EP 44 - STRADDIE WHALES, MARATHON SCANDALS & THE HYROX BUG

[00:00] In the beginning podcast, we are back. We're starting today with a laugh because we're remote today — we're not together in the Courtney Atkinson studio, we're apart. I'm still on the Gold Coast. Courtney, where are you at the moment? Yeah, I'm sitting in Coogee. I like being at home in the studio, but I've been down in Sydney. We've got a big week here at Red Bull headquarters talking about all the marketing plans and sales plans for next year. So it's a busy week, but

[00:30] an exciting week. You're doing your real job at the moment, whereas I've actually got three weeks off. I'm a bit listless, a bit directionless — for people who listen to the radio show, I've got three weeks off. The reason we're doing this today is because I've just got off the ferry from Stratty. I've had three nights over on Stradbroke Island with the kids, just relaxing and trying to turn the brain off. I shouldn't whinge, 'cause I was on a whole holiday the week before, but I'm gonna whinge anyway, and that

[01:02] sounds amazing. Anytime you can get lost. What's Straddie like at the moment? Is it busy at this time of year when it's not school holidays? No, it's beautiful. For people who've never been to Australia, I'll talk about it like I'm a local even though I've only been there twice, but it's one of the great camping trips. We now put it down as a yearly thing for the family, at Cylinder Beach. It's got everything you'd want out of a campground without having too much of the hassle of normal camping.

[01:32] Courtney, you and the Atkinson crew like to get properly rugged — you like to get as far away from a Wi-Fi signal as you can. We're not quite that, but I still don't like campgrounds that are basically a hotel. We won't glamp, we want to set the tent up, we want to get dirty, we want to have to use the campfire, that sort of stuff. And Cylinder Beach, for people who haven't been, is a right-hand point break, a right-hand bay, a bit like a lot of

[02:04] the classic ones you see on the Gold Coast. It's got these beautiful calm sand sections and the water's a lovely temperature even in the middle of winter. But the other thing about going at this time of year is it's the whale highway. You can just sit there and spot humpbacks on the way up to Hervey Bay — it's unbelievable. So you saw a few whales out there? It's a beautiful part of the world. Yeah, one of the cafes has a whale count sign — they reckon last year's

[02:37] count was somewhere around 4,280, and this year the count's been about 4,000. So many whales. And if you do the Gorge Walk there's turtles, dolphins — for someone who grew up in Adelaide, where the only thing you're probably going to spot in the ocean is a great white, going to Straddie and being able to see all this stuff just a hundred metres offshore is incredible. It's so cool. When I was doing a bit of tourism work over there, there was — I forget what they call it —

[03:08] but effectively it's the big manta ray station out there, the cleaning station. You can go, I don't know, maybe 500 metres offshore to where you see those rocks out to the north of Cylinder, drop in the water there, and dive down and literally be swimming along with the big manta rays. They also tell me that area's a bit of a shark highway if you go a little further out with the current. But hey, talking about sea life, have you heard what's

[03:39] going on at Noosa at the moment with the croc sighting? No — yes, actually, yes. There's been multiple croc sightings in the Noosa River. Parks and Wildlife have been out there looking for it. What happened was there was a guy walking his dog, and the dog saw what he thought was a stick, then realised it was moving and sighted it as a croc. Same day, a guy in his boat with

[04:09] his fish finder saw what looked like a crocodile underneath, and there's a picture of it in the news — you can literally see it kind of snaking along. He wouldn't have thought anything of it, except he'd heard there'd been a sighting down there. Interesting — they wouldn't normally come that far south, but I guess we'll find out, because if it's there, they'll eventually find it. I don't like that, because for people who live in the

[04:41] southeast — the Brisbane River is basically anybody's guess what's under there, and it's called the Brown Snake for a reason. Who knows if anyone's ever actually seen anything in there. But if crocs start making their way into it, just write the city off. Move the city, the city's cooked. If crocodiles make it into the Brisbane River, Brisbane as a host city should give the Olympics back — you cannot have crocodiles living in the main waterway of an Olympic city.

[05:12] It's done, right? As dirty as the Seine was in Paris last year — for all the diseases the triathletes and ocean swimmers might have caught in the Seine — at least they weren't getting chomped by salties. If salties get into the Brisbane River, cancel the Olympic Games. And if they do make it into the river, it's a matter of days until they make their way into Tallebudgera Creek and Currumbin Creek, and at that point I'm out, I'm heading back, I'm out of the Gold Coast. I was going to say they'd get to it eventually, but mate, we're all stuffed either way. We'll find out — I mean, there are often sightings

[05:45] at different spots. I've heard of them north of Fraser as well, but you never really find out. Interesting news anyway for the morning — Straddie's got some crocodiles, not great for running though. Let's talk about the big story, which I reckon broke not long after we dropped last week's episode — apologies if you thought maybe we'd talk about it then. Her name is Ruth — Ruth Chepngetich, apologies if I haven't got that exactly right — Ruth Chepngetich, who is

[06:16] the Kenyan marathon superstar who's been suspended for testing positive to drugs. Courtney, your thoughts? Well, sometimes when it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true. To be clear, she's been suspended, and at this stage she's got a diuretic in her system, which acts as a masking agent. What I found really interesting — I saw an article going through it — and you'd say, well, hang on, it's just a

[06:48] diuretic, they haven't found any actual performance-enhancing drugs in the system. Normally, they'll pick up that particular diuretic at a factor of around 20. And she had — don't quote me on this — I think 3,400 as a dosage. I've got no idea what that means, by the way, just to be clear. We're not insinuating anything here, but that seems like

[07:20] a lot of that diuretic to be in your system naturally. Fun fact, for people who might not understand diuretics — remember this is what Shane Warne actually got done for when he was playing cricket, and he said he took it for weight loss reasons, took one of his mum's diuretics to drop some water weight. But to go to elite performance enhancing, as Courtney said, you take diuretics potentially to mask other performance-enhancing

[07:51] drugs. The thing she was provisionally suspended for, tested positive for, was something called hydrochlorothiazide, or a thiazide, which is a diuretic listed on the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited substance list, as you said, due to its potential to mask other performance-enhancing drugs. I think — and don't quote me, if anyone wants to go do the research — this goes back to when she ran the Chicago Marathon in 2024 last year, where she set the new world record. We talked about it on one of our

[08:22] very early episodes, and I think at the time the conversation we had was, I hope it's true, I hope it's not — because around the same time we'd also talked about the increasing number of Kenyan athletes being suspended for testing positive to this sort of thing. What we said at the time, after Ruth's victory, was, wow, what an incredible performance, what a leap forward for women's marathon times, I really hope it's authentic. Now we get to, what, ten months on,

[08:56] and something like this comes out. The test was from March this year, so it wasn't right after the Chicago Marathon, it was six months after the fact. But you can go with the old "where there's smoke, there's fire" theory, and this positive test can do nothing but cast doubt on everything she's achieved in the last twelve months. Did you read that, that the test was that far after? OK, I'll take your word for it, I thought it was closer. But anyway, provisionally suspended, right,

[09:27] so there'll be more to hear on all of this, obviously, but it's disappointing, isn't it, when you get these great performances and then it comes out that there's a reality to maybe some of the underbelly of these professional endurance sports. What's also interesting is that her manager or agent is the same agent that a number of other Kenyans —

[09:59] not just a few — have also been pinged over the years through that same agent. So, as they say, maybe sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire. Let me ask you this — before Lance Armstrong got done, did you think the Tour de France was a clean sport? I was probably too young and naive to think either way, but I was a believer. Yeah, for sure I was a believer, I was an Armstrong believer, I was all in.

[10:31] So was I, and I reckon anyone other than those really close to him or the sport who tells you otherwise is just trying to be on the right side of history. We were all caught up in the hysteria. And hey, aside from the cheating, what he did for cancer can't be denied — that man raised maybe more money than anybody in the history of the planet for cancer through that Livestrong movement, that was incredible, you can't take that away from him. But do you look at the Tour de France and cycling now and

[11:02] believe it's a clean sport? Off the back of that, I find it difficult to look at professional cycling, the Tour de France every year, with a clear mindset. Just because of all that, I now look at the sport as tainted, borderline permanently. I'd agree. I mean, I've got no idea what actually goes on, but I think for most of us on the outside of the European world — Americans, Australians — we're on the outside of

[11:34] European cycling that's been going on for centuries. I think that was the big wake-up call for a lot of us, even mainstream. You obviously had the Festina affair — what was the watch brand, Festina — the blue team that got busted, the police raiding that one Tour, going across France, all that happened. And I think within cycling itself it was known, but it probably didn't go too mainstream at that time — Armstrong is what brought cycling to the mainstream.

[12:06] And yeah, you're right, it's not so much that you'd say it's right or wrong, but you'd always question it from then on. The reason I bring that up, to bring it back to where we are now with Ruth and with running, with these other athletes provisionally suspended — my worry is that this boom in marathon running, this bubble we're experiencing now where running's never been more popular, suddenly gets prematurely burst, because these athletes at the pointy end of

[12:37] the sport — we have that Lance Armstrong moment, that crash back down to earth, because suddenly a report comes out exposing everybody at the pointy end. Yeah, I'd challenge that to a degree. It'd be interesting to ask Bronte if she knew about the women's marathon world record as, let's say, a mid-packer in the marathon at the Gold Coast. Do you even know?

[13:07] Yeah, we've already talked about whether you even know who wins the marathon on the day of your own race when you're running it. The next question I'd ask is, do you actually look at social media enough to be getting the algorithm spamming you with that information? I'm not sure — if you're a runner in the mid-pack following certain people around running, do you just get the algorithm feeding you information at that level? I can't tell you, honestly. Tell you the truth, no,

[13:38] but that does bring it back to the idea we've discussed before — that the difference with marathoning, as opposed to other sports where people actively support the best of the best, is that level of fandom and fellowship doesn't really exist in marathon running. It's almost too disassociated — we don't connect the elite with the people who just want to go out and run a marathon in the same way. It'd be an interesting question to ask

[14:09] someone like — who do we know? Like your new best friend, Andy Buchanan. Oh, my new mate Andy Buchanan — I was listening to Tim Vincent's podcast, Journeyman, and Andy's up training with Tim Vincent at the moment in Cairns, doing their marathon prep. It'd be interesting to know, when you're at the pointy end like they are and you see this happen, how does it affect them in their field? Because it's mainly happened in women's running, but

[14:40] the reality is the top of the tree in the sport they're trying to compete in is getting busted. How does that make you react when that's your livelihood, that's what you're racing, and then you've got to go out and compete against that type of field? Did anyone ever get done for drugs while you were competing at the pointy end of triathlon? A few got pinged here and there, no one too close to me in the sense that while I was racing, someone I raced the week before got busted.

[15:12] But definitely over time in triathlon there were some — I think more recently there've been some higher-profile ones in Ironman, not this year but over the past few years. It's endurance sport, right, and as soon as there's money involved, some people are going to try and take shortcuts. Let me ask you another question about your triathlon career — was there ever a point, whether at the beginning or the end (I'm imagining not in the middle, in your heyday, when you were one of the best in the world), where you had a moment

[15:44] during a race or an event where you just went, I can't go with that bloke, this is men versus boys stuff? Honestly, not often, but Alistair Brownlee was the one for sure I raced against. He won gold at the London Olympics, not Beijing — London. He was at a level. I raced him at his very first kind of breakout race, at

[16:15] a World Cup level — before he went on to the World Series, we were racing on the roads in Greece, on one of the Greek islands. I think it was his first race, or definitely his first outing at that type of level, and he broke away on the bike as a young kid. I was running the best in the field that day, I think I finished third, but him and a Kiwi, Kris Gemmell, broke

[16:46] away and stayed away in that race. I remember it really well because I was running the best — I should have won the race, but I got beaten by this young kid because he just had the guts to give it a go and break away. I went on to race him a lot after that, but there were times when he got so confident in his swim-bike-run ability that he'd run out at a pace and put a minute into the best in the world. And at that point you're just like, I don't know what more I can do, I don't have a minute up my sleeve.

[17:16] You always think, maybe I can find twenty seconds, maybe thirty seconds if I'm really on it, but sometimes a minute was just out of the ballpark. So for me, he was definitely the one guy I raced that I never really felt like, yeah, I can get this guy today. Great story, and the reason I ask is I think the Gold Coast Suns have found their Alistair Brownlee in the Adelaide Crows — I know we were talking them up so hard. Yeah, no, we've got a little

[17:47] attachment to the Gold Coast Suns here at In The Beginning, because obviously I call a lot of their footy games, and I got to call their incredible win over Collingwood — their first Friday night game in the history of the club, the other week, amazing to get to call that, a historical moment for the club, a great game and a huge win for Damien Hardwick and the Suns. Then they go away and it was boys-versus-men stuff against the Adelaide Crows — they got done by 61 points in the end, and that

[18:18] was probably flattering them, they were nowhere near the standard of the Crows. And, you know, we know their head of high performance, and I can't imagine the conversations he'd have been having behind closed doors with Damien Hardwick this week, because they were simply nowhere near the pace. The irony is I actually know both high performance managers from the two teams very well — Darren Burgess is the high performance manager for the Crows, I was going to say it's Darren

[18:49] Burgess. I first met him over at the Dees — he's been around Red Bull for a long time, so when Red Bull had a partnership with the Dees, he was their high performance manager the year they took them from literally the wooden spooners to winning the premiership. The following year he moved over to the Crows, so I followed their progress just as closely as I followed the Gold Coast's. Put it this way, I haven't spoken to either of them this week.

[19:20] I'll leave it, I'll let sleeping ducks lie — because they did give them a good hiding, but I'm sure the Gold Coast are... who have they got this weekend, are you calling the game out there? It's the QClash — Gold Coast versus Brisbane. Just going back to Darren Burgess for a moment, I believe he spent a bit of time with Liverpool over in the EPL at one stage. Yeah, definitely an EPL team.

[19:50] Maybe it was Arsenal, I should know that. That whole high performance manager world — is that an environment you dealt with a bit as an athlete? As you say, Darren Burgess is a gun for hire, to some extent, but how different is the knowledge of one high performance manager to another? Yeah, I think the beauty in Australia with high performance is there's no real secrets, in the sense that

[20:21] the information's readily available to everyone. What I have noticed is a difference in how different teams — not just in AFL, but across all the football codes — approach fitness very differently. Years and years ago I went up and got inside for a day with the Cowboys up in North Queensland in rugby league, had a chat with their team, and got a bit of a handle on how they trained and what kind of fitness things they were

[20:51] doing, and got to know some of the people in the programme, and how they'd approach their fitness and what they thought they'd need, versus some of the other teams. So yes, they have different approaches, but the basis of where they're drawing their information from, and the experts, are all the same. What you do see, I think, is that once you've had success, success breeds success — once you know how to unlock it,

[21:22] once you've done that, you see people in that space go from team to team and generally build some success on top of what they've already done, because they know how to do it. Well, from a Gold Coast Suns perspective, it was men-versus-boys stuff last week. This week against the Lions will be very interesting, because I think the Lions have now put themselves in a position where finals is basically

[21:52] guaranteed, and they're almost at the point where they can start managing players through to the end of the season. So it's a question — I'll be very interested to see, depending on when you're listening to this, how that game played out, and whether Brisbane opted for the bigger picture towards finals, or both teams went all in given it's the local derby. Can I take it back to running for a moment? Because I think on last week's podcast, I told people the story of Earl.

[22:23] Earl was the fella I managed to catch in the finishing chute of the Gold Coast Marathon. I got an update from somebody who listens to the podcast — shout out to Melanie Long, who listens to the podcast and ran the Gold Coast Marathon. She rode the bus to the start and is actually targeting Melbourne or Sydney now — she's got the bug, she's on board. But she listened to last week's

[22:54] episode and said, I just listened to your podcast and heard the mention of Earl — I was a few people ahead of him and we leapfrogged most of the way through the run. He added me on Strava, and it turned out he was in hospital for two days after the marathon. So poor old Earl, who staggered home in about five and a half hours, spent the following two days after the Gold Coast Marathon in hospital. On the upside, we might have a new listener, Courtney, because Mel

[23:25] said, I've just messaged him to listen to the podcast, if he hasn't already. Well, hopefully he's recovered now and getting back into it, but that's crazy. I wonder what it was — just exhaustion, or we don't know? I assume so, I don't know, he must have been that dehydrated. I've got plenty of runners at the moment — some of the runners I know who ran the Gold Coast Marathon are in that phase of, I'm back running, but gee, I feel heavy, gee I feel heavy, what should I do, should I keep jogging?

[23:56] Should I keep going? And the answer is you've got to just take it easy, listen to the body. There's a lot of that going around at the moment, a few injuries floating around off the back of it as well. Let me ask you this, because we've talked about strength training a lot on this pod, particularly given how good my calves are going and the injury rehab you've been doing with your hip — how do you re-enter strength training, what would be your advice? I know you only

[24:27] like talking about yourself personally, but how do you re-enter a strength training protocol? Let me tell you why I came back to leg weights last week — it had been a while since I'd done any strength training, so I jumped back in, and let me tell you what I did. I did some bodyweight Bulgarian split squats, one set, then I went three sets with seven-kilo dumbbells,

[24:59] then I did some bodyweight box jumps, a 25-kilo goblet squat, calf raises with bodyweight, then straight-leg calf raises with a ten-kilo weight. Now Courtney, I've only just recovered, and that was about ten days ago. Started with Bulgarian split squats, made it sound like you knew what you were talking about there, Liam, that went over my head at least. Anyway, yeah, you're going to get sore that first time, right? And I think our analogy

[25:33] around the walk-run approach to getting back into training is very similar — I think you don't want to do back-to-back days, that's the first thing. But you are going to get sore the first time you lift, if you haven't done it in a long time, that's just the reality of it, and you recover from it. I think if you take strength training and the way it works, where you lift, you generally get some soreness from that, you allow yourself to recover,

[26:03] then you come back and lift a little bit heavier, or progress in some way, and recover again. The good thing is you feel the soreness — that's how run training and progression should also work, the difference is you don't always feel that same soreness, but you nearly need to treat it the same way. So I think if you can understand how you go through strength training, it's a great guide to also know how to approach running at the same time — there's no real difference. I feel your pain, Liam,

[26:33] because I started squatting again — I got the old squat bar out last week as well, and like I say, I never do what I preach. I know what I should be doing, but I hadn't been doing it. Started off at 40 kilos the first day, just out of the five, not super heavy yet, but I've been lifting about 65 kilos. I've got a few days in Sydney to give

[27:03] myself a three-day break, and then I'll get back into it. But I am glad I've jumped back into it, because I'm now back on the longer run programme, and as I mentioned last time, I want to get this 10K time down. So I'm trying to build up a slow 15K as kind of my base run — I want that really slow, steady zone-two 15K to be a real base run for me.

[27:33] I actually went for a really nice one out on Stratty — jumped back into the, I can't remember what the model's called, the Salomon "hail damage" shoes, as I've been calling them, with the golf ball dimples, and the Ultra Glide 3, I think that would be. Actually, I don't think they were the Ultra Glides, I thought they were a different model — anyway, the hail damage shoes, people might remember, this was only the second or third run I'd done in them. The first one was a loop up in the ranges, which had a lot more elevation, and I came back telling you how

[28:05] I didn't feel like the shoes were very responsive, kind of flat, didn't feel like much when I ran. This time I ran a 17K on Stratty in them, on a fire trail with little to no elevation. Amazing shoe — great shoe to run flat in. He loved it. That's good to hear you were loving running in them. Here's a bit of a retake, I suppose, and I think we touched on this earlier — I've got absolutely zero evidence for this,

[28:35] it's purely subjective, but like I said, I've heard about a few injuries off the back of the marathon, I've heard about a number of upper-leg injuries going around at the moment. And I'm still wondering whether all these built-up shoes, these really high-stack rubber shoes, are having an impact over time, causing injuries in new locations in the body. Because prevalent running injuries

[29:06] have generally been lower-limb injuries — we're still getting the calf injuries, a lot of stress around the tibia, fibula, lower limbs, knees. But off the back of what I had with my hip, I'm hearing a lot more upper-limb injuries at the moment that are stress-related. I'm just putting the question to our listeners — is anyone else having similar thoughts? Are these high-stack rubber shoes — because all the shoe brands have now

[29:36] moved into that space, the progression was slower for some brands. If you take Salomon, they probably only got to the party in maybe the last year and a half with a really big stack. Even ASICS, which we talked about last week at the Gold Coast Marathon — they probably didn't really get into the soft rubber until maybe about two years ago, they weren't as quick as some other brands. But all the brands are now playing

[30:07] in this space. I just wonder — is it changing everyone's gait? Is it having an effect in some shape or form on people who've run for a long time, say thirty years, in quite low-stack, low-drop shoes, and then suddenly, over a period of two to three years, are running in what are arguably stilts. They feel great, but I just

[30:37] wonder what the long-term effect of all this is going to be. No doubt they're quicker, but how does it affect things? There's a question for the ITB family — if there's anybody, any long-term runners who've been running for a while, have you changed your shoes, have you noticed new injuries creeping in, and have you gone back to the shoe you used to run in? Because I guess the point is, as you say, if you're not chasing — if you're just running for enjoyment, not constantly chasing PBs or whatever —

[31:08] why wouldn't you find the shoe that isn't so much about performance, but about durability, about comfort, about staying injury-free? That's the shoe that matters to you, not the one that's chasing time. On that note, my Nike Alphaflys, the Eliud Kipchoge special model, are still sitting unused. You'll save them for a good day. The challenge that's going to happen over time is you won't be able to buy those shoes anymore. A lot of the brands aren't going to keep making new models of

[31:39] shoes in an older style — all shoes are moving towards higher stack heights, more rubber. There's going to come a time when you can't walk it back unless you've got old stock of shoes yourself. It's not like the brands are saying, here's the new models we're doing, and this is where we think we should go, but we're also stocking some of the old ones — it doesn't work like that. It'll be interesting moving forward. If history's taught us anything, everything cycles,

[32:12] the pendulum swings — does it go too far and then come back to the middle? Who knows, but I'm really interested in this space at the moment, just because I've heard others having similar challenges to what I've gone through in the past six months. I'd be really keen to get people to send in a voicemail, or send you DMs on the Instagram account, if you're having anything similar. If you know anybody experiencing some of these things, and if there are any physios out there, send them in, because you

[32:44] are the ones probably seeing it, correct? Correct, correct. We should ask Trent — I've been going to see Trent for a few massages lately, so I'm doing everything, back doing everything, strength, massage, we're on our way to getting some stuff done. Courtney, I've got a confession to make, and I think you need to prepare yourself, because I think I've caught the bug. I think I want to do Hy-

[33:15] rox. We might have to have a conversation then. I think I'm telling us — do HYROX in forty minutes? I don't know if it's that, no, and I still want to run fast, but I don't know what's happened in the last — I don't know if it's the post-marathon excitement dip, but suddenly, normally the first half of the year, I'm swiping past

[33:49] — what do they call the thing, the ski erg — I don't want to watch your ski erg crap, I don't want to watch your rowing, I don't want to watch your farmer's carries, I don't care, put your shirt back on, go away, leave me alone, you CrossFit types. Couldn't be right, that's what I used to think about it. I don't know what's happened in the last few weeks, Courtney, but suddenly HYROX is interesting to me, suddenly I'm more than a little bit interested,

[34:19] I think I want to compete next year, somewhere — Brisbane or Sydney or wherever the next HYROX is. What have you seen that's made you go, ah, I'm gonna tip the scales here, I've got interest now? Is it the Ali Cats? Have you got mates racing? I don't know, no — I mean, I know people who are doing it, and I feel like I know what it's about, it's not like it's anything new to me. Maybe it's because I haven't

[34:51] been able to run like I wanted to in the last three months or so. Maybe it's that the chemicals haven't been firing after long runs, I haven't been getting those endorphins rolling — but suddenly I'm sort of thinking, maybe I want to do the ski thing, maybe I want to run really fast for a kilometre, then do the other stuff. I don't know, I might go train this week and try some of those exercises and see how

[35:22] my body feels, but I don't know what's happened — I feel like that bug has finally embedded itself in my brain, and I want to explore it a little bit. You know there are 100,000 athletes doing HYROX next year in Australia — just in Australia, I hope I've got that figure right, I saw it in a document, so hopefully it's correct. Actually, hang on, that might be a global figure — I'm going to pull myself back here, because that could be global. How many athletes raced HYROX

[35:57] in Australia in 2025? No, you wouldn't be — actually, I've got ChatGPT telling me it was around 20,000 across Australia in 2025, and it's expected to grow again next year. This event is trending so hard, and you've been influenced — you've been bitten by the bug. What I

[36:27] do want to tell you, though, is get through Noosa first. Get through Noosa. OK, I will, and you're right — if you heard my Brisbane Marathon rant last week, I can jump on a bandwagon like the best of them, Michael Shelley pitched me the Brisbane Marathon idea and within thirty seconds I had a banner up, waving it like the best of them. I've got to remember I've set myself a target of breaking 40 minutes for 10K, that's goal number one, that's priority number one right

[36:59] now. Secondly, it's the Noosa Triathlon — I want to be ready, I want to be fit, I want to actually enjoy my day out there. That's number two on the podium. But now, suddenly, this HYROX bug — our mate "Rosie" David Rhodes, Olympian as well, wants me to go run the UTA Kosciuszko 100 with him at the end of November. I've got to be honest, right now, if you gave me the choice between running Kozi 100 or doing a HYROX event, I'm going HYROX,

[37:31] getting my shirt off, getting into a pair of On shoes, and doing — what's that got to do with HYROX, is that what you associate with HYROX? Seems like a HYROX-y thing to say. I think On and HYROX go together in my head. I don't know if that's fair — On and HYROX aren't really together at all, but if that's your perception,

[38:04] that's market perception, that's your take on it. All right, let's play this game — if you're listening along, when you picture a HYROX competitor, what are they wearing on their feet? Because I'm sure the good athletes, your James Newburys, your CrossFit converts, your Tia-Clair Toomeys —

[38:35] am I saying that right? — I'm sure those people at the pointy end of HYROX are wearing carbon plates, no doubt. But your average punter, I'm expecting more of a gym shoe than a running shoe. And for some reason in my head, that's an On kind of shoe, the shoe of HYROX. What's the HYROX shoe of choice? Maybe I'm picturing an Under Armour — probably closer to an Under Armour — but no, Puma is actually the

[39:06] partner and makes the shoes. Funnily enough, we were talking about high stack heights earlier, and the HYROX athletes do wear the high-stack carbon shoes, which makes sense for the running part, but I'd have thought it'd be challenging for some of the strength activities to be that high-stacked. I've never raced one, but it obviously skews way more towards running,

[39:38] so the shoe's helping them a lot more in the running part. But yes, they do wear the carbon plates and high stack heights, and Puma is what you should associate with HYROX. One more thing about HYROX, because as I said, it's just jumped into my brain a little bit — it's living there, who knows if I'll go anywhere with it, I've got two other priorities ahead of it. But one thing is, does it not feel like, I don't know how much it comes up

[40:10] for you, but it feels like everybody wins? It's like every HYROX competitor I know has somehow won their age group. It's a good business model, isn't it, where everyone kind of has a chance to win something in their age group, or on the same weekend you get someone who races their age group as an individual and then pops up in a mixed team in an age group, and then there's elite men,

[40:45] the open men use a different weight, and it's hard to keep up. But whatever they're doing, they're doing it right as a model. You know what, it's very similar to triathlon age-group World Championships, where they split it not only by age category — 25 to 29, 30 to 35, and so on — but then also let you race

[41:15] sprint distance or Olympic distance, so they keep bolstering the numbers by offering more and catering to more ages and more events. But good on them, because it encourages and motivates a lot of people to stay in these sports in older age groups — in what other area do you actually look forward to getting older?

[41:45] So right now, seriously, I've got a bone to pick about this, because I reckon at 40 I'm in the worst age group. Right now, with this whole boom in fitness, the 39-to-44 age bracket is Olympic standard, it's insane how good the athletes in that bracket are. And I don't know whether it's the elites who are still performing at

[42:17] an elite level who've just aged up, or whether you're also mixing in these late bloomers who've discovered the sport — but it is a nightmare. You know how at every World Cup, Australia always seems to find itself in the group of death, because we get drawn against the three best teams in the world? That's what the 39-to-44 age bracket is in men's amateur sport — it's the group of death, there's no way out of it. I reckon there'd also be a few in there who've

[42:47] worked pretty hard their whole life, had kids, and then see the light at the end of the tunnel — the kids have left school, they've got a bit of time away from work, and they start training semi-professionally again. What have we got to look forward to? Well, no, but that's the thing, Courtney, because by the time I get into that next age bracket, 44 and up, I've probably lost the enthusiasm for it, I'm probably playing golf by then, Courtney, and I'm out there on the

[43:17] golf course going, why are all these golfers in their late 40s so amazing when I only took the sport up six months ago and they're so much better than me? But here's a bombshell for you — I've always talked about my dislike of golf, but I actually played golf on the weekend, had a hit, a family round, out at Royal Pines. The family said, oh, we'll go out to the back nine at

[43:49] Royal Pines, the easy nine, not much sand — it was like playing in the bloody Sahara, there were bunkers, more sand than grass, and when there wasn't sand, there was water. But I did see a little bit of light there — I can see the outdoor appeal, on a Sunday afternoon, a nice arvo, sun's out, it was a relaxing experience. I was actually hitting the ball okay too, so that probably helped. But I'm not going to turn into a golfer,

[44:20] but like you with HYROX, I've put a toe in the water. Maybe there's a little itch to be scratched at a later date. You know what's interesting about this, as we talk about HYROX and golf and running — there's a common theme, Courtney, non-contact. No one wants to touch the contact stuff, the middle ground

[44:50] of contact is gone, right? All these non-contact sports are booming, and there's nothing in the middle ground. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, we've got the Run It Straight competitions, where it's just one pure contact moment between two massive Islander blokes trying to knock each other out. Oh, you're talking about Run It Straight, Run It Straight,

[45:20] yeah, it's wild. You know what else is wild? Have you seen on YouTube some of that backyard boxing, where guys like Dan Hooker from the UFC over in New Zealand put fifty grand up in the backyard and just get into it, quick succession boxing? I mean, the entertainment value — everything going around. Sorry, I got sidetracked, I was going to ask what you think the future of —

[45:51] as we talk about HYROX and marathoning and the boom in these sports — do you think Run It Straight, that professional league, how long do you think it lasts? Do you think it survives? No, I don't think it survives, I think it's a quick trend, that one. It's similar to — and I know it's still going, and I know it gets a lot of attention — here's how I look at it. You've got UFC, and then they've got the thing called the Slap

[46:21] League — I don't know the exact name for it, yeah, Slap League — literally, you're talking about slapping each other in the face until one drops. I think with those styles of competition, and Run It Straight is the same, they're perfect for social media clips. They garner a lot of attention because it's a one-trick pony — big impact, over in three seconds, and then you move on to the next thing, and it gets a lot of hits, a lot of likes,

[46:53] a lot of attention. How long until it gets so repetitive that there's no more interest in it? It's not like a game, not like a fight, it's a sugar fix — for the user, for the audience, it's a sugar fix. It's bang, and then interest goes away. Interestingly, this is where we always weave off from talking about running and sport into talking about content and audience behaviour,

[47:23] but interestingly, we're talking about this in a week where it's been revealed that Stephen Colbert's late-night show on CBS in the US is being taken off air, and that the show was costing the company $40 million a year, employing something like 200 people just to make it. It feels like we've reached a tipping point for content, because

[47:56] that long-established world of late-night TV seems to be crumbling — that was always kind of the bastion of television as we knew it, and now, maybe forever, I don't think you'll see a show like that made again. Obviously Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel are still on air, but I think that style of television and media is behind us for good. And YouTube is the

[48:31] future, I'd say. It's an interesting thing — you talk about Run It Straight, and how I got here is that old-fashioned style of programming is dying, this new sugar-hit thing is in, and maybe people don't create things for longevity anymore. People create things while they work, and as soon as it stops working, they create something else, and as soon as that stops working, they'll create something else again. We're just in this new pattern of content consumption. I think

[49:02] that particular show you're talking about has a lot to do with audience change over time, and the whole political landscape in the US was a major factor for that show. But you can look at The Project here in Australia recently — free-to-air TV has had a real shift and change, and it's viewer behaviour, where you get your content from, that's changed and is having an effect on a lot of these shows.

[49:35] However, on YouTube, long-form content is still king. There's all the new fads and everything else, but people are happy to sit there and watch, not just long-form video content, but podcasts — like pretty much what we're sitting here doing right now — they'll watch an hour, two hours, three hours of a podcast on YouTube. I still think there's a place for both. What is certain, though, is that short-form content is getting

[50:11] more clickbaity as it gets more saturated — you've got to do more and more to get and hold attention, and that's where I think it's at, at the moment. But how did we even get to there, mate, where do we start on that? Who knows where we ever start — the important thing is we arrive at the end at some stage. Hey, what's coming up for you this week in Sydney, are you going to get some runs in while you're down there? Yeah, I had a bit of a jog tonight along the beach, gets a bit dark early.

[50:44] I'll get a few runs in down here, and then I'm looking forward to getting back home to the squat rack, Liam. When are you actually flying out of Sydney? I'll be out later in the week, so back home for the weekend. OK, back home for the weekend — is there any chance you're there Friday morning? No, what's going on Friday morning? You're down here, aren't you? Well, I am in Sydney — we're going to cross mid-air, I'm coming down to Sydney because I've got a double header of footy this

[51:14] weekend for Triple M — I've got to do the Battle of the Bridge, Swans versus Giants, on the Friday night, then fly back to the Gold Coast for the QClash on Saturday. And the reason I bring up the run is because I'm going to jump in with my old crew, the runners in the dark down in Bondi, on the Friday morning. I've been messaging somebody in the crew, saying hey, return of the Snail King — that's my nickname in the crew, because this crew

[51:44] has gone from being a nice, social crew to suddenly being a crew of high-performing runners. The joke is I was the king of the snails within the group, and somebody messaged me and said, you're not a snail. And I said, no, no, no, in this group I am a snail — I know I'm a capable runner, but when I run with this group of people, I'm a snail, it's only a matter of time until I see footsteps disappearing into the morning. So I'll be in Sydney running with the crew — perfect, well, I look forward to hearing

[52:15] how that run goes. I'll get a few more runs in along the beach before I'm back, and I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Have a good weekend, and we'll catch everyone again next week as well.