if I'm running along, somehow the spectators can see that I'm racing my mate — literally on your bib, something like Matt versus, \[09:55\] Matt Verse — it's like a declaration, for the people who aren't going to win the race, that they've got a race within the race, which is them versus their mate. There's a lot of races within this race. More so than trying to win — only one person wins. But you get a lot of winners versus their mate. There's only ever one winner of a race, but in these big participation races there are so many winners. City2Surf will have so many winners of mates \[10:28\] racing mates. Have you had a mate-versus-mate race, and what's the best prize or outcome of that? I love that we're here, and I love that people running along listening are already going back to the bet they've made against him. Quick story — my brother-in-law is my race mate. My brother-in-law, Shane, my wife's brother, is the guy \[10:58\] we race with. We have this back-and-forth thing. Shane's not at his fittest right now, but he's a couple of years younger than me. He's got the all-time best Noosa Triathlon time out of the two of us, I've got the best marathon time and the best City2Surf time. We had this incredible twelve-month race-mates bet — I don't even think we had any money or prizing on it, it was pure pride. And the agreement was that year \[11:29\] it was City2Surf, it was Noosa Triathlon, and it was best parkrun time — over twelve months we were both entered in City2Surf and Noosa. He beat me at Noosa, he's a really good cyclist and a much better swimmer than I am, so he beat me at Noosa, and I beat him at City2Surf comfortably. So then it came down to the parkrun. We had twelve months to register a parkrun time. I was coming up here for Christmas — this is when we still lived in Sydney — and we drove up and \[12:01\] came through Tamworth, and Tamworth had a parkrun. I hadn't registered a parkrun time to that date. I went out at Tamworth parkrun and ran a sub-20 parkrun, but I didn't have my barcode with me. So I get up here, it's basically Christmas, I've got six days left to register a time. \[12:31\] I said to Shane, oh yeah, I did a sub-20 at parkrun in Tamworth. He's like, that doesn't count, you haven't registered your time. So on New Year's Day there's a Kirra parkrun, a big one down at Kirra. I said to Shane, look, will you agree that if I run a better time on New Year's Day, this counts? He said yep, we can both go out and run it. And it basically set itself up to become a match race \[13:01\] on New Year's Day, Shane and I down at Kirra. I ran 19:19 — 19:15 for me, great running, Shane — and Shane DNF'd. He DNF'd a 5K, what happened? Because he knew it was risk-reward, it was all guts or glory, it was DNF, it was DNS, it was death or glory. He said, I have to stay with him. And he came out and sat with me at three K's and said, \[13:32\] I'm done. So, to your point — pride, mates race, I want to know, if anyone's out there, what are the best bets or wins you've had punishing your mates? I wouldn't go as far as tattoos, but who knows, maybe there's some pretty decent ones. If you've had race bets with mates — MRBs — that are worth sharing, send it in, an audio message, slide it into the DMs, tell us all about it. \[14:02\] I'd love to share some MRBs with the In The Beginning podcast family. That's a good one. Now I don't remember what led us to that — proof that running has hit mainstream. You know what it is? For the fifth time we've said this movie. No, no, this is another level of mainstream. Marathons are now being targeted by scammers — this has just come out, and it's about the Gold Coast Marathon. \[14:33\] The Gold Coast Marathon resale market is now seeing people scammed into thinking they're purchasing a resold marathon ticket. This is an ABC story that's just come out. There's a woman by the name of Jess Iapella. She went to buy a resale ticket to the sold-out Gold Coast Half Marathon — she saw a bunch of things, asked about it on Facebook, and received a number of offers \[15:06\] offering to sell her one. She found what she thought was a genuine one and transferred half the money via PayID, but got no ticket — she's kissed goodbye to a hundred bucks. And this is the idea of mainstream, right? These marathons, half marathons, triathlons, whatever, selling out so quickly with such popularity creates this resale market. It's something music festivals and concerts and gigs have already gone through, where people want to chase entries \[15:38\] after it's sold out. And now the Gold Coast Marathon has come out and said Events Management Queensland are doing the right thing — they've provided a platform, a portal, saying transfer only through this. That's the only safe way to get an entry if you don't already have one or aren't on the wait list. But it's interesting that the scamming world has now turned its attention to the running world. When you transfer, do you set a price, or is it \[16:08\] a transfer fee they control? Well, here's what I understand, and don't take my word for it — I believe when you go through the official transfer portal it's done at ticket value. Which I really like, because you shouldn't be able to profit — I call it price gouging. I'd hate to see price gouging come into these races, people snapping up entries and reselling them at a profit. I don't think that's what \[16:39\] I'd like to see in the world. I had a fair few mates send me screenshots of missing out on the London Marathon ballot — just literally a screenshot saying, sorry, you didn't make the ballot. Tough luck. So it's a case of — I'm just thinking, if someone missed the ballot, knowing there was, what did we say, a million people wanting to do the London Marathon — \[17:09\] that many people wanting to do it — hopefully they don't allow for upsells. What would you think of the London Marathon if they suddenly ran it twice a year? Diminishes it, doesn't it? Yeah, that just popped into my head — the idea that if demand for the London Marathon and these other majors is that big, if it was on twice a year, would it be as good? But then you don't get the \[17:40\] ceremony of it. But isn't that what drives demand as well — isn't that partially driving this whole scenario at the moment? Once things start selling out, there's more want, you want what you can't have, so you've got to get in earlier the next year. There's a cycle effect to this whole thing — you're getting into your marketing brand. Once you create \[18:14\] more of them, for a while it might work, but does it actually decrease demand, because once you've given everyone the opportunity to do it, you need repeat customers coming in. We talked about this a bit with Pete from Salomon, about the idea of specialness and coolness and the shoes and the way that brand has managed to retain its cool factor. Have I told you about the Gold Coast Suns pink jumper? The pink range they introduced this year was \[18:44\] awesome — Gold Coast lost its mind for it. Two of the biggest retail days in the club's history were when they dropped the pink merch on their website. I had a conversation with people at the club about why they don't just make this their clash jumper — because for those who don't follow AFL, all teams except Collingwood have a clash jumper, to avoid colour clashes when they play away against certain teams. Really interesting comment — \[19:15\] the idea being, we could do that, but does it stop being cool if we're playing in this pink jumper every other week? Is it still special? The other thing with these sellouts — how many do they actually sell? I'm not picking on the Gold Coast Suns here, but in general you see a line of merch and it's sold out — it creates great demand, but did you sell ten of them, or did you sell a hundred thousand? \[19:47\] It's like a line out the front when there's nobody inside — the sellout depends entirely on how many you made. If I make ten of these and sell them all, sure, that's sold out — but they made a few more than ten. Anyway, to circle back to where we started — if you're looking to get into a race and you weren't able to buy a ticket through the original sale, find the official portal, don't risk it, because the \[20:17\] scammers have turned their eyes on the world of running, which means it's ruined. Now I've got a question for you, Liam — is your ring finger longer than your index finger? Your index is your pointer finger, that's your point finger, yes. And your ring finger — the next one, before the pinky. What have you got? Sorry, we just stopped \[20:49\] talking for a second — if you're watching on the Spotify video, you'll understand what we're doing, the ultimate podcasting scene of stopping talking to check our fingers. My ring finger is — jeez, I've got some real ring fingers, some real inflexibility. Your ring finger is taller than your — yeah, holy, by a lot, opposite. Now, I know where you're going with this, and this is fascinating. So what we've got here is my index finger is taller than my ring \[21:21\] finger, and Liam's is the opposite. Apparently it's indicative of a person's ability to run marathons, cycle long distances, and generally perform in endurance sports. Let's do the test — I haven't actually looked at which way it goes. So, before you read that, based on the test, if this is meant to indicate your capability to run marathons and ride long distances, based on \[21:54\] your fingers and mine, and based on your athletic prowess and mine, it should measure out that if your index finger is longer than your ring finger, that's a good sign for marathon running and bike riding. This is a study done at UniSA by PhD candidate Bethany Gower — she's been on National ABC Radio — and it found that you're more likely to tolerate longer-duration activities if your ring \[22:27\] finger is longer than your index finger. And we've just debunked that — we're the complete exception to the rule. This is going nowhere, because that's not what I mean — you can run a marathon too. Not as well as you. So in this class of two, I think you're the exception, because yep, my ring is longer than my index. My ring finger is longer than my \[22:57\] index finger — definitely, both of them, substantially. My index finger is definitely — sorry, my ring finger is longer than my index finger, and I can run and I can ride. Someone asked, what does it mean if the ring finger on one hand is shorter than the other? It's different — means you've probably really stuffed something up. It's all about the circulatory and respiratory systems' ability to supply oxygen to the working muscles during sustained physical exercise. I'm calling bullshit. I actually thought that was \[23:27\] going 100% the other way — I hadn't bothered checking. A few people sent that in and thought we'd be interested. Speaking of things you might dispute, I had a really interesting massage experience the other day — not what you're thinking, get your mind out of the gutter. With the calf injury I went through, Gold Coast Physio's been awesome — Britt, the whole team there, Trent, have been great. \[23:58\] Now that I know I'm not running the marathon, I've pulled back on the physio, because at my level of running per K's per week I probably don't need to be hitting up the physio. Once I start upping the case again I'll be going to see Trent to get needles stuck in, because that really works on releasing my calves — I'll be back, team. But I've also been back at the gym a bit, doing some weights. I had a bit of that lethargy in the body, an overall soreness, so I decided to treat myself to a massage. \[24:29\] I went to Riggs Recovery in Palm Beach — have you been there? It's one of these hot-and-cold-plunge health spaces that are booming at the moment, there are a few of them going around. I went to Riggs because it was near my place and they had an available slot. I got a massage, and it turned out the person doing it, she and I had competed the \[25:00\] same year of Red Bull Defiance — she was at Red Bull Defiance too, her name's Emma. Emma was awesome — I walked out of that massage feeling great, she hit all the trouble spots, you can see the cupping marks, I've had cupping done as part of an overall tune-up for the body. But this was the thing I wanted to bring up with you — she runs trails and does 100K races, so we were having a bit of a chat about everything, and it was almost \[25:31\] like therapy as well as physio for me, and I really enjoyed it, I'll definitely be going back. But the thing I wanted to bring up with you — she asked about the calf problem and how it was going, I explained everything I'd gone through and what caused it, and then she asked, can I also give you my thoughts? And she said, I think maybe the calf is representative of you not fully committing to something in life. Is there something in \[26:01\] your work life that might be — and she brought in this, I know, very deep thing, and thankfully I was lying down because it sat me down. I was like, maybe there's something in my work life I'm not fully committing to, and my calf problems are related? If I didn't have enough problems in my calf, now I need to go and see a psychologist as well. I said, Emma, I've got that many professionals committed to these damn calves already. But it made me \[26:32\] stop and think there might be something mental going on. I'm a big believer that stress contributes to issues in the body — when you go through a stressful period, whether it's something at work or with the family, it can be a moldable factor for a lot of things. You feel it in the body physically worse than actually going out and doing something physical to affect it — I think the stress of what that puts on your body and how it \[27:02\] affects it is worse than the actual physical nature of exercise. I guess that makes sense — whether it's your heart rate up, whether it's lethargy, whether it's motivation, all of those things. I don't know how it all works from a psychology point of view, but I know that's what happens in practice. That's the other thing — I'm basically taking you into my massage session — she said as she was working my shoulder, it feels like you need to exhale. \[27:33\] So I breathed, and she said, no, no, it feels like generally you need to exhale a bit. I was like, do they offer breath courses there? I think she could — she was amazing, fantastic. Coincidence that she'd done Red Bull Defiance — did you just totally walk in there? I booked it online at Riggs because I knew they offered massage. Completely random — we started talking during the whole thing, she said, I'm a runner as well, and we're talking about races, and I had the conversation with her that you \[28:05\] and I had on the last step, about that moment you'd go back to and experience all over again. I said, at Red Bull Defiance. She said, I did Red Bull Defiance too — what year? The year was really stormy. I said, we couldn't battle out to the arm — same year! It was an amazing coincidence, she was amazing, and the massage was great. My hips are so tight through everywhere — have you ever had your psoas released? That's one of the more painful, but more enjoyable, things. \[28:36\] Jeez, I didn't know where my psoas was, and I do now — that hurts. Speaking of the psoas, I went to see Trent last week — I did, my excuse for not getting a rub for the last however long was just that every time I went to make an appointment the days didn't line up, the times didn't line up, and then the next week came. Anyway, Doctor Ben rang me. \[29:08\] I drove out of the street and he's flashing me with his lights, and I said, what are you up to? He said, I'm going in to see the physio — go and see Britt, who we had on the Gold Coast Marathon series, around the physio, and then get rubbed after. And the next message I get is, I've got your appointment at 12:30\. He's got himself a new personal assistant, he locked me in. So I turned up and saw Trent — great filler. But that's where I got the psoas release, and it \[29:38\] was tiring, but great to get in there. It put me straight back on the massage table over in France, where I'd spend a lot of my time racing with our Australian masseurs. Just the memory of different hands locked in as far as I could into that area of my lower stomach, across there — it's painful, but it used to be one of the most effective things I'd get done. What did it do for you in terms of loosening things up and \[30:11\] unlocking things? Well, that's the release for the hips. Because in triathlon, you're riding your bike, so you're literally closing your hip angle, and as you're loading up with that closed hip angle, if you're not strong enough through the psoas you tighten up through that area. And then the next thing you've got to do is stretch out, get length in the psoas, and have the strength to be able to kick through when \[30:41\] you're running. So that was the challenge of triathlon — you'd get awfully tight psoas muscles. If anyone listening doesn't know what their psoas is, grab a hold of just above your hip, around your stomach, where your love handles are, go in about a couple of inches, and go internal — you'll find tight bands in there. And I'd challenge you all, next time you have a \[31:13\] massage scheduled, just say to them, hey, show me where my psoas is, show me what you'd have to do to get to it. There was a bit of a badge of honour, back when I was running full-time, day to day, of how far could you get in there. Would you mind if we jump into the bike world for a moment? I don't have this on the run sheet, but I'm going to adjust the names to \[31:45\] protect people because I haven't exactly cleared this story for podcasting. So where do you stand on buying bikes off Facebook Marketplace? I'm okay with it — what would you warn people against when buying bikes on Marketplace? Well, you don't know the history of the bike, that's number one. To be transparent, I would never have thought of buying a road bike or mountain bike off \[32:15\] Marketplace, but I do look at dirt bikes — motorbikes — that's where I'd look at Marketplace. This is because with the Gold Coast Marathon now in my rearview mirror from a participation standpoint, my athletic schedule turns its attention to Noosa. Good — did someone ask this question about bikes, buying a bike? Yes, \[32:46\] someone said — I'm running, I think it was a half marathon or a marathon, and then my next goal is to do a half Iron Man. Can you give us some advice on buying a bike? I'm going to find this, because someone did ask that question. As you're looking for it, I'll jump in on this Facebook thing. I think with bikes, top-end gear costs a lot of money but doesn't give you a lot of extra bang for your buck in \[33:16\] terms of performance. If you're a Tour de France rider going up a hill, strength-to-weight ratio and all that, maybe the top-end stuff, the best of the best, makes a difference — if you can afford it, go for it. But with bikes, middle-of-the-range equipment makes the most sense for bang for your buck. I've learnt this more in the mountain bike world since buying a couple of my own bikes in the more recent \[33:48\] years — I'll always go for mid-range now, not top-end, for that exact reason, it's just not worth the bang for buck. And often the wear on middle-of-the-range components actually wears a lot better — you get more longevity out of it. BJ Platts — this is BJ, who told us to stay out of ourselves — he said, gentlemen, after the GC Marathon is over I would like to look at \[34:18\] a half or full Iron Man. His question was, what entry-level bike would you recommend? I'll let Courtney give an answer. On the bike front, I've only ever had one road bike — I bought it in 2014 before my first Noosa Triathlon, off someone my wife worked with. It's too big for me and I've still had it for ten years — it's a Cannondale CAAD9 or \[34:48\] something. I paid $1,500 for it at the time, it was relatively new, the guy was moving overseas and just wanted to get rid of it, and it's been great, it's done the job. And as much as I've always kind of looked at more expensive bikes — Spud Anderson, Sydney legend, has always said, put me on a $50 bike with a $50 pair of aero bars, and — what was it — it's the legs, not the bike. \[35:18\] You know, these days I'd challenge that a little bit, because the right bike with the aero technology they've got to these days, the right bike with the wrong legs might still beat a really old-school bike in the wrong position with brilliant legs. So for someone like BJ looking to get into it for the first time, what — where should he start? Well, he's talking about a half Iron Man, so if you want to race triathlons and you're only going to have one bike, ideally you \[35:51\] probably want to get some type of aero bike you can time-trial on, if that's your goal, to go as good as you can. But if your goal is more just to finish it and be as comfortable as possible riding day to day, then maybe just a normal road bike still suffices, and you put clip-ons onto it — that's a cheaper, more cost-effective way to go, but you're not going to get the same performance as you would in \[36:21\] triathlon if you got yourself in the right position on a time-trial bike. As far as brands go, everyone's individual on what they like, but when you're looking at different bikes and making decisions, it's like shoes — go and actually feel a bike, go and see what fits, because bikes like Canyon now you can order online, they rock up at your house, you build them and go — but you're not going to get the \[36:53\] same service or peace of mind as if you went into a shop where they show you it all, do the one-month tune-up and everything. That's for new bikes though — the question came around Facebook bikes. This is a decision about savings and what you're willing to part with, that's how I look at it. There's a threshold — it's risk and reward again. There's a threshold where I'm saving this much by buying \[37:25\] this bike on Facebook, but I don't know the history of it, I don't know what's happened to it, and if I've saved enough it's probably worth the risk. If you're not saving much, go and get the peace-of-mind option instead. So one tip I'll give — if someone's looking to upgrade or buy a bike, now's not a bad time to look, it's the end of triathlon season, end-of-year sales, but also this is \[37:57\] when the serious people, the ones taking the hobby from beginner to advanced, upgrade their bike and look to offload last season's bike — that first bike they had. The reason this came up is a friend of mine who's signed up for the Western Sydney Half Iron Man — his first one. He's done Noosa for a bunch of years, done a few multi-day rides down in Tassie, but he's looking to upgrade. \[38:28\] his bike, and he jumped on Facebook Marketplace and found a bike that on paper wasn't too good to be true, but was certainly cheaper — a good deal. He was making the savings, and his friend advised him to jump on Strava and see if he could find the seller, see how much the bike's been ridden, see how many K's this thing has done, because obviously sellers say 'lightly used' when it's actually been heavily used — there's an easy trick. \[38:59\] See if you can find the seller on Strava and actually see how many kilometres they've put through the thing. That's a great call, a good trick. And it also revealed something, because my friend found that the person selling this bike happens to be related to a very, very wealthy Australian — we're talking rich-list Australian. \[39:30\] So he found out this person comes from a bit of cash, and the deduction he made is that this person, with all their money, bought something top of the line, and Strava showed they'd barely ridden it — very little. And they'd kind of gone, I don't need that anymore. So not only is it lightly used, it's also heavily discounted, because money isn't that important to the seller, and they don't need to try to regain every cent they paid \[40:02\] for it. This teaches you to do your homework — right, done their homework, so he's bought the bike, but once he figured out the wealth, he just casually said, hey, if you've got any — because I'll tell you, this seller sold the bike at a rate that was cheap for it and didn't even disclose there was a power meter on it, didn't include that in the price. Clearly just oblivious to the \[40:33\] fact that it was that top-end range of bike that came with a power meter. Then my friend said to him, hey, if you've got any other cycling stuff you're going to get rid of, let me know. This person's written back, oh, I've actually got a bunch of cycling clothes you can just have. So now he's waiting to pick it up. This seller's obviously \[41:06\] gone — he's out, he's out, he's out. My tip for buying bikes on Facebook Marketplace — check Strava, and if you can find someone who looks like they're giving up on the sport entirely, go for it. I do the same thing with motorbikes at the moment — I've been looking at a few, and some of them you see with race numbers on, so you think, have they been raced, or have they just been used out on a property? I'll go look at the name and see if I can find them on Instagram and see what they're doing on the bike. You find a few, you don't, but it's a good gauge — like, have you raced it? \[41:37\] Well mate, come on — really, because there's your motive, you on the podium, why are you fifty foot in the air on that bike? Have you been on your bike? I haven't been lately, and I'm not going to for the moment, that's away in the next month. I wanted to follow up on something a couple of weeks old — the Mick Fanning charity golf day. I never actually told In The Beginning about this experience. \[42:07\] You've played in it before, haven't you — a few years, the first one, possibly, because this was year four. This year, the floods were that long ago? Wow. I vaguely recall seeing you at one of these things. I've definitely played, maybe one, possibly two. In fact you did, because you met Dill Buckley — he's actually coming up here to run the Gold Coast Half Marathon, \[42:37\] with Lululemon this year. I've been trying to reach out to him and get him on the podcast, but — no, we're not going to talk about anyone else. Getting on, stop — no, no, I wanted to say, next year, Mick Fanning, I know you're listening, we need you back at the golf day, we need you back at the golf day. So, you're doing Red Bull Race the Sun? You're a bit busy. I had my hands full, but I was lucky enough to get involved with it — that's one of the great \[43:08\] experiences, when you talk about event organisation and putting experiences together. They go all in, don't they — that's the other thing, which you'd know more about than I would given what you do with Red Bull. When brands are allowed to essentially express who they are without any restrictions, I feel like you get more buy-in. Because Mick's general rule is, if all the money goes to charity, you \[43:38\] get to actually do what you want. And that's how you end up with people getting tattoos and haircuts, BMX riders doing backflips, people getting fireballs shot into their mouths from super soakers. It's escalated over the years, and that's a great thing when brands really buy into something like that and it evolves — there's 36 holes, and this year there were only four holes without activation, with \[44:09\] over 30 brands trying to outdo each other, most of them involved through personal relationships or like-minded people. And to take it back — I'll be really interested to see the Gold Coast Marathon Expo this year, because we're starting to see, we saw at the London Marathon, all the clips and pictures of brands trying to outdo one another with viral campaigns. One of the best ones I saw \[44:40\] was Gymshark the other day, at HYROX — I'm not sure if it was the HYROX World Champs, it was HYROX in London — they set up what they called a launderette. The idea was, when you finish HYROX you get a patch you could sew onto a hat or a hoodie, to say you finished HYROX. But what do you do with a patch? So Gymshark worked out, we'll create the space — \[45:11\] you come to us, and we'll sew the patch onto something for you. I just found it — the way they'd activated it, it was a launderette, and there were other things in there, but the premise was, go there, get this patch put on clothing — I'm assuming you could put it on their own clothing too. I thought that was one of the better ones — the Gymshark launderette, because it was in London. The Gymshark launderette popped up at HYROX London. Run the race, earn the badge, claim the hoodie. \[45:42\] So you turned up with your patch and there were people with sewing machines sewing it onto your hoodie. It's got a purpose but it's also a great space — that's clever, really thinking outside the box. The other one that was good — I think it was London Marathon — was one of the hydration brands had the bowsers, you go and fill up, literally, like you want energy, you go fill it up at the petrol bowser. It was like a \[46:14\] small sports-drink brand that was good too — Pure Sport did the petrol pumps. And that was another one that stood out, because it's hard to stand out these days, there's so much going on. Even on the Gold Coast, have you started to see the run-club-slash-cafes on the Gold Coast and all the branding — even that's competitive in itself, because there are so many run clubs wanting to \[46:45\] do something with a running-shoe brand, and then they need a space to do it, so it's driving all this competition. And they might get 50 people there — I don't know how it really — do you reckon, I know we're drifting into Gold Coast Marathon territory again, apologies if you're one of the people out there who's not coming to the Gold Coast, bad luck. Do you think the Exhibition Centre is still the right place for the Expo? Jeez, I hadn't even thought \[47:16\] about that. We live in a place where the marathon on the Gold Coast is sunny, bright, outdoors — is there a better space? Should they be taking over Hota? The problem with Hota is public transport — that's the reason Broadbeach works so well, not just for the Expo but in general, having the Convention Centre on the Gold Coast there, you get the G:link down, and a lot of people will be staying in Broadbeach. \[47:49\] It's a high-activity hub, it's easy, and it's a big space made for it. I reckon that's why it works. You're the event planner, I'm just coming up with half-baked ideas, but I want everybody out there running the Gold Coast Marathon this year, listening to this — I know they ask you to submit feedback after your race, you always get that email saying you've got a chance to win entry into next year's race, give us your feedback. If it's not there this year, and my guess is it won't be because I only came up with the idea three weeks ago, \[48:20\] I want everybody who's listening to say you want the halfway house — say you want a hometown house at the turn at Miami, say you want to see a grandstand set up next year where people are losing their minds as you turn that halfway mark of the Gold Coast Marathon. Let's make that happen, let's make that a thing. That's the idea. I just want it — it would be so \[48:53\] cool, a party-hall type thing, hey Ryan? Ryan McDonald agreed it would be cool, but there are some logistical, operational things that need to be taken into consideration. Taught to me by an event manager. Hey, I'm going to show you a video — I'll put it up on Spotify as well — and I want you to tell me what sport you think this athlete plays. So I'm looking at a very athletic young woman using gym equipment I haven't seen before. She's using one of the — what are the bands called — \[49:24\] tension bands. Now she's sitting down doing a split squat in the air on a tension band, and then she's doing a squat on a tension band. Now she's jumping from a Stairmaster onto a box and landing back, now she's doing some glute exercises. What sport do you think she's coming from? Well, there's a soccer ball, there's a \[49:54\] soccer ball involved. You just ruined it — I didn't see the soccer ball when I watched it. My wife showed me this. There's a soccer ball in it — I didn't see it, and she's a soccer player. You ruin everything, Liam. There's a soccer ball in it. I looked at this without seeing the soccer ball, and when my wife said, have a look at this, does this make sense — I thought, this is crazy, what is she doing this for? Is she a soccer player? Soccer player from the Netherlands, I believe. \[50:26\] Those crazy Dutch people, from the Netherlands. I'll go through some of the comments in a minute, but when I hadn't seen the soccer ball and I looked at her, I thought, what is she — my first thought was maybe a hurdler, doing squats standing on a rubber band in the air, this is dangerous. Do you know what my guess was going to be before I saw the soccer ball? I was going to say, is she a bobsledder, an explosive athlete trying to push off? I also thought maybe a gymnast, because of the activity. \[50:56\] She's in the air on these rubber bands — what's her name, out of curiosity? Courtney's about to try — no, no, I've only got the Instagram handle: femke, m, key, prince. Football player — she plays for Fortuna Sittard. Cool. \[51:26\] Some of the comments are interesting — just because you can doesn't mean you should. Other people were guessing badminton, is it a badminton athlete, I have a lot of questions, I just don't know which one to ask. But this one — she can do this because she is athletic, she isn't athletic because she can do this. Look at that, say that again — she can do this. Where did it go? \[51:57\] She can do this because she is athletic, she isn't athletic because she can do this — pretty much. There's a lot of risk involved in what she's doing here — she's on a treadmill at one stage doing circles, kicking a soccer ball as well. It was very impressive. Hey, speaking of people doing weird things and wondering if they're necessary — there's a French-Algerian artist called Reeles, I'm not quite sure how to say his name. \[52:27\] Should've just gone with what you thought — Reeles, let's call him Reeles. He's a singer, an artist, and he's competed — I think this happened a few months ago, but I've only just stumbled across it — this is the thing with the treadmill blades. This was a while ago — have we talked about this? I don't think we have, it's just come up on my feed. Do people send this in to you? I've got a feeling this is from a while ago — okay, well I'm seeing it for the first time. \[52:57\] He went 24 hours on a treadmill to launch his new album, 'Survival Without Stopping'. He literally had what looked like massive blades behind him. This has only just popped into my world, so apologies if everyone's already across it — I like this one, I respect somebody who does this. We talk about Teddy Swims and the run club he started up — oh, no, Jelly Roll, not Teddy Swims — Jelly Roll's Run Club. \[53:29\] He ran 24 hours to launch an album, not stopping on the treadmill. What's the longest you've run on a treadmill without stopping — not 24 hours, that's horrible, that's my idea of hell. I mean, I think that's the purpose of it, to get people to watch you go through hell. But he didn't actually look that bad when he popped off. I did see, a while ago, something around his Strava leading up to that — for five years he built up \[54:01\] his mileage over, you know, 100K, 150, up to 200-plus a week. So it wasn't like he just popped up one year and said, hey, I'm going to do this. Speaking of mileage, how's your running going — we haven't talked about our own running. What's going on? Good — I ran over 50K last week. You're such a silent assassin, aren't you — slowly coming back from when you were walking around on crutches, which wasn't that long ago. Back running, still taking a day off here and there to manage things. \[54:33\] But yeah, back running — I did 14K up at the Spit on Tuesday. Where's your head at with running at the moment? Just keeping things slow, building it up without causing any other problems, not even concentrating on the hip or the bone, just making sure I'm not getting any calf or other niggles as I come back and start upping the mileage. \[55:03\] So just managing it around that, doing strength work to support it, getting another massage. Have you had any phantom pain around it? Yeah, a bit — the mind's always playing tricks on you, and because I was staying off that leg, literally putting no weight through it for a significant part of time, there's been some muscle deterioration, so from left to right leg I'm going to have to build some strength back on that right leg. \[55:34\] I prefer to build it through running, load up where the activity is specific, but I'm also aware I need to add some extra stuff to manage it outside that. Fifty K, did a fartlek yesterday morning with some of the crew — breathing heavy, I'm still enjoying the background of it, that's the main thing. It'll take a bit of time to see how quickly I come back, no rushing. What about \[56:06\] yourself? I was down in Sydney last weekend for the Suns-Giants game. I still can't believe — I watched the game, GWS versus Suns, game of the year, best game of football for the year. I sat there and watched it to the third quarter, then turned the TV off to go do something else because I thought it was over. Nope — GWS trailed basically right up until the tenth minute of the final term. \[56:37\] I went to the game with Dew Bolton down in Sydney — former Swans champion, 300 games, premierships, he's done it all, he's a legend. At three-quarter time he said, I reckon we've got a grandstand finish coming — he called it, said there's a grandstand finish on the way, the Giants are just bubbling. And then they came out and kicked something like six goals to three in the last term to win the game. Such an amazing game. Devastation if you're a Suns supporter — Damien Hardwick looked pretty \[57:10\] frustrated, because those are the games the Suns have got to take a step in, if they're serious about being a contender — the side's talented enough, matured enough to win the games they should win, but now it's about executing in those moments. I saw him flipping the bird at the umpire — that's going to cost him $2,000 at Fox Footy. It was literally the last play of the game, basically, over the deliberate out-of-bounds decision, and Hardwick \[57:41\] was frustrated, and not just Hardwick in this case, generally, sport — I think that's too grand a deterrent for someone who's probably being paid. No, it's symbolic. Actually, to tangent for a moment, I think the AFL has something of a problem with staging for free kicks and exaggerating free kicks to try and trick the umpires. The umpires — AFL is one of the hardest games to officiate, because the rules have so many grey areas that it's a thankless job, and I think the \[58:15\] umpires should never be the ones criticised — it should be the rule-makers. Having said that, I think the AFL should come out after each round, review the tape, and retroactively fine players for staging, whether they were awarded the free kick at the time or not, whether they convinced or tricked the umpire or not. The AFL should go through with a fine-tooth comb and fine players who stage — try to stamp it out, because if you keep \[58:45\] turning up every Monday morning at every football club with a list of players and the amount of money they've got to pay back, they'll stop it real quick. Well, there's my question though — what's a fair fine? What would deter a player? Put it this way — 500 bucks might not seem like much at the time, but if someone keeps turning up to your workplace every Monday saying you owe me $500, I might be talking out of school, but I'm tipping $500 for most \[59:16\] of the players — not all of them, but a lot — would think, if someone turns up to your workplace every Monday asking you for $500 for that little thing you did on the weekend, you might just stop doing it. Or $1,000, I don't know what the number is, but that's the point. How did we get here — we were talking about Sydney and running, that's right. Not everyone follows AFL, but at the moment with State of Origin, rugby league has different issues around reffing — it's not the staging stuff, nothing \[59:48\] like — I'd say nearly nothing's staged in rugby league, it's just tough. Is there more talk about refereeing and the refs' impact across both codes in the last 18 months than there has been in the past, or has it always been that way? I think inevitably we always fall into conversations about referees, whatever the sport. It's heightened at the moment in rugby league at time of recording because of the Ashley Klein performance in Game \[01:00:20\] 2\. But people always find ways to blame referees, and that's one of the things about sport — we're irrational when it comes to it. With the football in particular, I'm pretty centrist because I call football and have to be unbiased and centrist when I'm calling games, and I'll be on WhatsApp chats with a whole bunch of Adelaide Crows supporters who are completely irrational about their team. They put absolute blinkers on \[01:00:50\] and ignore the obvious, and when I respond with a centrist attitude to it, I annoy them, because they want to live in the passion of it, they want to live in the irrational — they want to believe there's a conspiracy against Adelaide. The Crows are actually going bloody amazing — that doesn't mean there's not a conspiracy against them from all the way at the top. I checked the ladder yesterday, before I messaged someone, and thought, I didn't realise how well the Crows are going. One of the great things about sport is that either we \[01:01:24\] can suspend the real world — not for the participant, but for the fan. By watching sport we get to temporarily suspend our real world and live in this fantasy world where we can make up whatever we want about what's going on behind the scenes. How did we get here — Sydney and running, that's right. I went down to Sydney for this game, and I went down a day early because I wanted to catch up with Ed, who I ran with — I stayed with Ed, who I did Red Bull Defiance with. I had my running gear, and I \[01:01:57\] had the best intentions of going for a run, 15 to 20K — you're moving to Ed. Ed and I went out for what I thought was just a couple of quiet drinks and dinner catch-up, but it didn't finish that way — it ended up being quite a heavy night. I saw you doing the — what's it called — the Guinness split-the-G thing. Fair to say we tried that a few times and did not get it right — not successful, but we were committed to getting it right, and we kept getting it wrong. \[01:02:29\] So I haven't run for coming up on a week now, at time of recording — but I'm actually going to go do a run today, because the Gold Coast, the station's trying to pump up the outdoor nature of this place, and all the things there are to do — we're trying to show people, look, you can go and do this on the Gold Coast, so I'm going to go for a run, probably from my place, head up towards Snapper, by myself, and do a little video that they can then use on all their socials. \[01:02:59\] Nice — go and get into some of those Currumbin trails. Or are they kind of grey? I'm not as talented as you at capturing trails, you're very good at making trails look appealing to people. I look more like The Blair Witch Project when I try — you've got to teach me how to do trail videography better. Well, I gave you the camera, and the stabilisation does half the work. There was a time, probably when I first started capturing, when I first left triathlon and moved into, \[01:03:33\] a lot of the brand work — my foot in the door to that space of adventure came when I partnered with Kathmandu and went over to race Coast to Coast. Before that I'd just filmed some adventure stuff, and it always felt quite natural to me, being comfortable while exercising — it's not like you're breathless with all those other things you've got to deal with. In those environments I reckon I'm pretty \[01:04:03\] comfortable. But that was when I first started filming — stabilisation on GoPros didn't exist then, so it was actually a bit of a point of difference, because you had to be — someone's going to call me out on this — a reasonably capable athlete, able to manage yourself in those environments well enough to keep a camera stable enough to show people. Now the stabilisation on all these devices is so good, you can literally be running around with your arms swinging and it looks fine — you see it even with iPhones, and the stabilisation on \[01:04:35\] iPhones — that competitive advantage went out the door. So there's no excuse, Liam — there's no excuse for anyone to have shaky footage. And I think, with the trending run footage you see from on-brands, not the brands themselves, but the run clubs, whoever — there's a shakiness to a lot of the footage now. I actually think that's happened in part because everyone can take such stable footage with stabilisers, \[01:05:05\] there's a zagging, so if everyone else is zigging you go the other way and make it look really intense. My style of filming's back on brand, then. Done the right way, I wouldn't go that far, but done the right way. Hey, before we wrap — one more thing. Last night I got on Prime and watched the 'Breaking4' doco — Faith Kipyegon, because we had heaps of questions, like can you talk about the clothing, the shoes and all that. To be honest I haven't had time to research it fully, but I watched the 51-minute doco. Now, at time of \[01:05:37\] recording — so if this comes out Saturday morning, the record attempt for the sub-four minute mile would have happened. It's live on Prime on the 26th of June — that's this weekend, no, that's Friday, today, tomorrow, yesterday — June the 26th, no, it's available June the 27th at 10am, so that's Saturday morning our time — no, Friday morning, June the 27th at \[01:06:11\] 10am on Prime. Okay, the four-minute-mile live attempt — we'll know the result by the time you're listening to this. But what I did watch last night was a great doco that went through the clothing. Two things I took out of it — the shoe side of things, they didn't give much information on that, they're lightening up the shoe and a few things. But the technology in the \[01:06:41\] clothing is to do with drag — they've got dimples on the clothing, think of the old Mizuno shoes, the dimples we all remember, but smaller knobs across the clothing in certain spots, to affect how the air flows around it and affect the drag. That's where they've gone with the clothing — for anyone wondering why she's got this special stuff. I've seen a lot on socials \[01:07:12\] showing how it's knitted and all that, but I think it's really the drag and the dimples that make the difference, and how the pacers are going to run around her. They've got men — from what was shown on the show — 800-metre-capable runners, very fast capable runners, and what they're looking at is that, because in the two-hour marathon attempt it's a bit more simple around draught and \[01:07:43\] aerodynamics — it's like birds flying, you just want everybody sheltering as you go around. On a track it gets more complicated, though, because you can't have someone running inside, you've got to manage the bends, so the person on the outside has to speed up more than the person on the inside. They were showing some of the formations — here's the optimal formation for giving her the best wind break. What I found really interesting was that the lead runner is actually giving more space \[01:08:16\] than the rear runners — the rear runners coming up behind her have to be tighter, to manage the blocking, creating that air pocket for her. And how they do that on a track will make all the difference, because the outside runners have got to — it's nearly like a fartlek. Would it work — just a thought, as you were talking about running the track — would she not have a better chance of breaking this if they found an 800-metre-long salt flat and put the aerodynamics around her on that instead? \[01:08:46\] Why wouldn't they — if they want Faith to break the four-minute mile, why wouldn't they lay 1.6K of tartan track in a straight line somewhere? Maybe it's for full authenticity, doing it properly. I reckon that's something — have you seen the guy who breaks cycling speed records, riding behind literally a car with a big shelter? Effectively you could do \[01:09:16\] that as well, but I think they're playing on the fine line of what's still legal to a degree — we're on a track, doing it in those conditions, and it's going to be super interesting to see. If anyone wants to, go and watch that, because it's interesting to see the whole background story of it. Cool, that's good. Alright, good episode — like, subscribe, all that, and we'll be back — have we got Wednesday coming up? Good question, we'll work it out. But Gold \[01:09:46\] Coast Marathon — a lot of requests coming in for a day-of-marathon episode. Day-of episode — look, I'll say this, stand by, I'm not running the marathon, I can confirm that now, but you might see me there in a different capacity. Look out for Liam, look out for me. Alright, cool, see you then. Bye.