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# EP53 - CAM RAYNER’S RED BULL COCKTAIL
- URL: https://www.inthebeginningpodcast.com/ep53-cam-rayners-red-bull-cocktail/
- Published: 2025-09-26T06:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T11:00:45.000Z
- Description: Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Strava culture, Noosa Triathlon, parkrun — recorded on the Gold Coast.
- Author: Courtney Atkinson
- Tags: Episodes, Main Feed, Strava, Triathlon, Running Training, #Import 2026-07-28 20:58

*Courtney Atkinson and Liam Flanagan on Strava culture, Noosa Triathlon, parkrun — recorded on the Gold Coast.*

## Listen

Listen on [Spotify](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthebeginningpodcast/episodes/EP53---CAM-RAYNERS-RED-BULL-COCKTAIL-e38mbct?ref=inthebeginningpodcast.com) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep53-cam-rayners-red-bull-cocktail/id1772010786?i=1000728610947&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 53, and we are back across the table from one another, corner. You're back from Bali. Yeah, well, I always liked it so much better in person, isn't it? How much sleep did you get? I caught the red-eye home last night, so I walked in the door about two hours ago, and I reckon I got one hour of dodgy Jetstar sleep overnight. And one hour of Jetstar sleep is probably the equivalent of about half an hour of decent sleep. And the other three

\[00:30\] families I was travelling with, somehow we were on Virgin. I don't know what I did, but anyway. Isn't it funny when you book? I think about this in the mornings when I'm on the way into the radio show, 'cause I'm on the road and there's very few people around. But occasionally I'll see somebody with a suitcase in hand who's clearly booked the first flight out of the Gold Coast, and I think those people hate the past versions of themselves. The past version of you sees that early flight, it's $200 cheaper, and goes, yeah, I'll just catch that.

\[01:00\] But the you that has to deal with that flight in the moment gets so angry with past you for trying to save money. That's me. Every week, Liam, especially now daylight saving is coming, because to get to Sydney it's the 6:00 AM flight. So yeah, we're on the Red Bulls today because I need every bit of caffeine I can get. We're both on the Red Bull today, and we're going to talk about Red Bull, because people go, no one drinks that stuff. Have a listen to our Lions' Cam Rayner — he must, do you get man of the match

\[01:30\] against the Suns? He would have been one of my best two players on the ground. At one stage you were throwing up on the wing, and then they brought a concoction out — it looked like a Red Bull and everything in it, and he's slugged it down. He's a crook. Yeah, a beat-up crook — your throat's still a little bit ragged. But the concoction, it was a Red Bull, an assault tablet and a No-Doz, so I'm not sure if I'll be trying that anytime soon. Wouldn't recommend it. You could call it the Rayner cocktail — the Red Bull, a No-Doz and an assault tablet.

\[02:00\] Brisbane Lions, on the good stuff. Big shout-out to Cam, 'cause it's grand final day. If you're listening to this on the Saturday, the day it drops, it's grand final day and the Brisbane Lions are going for back-to-back premierships. In that game against the Gold Coast Suns, he was an animal — unstoppable. Him and Josh Dunkley, they bullied the Gold Coast Suns, they were just too physical for

\[02:31\] them. I think they win again today, and here's a statement for you: if the Brisbane Lions win today, it's their third grand final in a row. If they win today, that's two wins out of three grand finals, and with the players coming to the Brisbane Lions in the off-season — presuming all the trades get done, which I expect them to — you could be talking about this current Brisbane Lions team under Chris Fagan as one of the best teams of the last three

\[03:01\] decades. Because with Sam Draper and Oscar Allen, two big men they're expected to get, plus another kid coming in this year's draft through the Academy system, and the ongoing development of their youth, this team could dominate the comp for the next two to three years — all fuelled by the Cam Rayner cocktail of a Red Bull, a No-Doz tablet and a salt tablet. I wonder — did he say salt tablet? Salt tablet and No-Doz and a Red Bull. When I first heard it, for some

\[03:31\] reason in my head I was thinking pickle juice — a Red Bull pickle juice, that'd be pretty good too. Would Red Bull entertain a Cam Rayner cocktail, get his face on it? There we go, you never know. Hey, from Cam Rayner to Harry Styles — yeah, there's a jump. Do you know who Harry Styles is? One Direction? I always want to check before we jump into these — if you don't know who Harry Styles is, he's basically the Justin Bieber, one of the biggest pop stars of the last probably ten

\[04:02\] years, part of One Direction. But more importantly for us, Harry Styles is now a member of the sub-three-hour marathon club. Going incognito at the Berlin Marathon last weekend, Harry Styles, who's 31 now, ran a 2:59:13, which was more than 25 minutes better than his previous best when he ran Tokyo in March. So I think first and foremost we can say Harry's got the running bug, because if you run a

\[04:34\] 3:24 marathon and then come back for more, tick off Tokyo and now you've ticked off Berlin — I think it's probably not too big a stretch to say Harry wants to tick off all seven majors. I think I'll say it: we're going to see Harry in — you reckon he'll come down and see? I reckon we'll see Harry in Sydney. Might take four or five years. No, no — listen up, Sydney Marathon, listen up, message for you.

\[05:04\] I'm looking down the camera as I say this: TCS Sydney Marathon, Eliud Kipchoge last year, great, you nailed it, you sold it as a major marathon in year one. Next year, go get Harry Styles. Pay him what you need to, because if you want to continue to build on the hype you generated in year one as a major, go get Harry Styles, go get the celebrity, pay him what he needs, get him out here, make it a thing.

\[05:35\] I don't know if Harry wants to be featured like that, given that he ran this under someone else's name — with a bandana on and sunnies. But if you make a feature of it, that's another way to continue building on the popularity of Sydney as a major marathon. The fake name he ran under was Ted Sarandos — what's that mean? Well, the CEO of Netflix is Ted Sarandos, so he's obviously had a bit of fun there. I don't know if there's a relationship, but — let's get back to proper running. Yeah, let's get back to running.

\[06:05\] Yeah, well, that was serious running, no danger there. I typed in who coaches him, because he ran pretty much — he ran a 1:29 and then a 1:30 half, so yeah, on the money, obviously training properly and doing all that. With a quick Google I can't find who trains him at the moment, but from 2018 to 2021, which tells us he's been training a while for this — he's been in the running scene for a while. A former Special Forces soldier and

\[06:36\] Executive Peak Performance founder — his one-mile PB was 5:13\. What's that per K? We work on the metric system down here — 5:13 is moving, it's good. This is the story I found about him — all I'm saying is he's got a really good speed base. The story I found about Harry says there's a fellow by the name of David Thibou, a former British special

\[07:06\] forces figure — if he didn't say the name, you've got to give him his name, you couldn't say his name, that's why he didn't say it. Look, that's not irrelevant of whether he's a celebrity or not — that's serious. Running a 2:59:13 is serious running. Harry, big shout-out, welcome to the running community. Looks like he's running in Alphaflys, for the shoe nerds out there. 2:59, and a friend of mine ran — oh, OK, here's the story for

\[07:36\] you. A friend of mine, Nick — shout-out Nick Spanner, part of the Runners in the Dark crew in Sydney — went over and ran Berlin, and I'm going to show you a photo. Was that the reason he went to Berlin, to get a fast time? I don't know if he went specifically to run a fast time, but he ran there, got into Berlin, and ran a 2:58 — I don't believe that's Nick's fastest ever marathon. But here's the thing — everybody knows the

\[08:07\] photographers are on course. You finish your race, and at the end you get an email with all the photos of you throughout the course. There were some jokes made about Nick — when we saw the Harry Styles photo, we said, did you see him on course? Nick said no, I'd heard he was running, I kept an eye out but didn't see him. Then Nick went and looked through the photos with his bib number, and he's running right with him. Have a look at the photo Nick's got from the day. That's Nick out in front in the

\[08:39\] AG1\. Yeah, I can see him — and then, where am I? In the background, head down, is Harry Styles. So Nick's got this great photo of himself probably five metres or so ahead of Harry Styles at the Berlin Marathon. As I said to Nick, mate, if you haven't bought that photo, I'll buy it for you, because that's a photo you should be putting up in your pool room as a runner. You've given this guy some props this morning — I love it, but it's a great running story, having this kind of

\[09:09\] story involving so many people. Yes. We'll move on — it's time to talk finance. We've never talked finance on this show before, but we've got two finance stories, both running-related. I just saw the second note. Let's go with the first one — we've been quoted in the AFR, the Australian Financial Review. For those of you playing along at home, In The Beginning Podcast officially quoted in a recent article, about running

\[09:39\] influencers and the amount of cash they're making. And they took a quote from you, in fact, saying you'd like to see some of that money — so they took quotes from our AG1 live episode, but they didn't attribute that quote, which I wasn't happy about. They only attributed the quote from you — In The Beginning Podcast, Courtney Atkinson saying he'd like to see more money going to — and they didn't quote Andy. And when they used a quote from Andy Buchanan, Australian marathon record holder, they didn't cite that it was from our AG One

\[10:09\] podcast. Go and get that journalist. No — the irony of it was, this article got sent to me through a few different people, and none of them had actually read it. That's what media's like these days. No one had actually read it, they just sent it because we were in it. Oh, really? No — actually, I saw the headline, and so did the people who read the Financial Review, they sent it to

\[10:41\] me, but they didn't mention we're in it, they didn't realise. So when I said, hey, we're quoted in it, 'cause I actually read through the whole thing — no idea, they just read the headline. It goes to show we're so guilty of headline culture now. The irony, I suppose, is I'm heading down to the Snowy Mountains next week to do the run mentioned in that article, about running influencers — give them a shout-out, yeah.

\[11:12\] Louis Phillips — I'd have to know more, I'll get some more information on how the article came about. I would love to have a conversation with Louis about running. I think he's really interesting — I didn't realise he'd been on Big Brother. I didn't realise that either. Yeah, he was on Big Brother, so he generated an audience off that and then converted it. So there's always a story behind the story. So true, isn't it?

\[11:42\] It's not like you just started running and then suddenly bang, bang, bang, bang, bang — there's a story that got you to that point. I don't know what his audience looked like pre- or post-Big Brother — maybe he discounts any Big Brother influence on his audience size, I don't know, but I'm 99% sure he was on Big Brother. Well, that's another question. But I love what Louis does for running.

\[12:12\] I think it's great. When he's on the coast one day — 'cause we want to do interviews in person, it's way better — yes, Louis, next time you're on the coast, you're welcome. I'll see you next week, 'cause I want to ask you this. I've been away a few times with him — he came out to Uluru last year, when we were out there running. Was Danny Byron with you earlier? Oh, yeah, true — Byron. So we catch up a fair bit. I think for anyone who wants to have a look, we'll put the link in — but the thing is the article makes it out like there's this big

\[12:43\] tension, and there's not — not between us, just between elites and runners in general, and that's not it either. The other thing Andy's quoted in that story — for anybody who listened to the AG One episode in full — Andy's not critical of the influencers. His comment, the quote they used in the article, was that Andy doesn't think people should think someone who's been running for twelve months knows everything about running. That's different, that's coaching, that's instructive, that's got nothing to do

\[13:13\] with it. But he also said the elites need to learn from what run influencers are doing, and actually do better at showing what they do. Big shout-out to Andy as well, because I've been asking him for fashion advice lately — remember that T-shirt he was wearing, an ASICS sports-style T-shirt? I asked him about it when he was up here for the marathon — it looked cool, it was very cool. Anyway, next finance story.

\[13:43\] Can you believe it — when it rains finance, it pours finance. I'm going to take a victory lap on this one. Have I not been banging on about the fact that Strava and the Runna acquisition — this is massive for running, this is going to become a behemoth. I kid you not, I was texting somebody about a running-related thing — there's potentially some things we might get to do down the track — and this person had just

\[14:14\] entered the running world from an agency perspective, and I was sending him a bit of an email to say, hey, here's the lay of the land in running, the brands, the Insta accounts, here's some things that might help you. And I said in this email, mate, Strava and Runna, this is the sleeping giant of the running world, keep an eye on it — if it ever becomes publicly listed, Strava is making a move toward an IPO, an initial public offering, and

\[14:47\] becoming a publicly listed company. So many things follow off the back of that. Right now, the lay of the land is they're sounding out funds and organisations in the US to handle this IPO for them, which is where they'd go public and allow people to buy shares. It was last valued in May by a capital firm at $2.2 billion — Jesus, $2.2 billion. And they've recently appointed a

\[15:19\] chief financial officer, which often happens before an IPO goes forward. So they've now got someone in the big chair financially, and now we wait to see what happens. I'm really excited about what this means. I saw two things — one was the guy who created Runna, I saw — you believe what you see on social media, I suppose — he

\[15:49\] was talking about how, to get to Strava, that was literally their goal, and to get even just an intro, he just kept continually emailing random people, trying to get to the CEO of Strava, kept trying different emails until one clicked. That's clever — don't know how much truth there is to it, but it's him talking in the piece. The second thing is, we know that's business, right — they're building it up to create something. What has happened every time a social media account has had to

\[16:21\] monetise, 'cause once you go public you're accountable to shareholders, and what's the one thing shareholders need? Profit, revenue, profit. It becomes not so much about the product, it's about the returns. And what has every single app, every social-media-style app, done to create profit? Ads. Not a bad thing — advertising is not a bad thing.

\[16:52\] It can ruin things, and it has ruined things, but it's not a bad thing in itself. I, for one, we talk about it, hey, if there are any advertisers who want to come on board, we'll take them. I mean, just the other week you ran me through that list of running brands I hadn't heard of — I'll be honest, when you did that, about a month or two ago, you ran me through a list of European running brands and I hadn't heard of most of them. When I went down to Sydney I got mocked, people were like,

\[17:22\] what? You've been out of Sydney too long, the fact you haven't heard of all these brands. But with the running space, I'd love it if I had the ability to be shown tailored, suggestive advertising, because I love running, I'm passionate about it, and I think I have the ability to discern what would be of value to me. Can Strava provide that if they start bombarding the platform with ads? I don't know, but I'd certainly be open to the idea. And put it this way — how much money have we got in the joint account, Courtney? How much money is there in

\[17:53\] the In The Beginning Podcast account? I'm not going to mention it — we're buying Strava, we're buying Strava shares. Hey, what did you say about Sydney — when I was down there I got mocked by people for not knowing about certain running brands. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about Sydney. Brisbane — Not So Emergency Department, how can I help you? I love it here, let's see — symptoms: twitching, delusion, I love the sweat, always sweating, I love this humidity all of the time. OK, just relax, you've got mover's remorse.

\[18:24\] Did you move from Melbourne to escape? 5:00 AM and everyone's up running, walking, swimming, and it's only winter — I hear the sun comes up earlier in summer. We've got another one — you should have read the handbook before migrating. Well, it clearly states that Brisbane is under the rule of the Aztec sun god, and you must self-sacrifice each morning at sunrise through exercise to keep the sun shining here. I'll write this down for you — what happens if I don't? The whole place floods,

\[18:54\] what do I do? You exercise at sunrise like the rest of us, or you go back down south. Who was that? That was the IOC — sorry, some context: that was Jimmy Rees, he was being the Brisbane Not So Emergency Department call centre. I love Jimmy Rees. Some people whose parents have got younger kids might remember him from Giggle and

\[19:24\] Hoot — yeah, he was Jimmy Giggle on that. And it's so spot on, the idea that you move up here and go, oh, we love the sunshine, and then it gets into the summer months. I remember the first year I was up here — I only thought about this after I saw this clip — I've acclimatised, I don't sweat nearly as much as I used to in the humidity here, I've adjusted, I can see how it happens. I mean, you've just spent ten days in bloody Indonesia — I didn't adjust.

\[19:57\] That's the next level, right, and then another level. It was 27 degrees, I think, the day before we left here. Get there, try and have a jog, mate — did you jog at all? I spent a lot of time on treadmills — some really nice treadmills, I was in the hotel fitness centres with views and everything else, but I was on holiday, sleeping in, family time and all that. So when the day came that I needed to run, it was just, sometimes, hot, hot.

\[20:27\] I just jumped in. I'm facing that a little bit at the moment, because — we've talked about this before — I'm on pro hours because of the radio show, but today, for example, it's almost — the forecast today is a top of 26 — I think it's starting to get really warm around midday for me running, and that's before the tan you're going to get. Shut it off, shut it off, shut it off, shut it off. Hey, now, we've talked about your terrible memory a bit on this, and the Courtney Atkinson

\[20:58\] Museum — when you pass on and we open it up, it might be empty in some stretches, just because you can't remember anything that went on. But I think we brought this up on a previous episode, and I wanted to share this audio, because at one end of the spectrum from a sports-memory perspective, we have Courtney Atkinson, which is zero. On a scale of one to ten, let's put you at one — you do remember some things. And if anybody missed the Noosa series episode that dropped earlier in the week, Courtney did remember something about the Noosa

\[21:30\] training. For those who haven't tuned in yet to the Noosa episodes — the next time we get Dan Atkins, Matt Hauser's coach, back in, I'm going to give him a week of my training diary from when I won it previously, and see what he thinks of it. See what he thinks of it, but also then go, I want to know what's different now — mileage, what would he change? He's not going to give us every secret in the book, but he's pretty open, right? Yeah, Dan's been amazing, and

\[22:01\] I love that exercise. So this is — a winner from what, 2007? What did you win it — 2007? You interviewed me, I've forgotten already — no, I think it was around 2010\. So, a winner's training diary from 2010 versus what a potential winner's diary of 2025 looks like — that's really cool. That's how we'll start the next episode with Dan. There you go — if you're already into the Noosa Tri series, jump into it, a lot of fun. So at one end of the

\[22:33\] sports-memory spectrum we have Courtney Atkinson. I'm putting this bloke on a ten — this is the pointy end of the sports-memory spectrum. Sean McVay — if you don't know who he is, he's the head coach of the LA Rams in the NFL — and this is him basically being asked about plays he's called in games from years gone by. You're unbelievable. Now, this is Sean McVay's time in Washington, so we're bringing it back to

\[23:04\] 2015, week seven, Bucs at Skins, second and seven on the Tampa Bay 24, 58 seconds left in the fourth quarter — Jamison Crowder, wheel route down the right sideline, first down, and then how did that drive end? Jordan Reed, touchdown, off a four-by-one, individual iso slant. And what meme came out of that game? Check out the brain on Sean — amazing.

\[23:34\] He did that a few times, I've just cut it down. By comparison, if you're listening to this, try to remember what you had for lunch two weeks ago. On any given day, Sean McVay is remembering a play he called in the fourth quarter of a game from maybe eight or nine years ago, when he wasn't even the head coach — he was the offensive coordinator of that team — and he can remember

\[24:05\] the play, the result of the play, and the meme that resulted from that game. So there was obviously a meme, it was a big play — there's two plays in there, but before that, in that same interview, he'd done it three times, or two times up to it. So he went three for three, different plays. LeBron James can do that a bit too — LeBron can remember plays, remember games from his career. So do you reckon endurance sports versus team sports like

\[24:37\] football, basketball, need a different kind of memory? Maybe it's got to do — in endurance sports you need the ability to forget, you need to turn the memory off, that's the key. You don't want to be thinking, in endurance sports you want to forget. In those team sports you want to remember. Well, when you sent me that one I thought, holy hell, that just sums me up, because really, what do I remember?

\[25:08\] So this is what I've worked out — I remember when something unique, out of the ordinary, happens, that's got nothing to do with the ordinary flow of what would have been in a race. So I can remember, say, a crash — like when I lost my sunglasses on a roundabout — I had plenty of crashes, but I remember that one because of the reason behind it. Otherwise the results all just blend together. Hey, I'm up in Seoul now — this is a bit of a heated debate, because

\[25:39\] we've talked about this — I think we've seen it in LA, over in America, we've obviously seen it in Sydney, and on the Gold Coast, pretty big shirtless-running population. I was just encouraging you to go out shirtless to get a bit of a tan, which probably isn't sun-safe, should mention — slip, slop, slap. But over in Korea, around some of the biggest parks, running's become such a big boom that the council, I assume, or the city, is banning and

\[26:10\] putting up guidelines prohibiting one, shirtless running, two, clapping and cheering for other runners — which we've mentioned happens here on the Gold Coast, running in large groups and shouting at pedestrians to make way. What do you reckon — this park runs, who did the — we'll ask Matt about this when we get Matt Hauser on, and Queensland's Roads and Transport, that is

\[26:40\] Queensland Roads and Transport, because they're saying you should be running safely in two lines, because the park's for everyone. Australia is guilty of being a bit of a nanny state on a lot of stuff, right — occupational health and safety, really important, I'm not disputing that — but I also think there are certain rules we shouldn't have to put in place, because common sense should just prevail. I'd hate to see rules brought in around running.

\[27:10\] No, and I don't like this, because it tells me a couple of things — it tells me the government is trying to dictate the way people exercise, which I don't like, but it also tells me the runners themselves have been carrying on like twits. If the fact they've brought in these rules means the runners have been behaving in such a way that people are complaining, well, it's not hard to run and not get in people's way and not make

\[27:44\] a nuisance of yourself. So here's a question for you — what do you call or say to someone if you're running around Burleigh Hill or through the flats? You like your new flats, look — the path's only wide enough for two people, you've got two walkers in front of you, what's your call? So — I love this, these runners will know this — they said, shouting 'make way'? Who says that? Yeah, I mean, aside from a royal being announced into a room. So what I do, because I don't like interrupting people, what I

\[28:18\] will do, if I'm coming up from behind them, or even if they're approaching me from the opposite way, I deliberately start scuffing my feet, to make noise. I think that's a good move — so I scuff my feet to make noise, allowing them to hear it without me being intrusive, giving them a chance, giving them a chance to give way. If they don't give way and we're still two abreast, whether I'm coming from behind or they're coming from the front, I will slow

\[28:49\] — I don't hold my pace, I slow and say 'sorry, guys.' Very much a 'sorry guys' type of guy. I say sorry guys, and then when they move I say thank you, with a wave, courteous about it, and then roll on. It's nice. And I'll turn side-on, get very skinny, like I'm trying to go through, you know, a little maze, get through one of the — what are you, Burleigh gates? Well, see, I'm just trying to think — I do the scuffle,

\[29:21\] I definitely try, especially on the trails but also on the road. It's a bad habit, because when you've grown up track running in athletics, you call 'track' — you just say the word track. So if you're on a running session, you've done, say, a hard 400 and you're gutted, you've got a group of three or four, you've just run that 400, you're bent over, taking big breaths, and then the 100-metre sprinters

\[29:52\] are coming down the straight, and that's what people shout at you — like you're playing golf, why the hell would you yell 'four'? I didn't know this was even a thing. You're running the track, and a lot of the groups I run with have the habit of calling 'track' — do they do that running around Burleigh Headland too? Which is worse than 'make way' — when you talk about common sense, it's like, 'track' means nothing.

\[30:24\] You'd look at them and go, what, are you an idiot? If I was walking on Burleigh Hill and someone yelled 'track,' I'd be so confused — what do you want me to do? Where 'track' means nothing. No, it's actually a good lesson — if you hear anybody shout 'track,' they mean get out of the way, unless you're actually on the track. Unless you're on the track, yeah, you've just brought

\[30:56\] up a really interesting thing — what do you call it, let us know. I'm trying to figure out the origin of why golfers shout 'fore.' Because it's the same thing, right — in cricket you shout 'six' when you know it's going for six. The term 'fore,' as a warning, may have roots in old Scottish, where it meant 'look out ahead,' or was

\[31:26\] associated with the phrase 'clear the way' — so it might be a Scottish word, since that's where golf started. Track — don't shout track. We've talked a little bit about this on the Gold Coast, because of what happened along Hedges Avenue with the runner and the cyclist and all the rest of it — he just called 'charge.' We didn't call anything, he was just a dick about it. If you're running, it's beholden on you to make

\[31:56\] adjustments. If you find yourself on a tight track, make as many adjustments as you can, or find somewhere else to run — you're not devoid of places to run. If you insist on running in high-population, high-density areas, I think the responsibility lies with you to make adjustments. And if we get to a point where Burleigh Hill or Bondi — because I know there's a running group in Bondi causing all sorts of issues — if we get to a point where these

\[32:27\] local councils are putting up signs because of the runners, we only have ourselves to blame. I'm still trying to think what else you'd call — I'm stumped as to what I would call, because all I've got in my mind is 'track,' the cycling-type call — would it be something like 'runner back'? Because if you're on a bike, the cycling call for someone runner back, coming through — what about this one, if you're running in a group and someone's walking towards you and you want to

\[32:58\] warn the people behind you, you call 'walker.' Yeah, great — so where, for example, Azi Gordon's group at the Spit — but is that putting the walker down, like, hey, we're runners, walker? I think there's a difference, I think there are different calls — if you're communicating to your running group, as opposed to communicating to the people in front of you, really you shouldn't have to communicate. If people are coming towards you, you shouldn't have to be telling them, hey, I'm coming through — they should be looking where

\[33:29\] they're going. I think if you're approaching someone from behind you should be calling and giving them a heads-up you're coming through, but if you're at the front of your running crew and something's coming towards you — Azi Gordon's example up at the Spit on the trail, 'bike up,' 'runner up,' 'walkers up,' and the people at the front call it for the people at the back, so everybody knows to move to the left. Running jargon — it's 'runner up,' 'bike up,' whatever, 'unicycle up.'

\[34:00\] Why add the 'up'? Meaning it's coming ahead. And then conversely, the runners at the back, when a bike is coming through, will call — 'runner back,' 'bike back,' whatever it is. OK, yeah, cool — let us know, anyone, if you have a specific etiquette within your running group, or wherever you run, to let people know, because I reckon the scuff is universal — everybody employs the scuff so they don't have to shout out. Yeah, on bitumen or concrete you get real heavy feet.

\[34:30\] On the trail, it's for a completely different reason — I don't want to scare the shit out of someone. Oh, you scare — yeah, I've had some beauties. I try to do everything I can, but especially when there's a little bit of a group, maybe two or three people travelling at a bit

\[35:00\] slower speed, talking together, and you're still trying to scuff and it's doing nothing — or if they've got headphones in, there's nothing you can do, and then suddenly you're there. It's happened to me too, vice versa — I've had my headphones on and a rider's suddenly right up on me. But that's on me — if you've got headphones in and you get scared by somebody because you can't hear them, that's on you, 100%. I like that — that's a good running chat, 100%, I like that one. OK, this one's from Lucas — now I actually have no idea what

\[35:30\] this is, but I'm going to play it. 'Hi guys, love the pod, I've finally caught up on all the episodes since I started listening. Talking about race events — I just ran the City-Bay on the weekend, and it probably wasn't the best-run event considering how big it is in Adelaide. The finish zone was in a different spot because of road works and stuff, but my main gripe with it was no net time — basically the

\[36:00\] time that was published on the website was the time from when the gun went off to when you crossed the finish line, which meant some people were missing out on PBs because it took them five or six minutes to get across the start line. Just wondering what you boys think about that — no net times at a massive running event with probably 10,000 people.' That's really interesting — full disclosure, and you won't know this, that's my cousin. How are you doing, Lucas — yeah, that's my cousin, who's a fan of the pod.

\[36:32\] Did I pay him to say that? No, I didn't. I hadn't even seen — did you take that out of our kitty? We're getting messages now. I hadn't actually seen the comment, I've just jumped on and had a look, and he's right — there's only the start time, there's no adjusted time. I don't know if he got one of those individually, but Izzi Batt-Doyle ran this, she would have been right at the

\[37:03\] front, so it probably doesn't matter for Izzi, but I'm looking through — it makes sense if you've got 10,000 people there, like, going off Gold Coast stats, what do they say — they get about a thousand people over the line a minute? A minute, that could be ten minutes right there. You've got to do better than that. It's a big run, that surprises me, because the City-Bay is where I broke 90 for the half a couple of years ago, and I feel like — you might have had — you might have been quicker than you thought, or did you just trust the time?

\[37:34\] No, no, I got the official time. That's really interesting. OK, yeah — come on, you're a big race, you've got to do better than that. Icon, bullshit on that one, Lucas — that's definitely a hey. Let's move on to injuries — people might remember, during our Gold Coast in the beginning runs of the Gold Coast Marathon series, we had a special episode where we sat down with a couple of

\[38:04\] physios from Southern Cross University. I forget the woman's name — Gabe was one of the physios who jumped in with us, and Mel — thank you, we had Gabe and Mel, who were great, and we talked a lot about injury prevention, recovery, all that sort of stuff. Now Gabe's reached out, because one of our questions too was how can people get involved in the studies to help figure out how to improve our calves and

\[38:36\] Achilles — that's right. Now Gabe's reached out because he's doing a study and wanted to put it out there — if anybody out there is experiencing any of this stuff, we can provide the link. He said: 'Allied health professionals, strength and conditioning coaches, and running coaches working with athletes with Achilles tendinopathy — participate and represent your profession and country in this global survey.' So if there's anybody out there, that'll be a meta-analysis-style study, yeah.

\[39:06\] And so if there's anybody out there currently experiencing some Achilles stuff, give us a hand here — we'll put a link down, and you can sign up and be part of a study, and it'll make you feel like a real runner if you're participating in a medical study on possible injuries. Yeah, makes everyone feel good. Hey, look, that school's comment from when I was away and we were online together — that's why, if you missed it — has it been all positive?

\[39:37\] I haven't really been across the — for the most part I think it has. If you take yourself back to the last episode, we were talking about the idea of running in schools, and we joked about the idea of Courtney bringing in a hard-line running coaching approach, as in — start running, get running, don't — compulsory running, compulsory exercise. Not just running, and not allowing kids an easy out from running basically, not

\[40:09\] to bully them, but because it's good for them, right — it's like encouraging your kids to eat their veggies, it's good for them, you do it because it's the right thing for them. Being a bit harder, a bit of a harder taskmaster with kids at schools might be what they need. We were joking about this — it wasn't just Courtney's idea, but we've had a lot of people reach out about it. Just a couple of comments to share with you, Courtney — Nick Stone, with regard to the last episode with kids at school and cross country, he said,

\[40:40\] 'I think it's more than just running — kids at school are not learning how to be uncomfortable, whether it's through hard exercise such as running, or being able to be bored — without a screen, in cars and buses, etcetera. We're letting kids only ever feel comfortable, so when things go wrong they can't handle it. I found parkrun has really helped my kids' tolerance with a lot of other things in life. Keep up the great work.' That's from Nick Stone — interesting, interesting. But we know parkrun is, you know, it's great for adults — but I wonder why parkrun haven't got involved in schools.

\[41:15\] I wonder why the parkrun organisation, with all the good they do for health and exercise — I guess it's volunteer-run, if you think about the individual parkruns, they're volunteer-run, yeah, they are — but because it's such a well-oiled organisation with such goodwill under that name, to take some type of system like that into a school system that can be replicated across the country — I just wonder why this hasn't been implemented.

\[41:47\] I don't know, I love the idea that Nick's taken his kids, not made them, but got them involved with parkrun, and found it's helped their tolerance with a lot of other things in their life. It could be anything, right, it doesn't have to be running — we don't have to get stuck on running, but we are a running podcast. But kids run, I mean, schoolyard play, right — this idea of learning how to be uncomfortable is a really interesting notion from Nick

\[42:18\] there. I'll take you inside for a moment, jumping ahead to my run week — this week I busted out the Nike Alphaflys that I hadn't used because I basically hadn't worn them. I'll jump ahead here — I hadn't worn them because they were just sitting there, I've had them for almost a year now, over a year now, and they were sitting there, and I joked that I didn't feel worthy of wearing them.

\[42:48\] The truth is I didn't really have a need to wear them — I wasn't racing, but I thought, what are they doing, they're going to drop a new model, just take them for a bloody run. So I put them on and thought, let's go see what you can do for a 10K. You didn't injure yourself? No, I didn't, good — but I got two Ks into it, did a warm-up, and I'm thinking, this is hard — I was running the first two Ks at around 3:55 per K, and I was thinking, this is hard.

\[43:21\] And then after two Ks I walked for two minutes, and turned it into basically an interval kind of effort — I did another two Ks, and I thought in my head, I'm bailing on this session because it got hard. I didn't plan it, there were a whole bunch of organisational things, it wasn't great training, but I quit because it started to get really hard. Could I have gritted my teeth, bitten down on the mouthguard and pushed through and seen where things ended up, even

\[43:52\] if it wasn't the result I was looking for? And it's that notion Nick's talking about, about kids, and showing them that you're not always going to win. Sometimes it's a goal of the session though — you've also got to know when — and I suppose with younger kids, you haven't got the maturity or the experience to know when it's too hard and when it's not. You'll learn that over time, and not just in running, in

\[44:23\] life, right — so that's where the kids side comes in. You might actually go, this is too hard, I've got to be smarter than this. But now you've bloody broken the egg open — I mean, your first K in them was under four minutes. Yeah, under four-minute K pace. Yeah, they're amazing. Were you like, geez, this is — I put these on and —

\[44:55\] I remember the last time I felt like that running — do you know what it felt like? The Chinese shoe? Yeah, in the sense that I loved running in that, a lot of response, a lot of energy return, bounce — and they felt the same thing. And although I felt far more self-conscious running in the Nike Alphaflys than I did in the Chinese shoe — 'cause they're the bright green ones with the big burnt-orange coloured sole, they stand out — you were more self-

\[45:25\] conscious than the hell before? Yeah. That's interesting — I feel like that's a much more recognisable shoe, and I felt the weight of expectation running in those shoes, self-expectation. But great, love them, and I'm really excited to run more and train more in them. And the other takeaway — I remember Benita talking a little bit about this, about the fact that super trainers and super shoes, while more taxing potentially, also have the ability to recover quicker from hard sessions. I think if I'd run that session

\[45:56\] in another pair of shoes, I'd be a lot more sore today than I am. So, great shoe, a lot of fun, really exciting to run in — keep an eye out for me and my bright green Alphaflys, and toughen up, round chickens, I've got to harden up. Hey, quickly, just going back to the school thing for a minute — we got another message from James Andrew about the school stuff, he's a high school PE teacher on the Gold Coast. Courtney, he said, I can't agree more, you can come and use your hard-ass approach on his

\[46:28\] sport-excellent students whenever you want. He's given some information about where they train and what time — so you've got an open invitation to go and take a hard-ass approach with some of the sport-excellent students. Threw the invite back, because we actually run pretty similar — won't mention where it is — with the kids, but on the same day, at the same spot, we run half an hour later. There you go, so you never know, it could all meet up. I love that, that'd be fantastic. I've got one here.

\[46:58\] I just want to give a shout — we're on listeners. Ben Tennant sent us a video, and it was windy — the reason I'm not going to play the audio is he was out sweeping the Ultra X England course, so I'm assuming this is a fell run in the Peak District. So, what's a fell? What's a fell run? Oh geez, I'm going to get called out big time on this — it's pretty much running over

\[47:28\] hills in the countryside, in the muddy regions around, like, I think around Leeds. I don't know enough about it — all I know is one day I want to go and run and experience it. Think of it like cross-country trail running, but over the fells, over the hills, from my understanding. He was wearing a pair of Salomons, they held up well, he talked about wearing waterproof pants — it must have been shitty and cold, but he was doing it. Cleaning up the course, pulling

\[47:59\] down the flags and everything else while listening to us call the Suns versus Brisbane. No way — is he Aussie, or is he just an interested party listening from overseas? Well, he has to be Australian, listening to the Suns-Lions call — you'd have to be. I just did a quick Google, what was his name — Ben Tennant. Shout-out Ben, thank you, mate.

\[48:30\] I never thought — I love my job, but I never thought there'd be a crossover point in my career where a bloke sweeping an ultra would be listening to me call footy. That's incredible. I've done a quick Google — fell running, also sometimes known as hill running, is the sport of running and racing off-road, over upland country, where the climb is a significant component of the difficulty. So you were spot on, Courtney — the name arises from the origins of the sport on the fells of northern Britain,

\[49:02\] especially those in the Lake District. There you go, absolutely smashed it. I've watched plenty of YouTube clips and videos on this kind of thing — when I raced back around the London Olympics time, racing the Brownlee brothers, that's what they grew up doing, that was their easy run. It's interesting, because we talked a little bit about this with Aussies — on the Gold Coast it's hot, it's hard, you get out and train in summer. On the flip side, is it

\[49:33\] harder to get out where it's hot and steamy and humid to train, or is it actually harder when you're living somewhere like Leeds, or up in the Northern Lakes district, where pretty much every day is freezing cold, windy, raining, and you've got to ride your bike. Does that toughen you up more than the heat? Well, that's a hypothetical you can never really answer. It's that whole thing of, like, they won — so you could probably argue, but

\[50:03\] would they have won by more if they'd grown up in the heat? It's one of those unanswerable hypotheticals — although I think there was some weird experiment back in the day where they took identical twins, separated them at birth — this is hypothetical, I'm not condoning it — put one with an impoverished family, one with a well-to-do family, and see if they grow up to achieve similar things or diverge — nature versus nurture, that sort of stuff. How much is environment involved, how much is it just discipline? And if you took the

\[50:34\] Brownlee brothers and raised them here on the Gold Coast, they'd still have been bloody good. But then, as we were just talking about, the Brownlee brothers doing that fell running, Andy Buchanan talks about Falls Creek and Bendigo and all that sort of running, and then you look at — I'm going to forget his name — who's the UTMB weapon, Tom Evans? No, Kilian Jornet, who grew up cross-country skiing and climbing mountains.

\[51:05\] So if you needed any more evidence that hills pay the bills, it's right there. I know you want to get to a new event that's coming, but can I just quickly — I don't really need to, but I'm going to bring it up — I had a moment, I was at Riggs Recovery in Currumbin, started going there a bit more, trying to use it more. I had a massage a couple of

\[51:37\] weeks back, and the person at Riggs said, do you do much sauna? I said no, I don't. She said, I think you'd benefit from it — anyway, so I'm trying to embrace sauna a bit more at the moment. I don't know why she said it, but I'm trying to do a bit more sauna, and I was in the sauna just the other day at Riggs and got chatting with this guy, who I don't

\[52:07\] know where this is going. No, no, no, no, no. He told me — we were just having a chat, he'd moved up from Melbourne, and he was talking about the fact that he used to run ultras and race Ironman and all that stuff. I hadn't said anything about my athletic background or anything, he just started telling me — I'm thinking, this is going to be an interesting conversation, because I said to him I was considering the 100-miler at UTA next year. He said he'd done a 100K race, and I wanted to get his thoughts on his training regime.

\[52:39\] This is what he told me — he said the longest run he did ahead of his 100K race was 19 kilometres. That was the longest run he went for — that must be on the short side. Very, very short side. What did he do — this is his technique — he was doing sauna sessions to the point of dehydration, and then training. He was taking himself to the point of feeling like he'd put 60 to 70 Ks in, and then

\[53:13\] training. Each to their own, but that sounds bloody dangerous. We do not advocate that at all. He told me that, and I just kind of nodded and smiled and went, wow. There are different measures — I mean, not to that extreme, but before the Tokyo World Champs, the whole Australian team was up in Cairns training to heat-acclimatise before a real hot Olympics or major championship. There are heat chambers in Canberra at the

\[53:44\] AIS, and probably some around the Gold Coast as well, where the treadmills are set up so you can change all the environmental factors and do your training in there to acclimatise — but it's done for specific reasons, in a controlled environment, for a purpose. But maybe there's something to putting yourself in that uncomfortable position every so often — as a training method, though, we're not advocating that at all, absolutely not.

\[54:14\] Very interesting — I didn't think you were going to go there with that. I don't know where you were going with it. I promise, next time I'll tell you about me and a man in a sauna, I'll give you a heads-up. Not too dissimilar — if I said to you the name Runderlust — Runderlust Fitness Festival — what comes to mind? What comes to mind with 'wunderlust' is it feels like

\[54:47\] Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, that's what came to mind. I'm pretty sure there's an event called Runderlust. I didn't think you'd go there either — you asked me what came to mind, two out of two. So what is Runderlust? That's a good question, Liam — it's 57 days away. It's Australia's first fitness festival like no other — run as far as you can, as far as you like, on a one-kilometre loop,

\[55:18\] over four hours, solo or with your crew. Take on epic fitness challenges, and vibe to live music, DJ sets, a good party under the stars that celebrates fitness, comedy, good vibes — this is up in Noosa, I've heard about this. It's from the mob that do — I don't know what they call it, luxury escapes, but for fitness people — you know, they take a few influencers away,

\[55:51\] he's out of Sydney, that's the style of training, and they take people away who pay to go — yoga and all that stuff, that's my understanding. So this is their event, this came across my desk a little while ago. I've just jumped on the website — just be aware, Red Bull's a partner. Runderlust.com.au — meet our partners: LSKD, Active Escapes, Dr

\[56:24\] Hydrate, RACV Noosa Resort, Red Bull. Well, great — I'm not going to change what I was saying, I wasn't going to add anything to that. I'll just say it's an interesting one. But what got me was, I've had a few people send me these sales videos, of common experiences, and it looks amazing, but it's never actually been on — the content's just been cut together to make you think, you

\[56:57\] know what I mean? A highlight reel of something that's never happened. Wow, I mean, great marketing, well done — are you interested? I'm having a look at it right now, the cuts of it, it looks fun, it looks really fun. 'Runderlust is Australia's first fitness festival like no other — run as far as you can on a one-K track over four hours, solo' — hang on, hang on, hang on,

\[57:28\] I'm going to backtrack what I said, because I'm just reading the thing — 'welcome to Runderlust Fitness Festival two' — so it has happened, so maybe they have done it before. And Abbey Holmes, who I know through footy — not personally, but I know through the AFL scene — is involved with it. So I'll take that back, I don't know enough about it. This appears to be an extension of the AG1 Night of the PBs, the LSKD Chase the Five — it appears to be an extension on that, where you're running a bit further, but then you're

\[57:58\] remaining in the area. I'll be fascinated to see how it goes — how much is a ticket? How much would you pay? Here we go — it's limited to 1,500 athletes, solo run is 70 bucks, and the pairs run is 120 — but then you must pay per person for the hybrid version. The hybrid sim is 70 bucks,

\[58:28\] the dash is 60, so you must pay per person, and the hybrid sim is like a HYROX — you can just be a VIP for 300, and that gets you the full whack — 300 bucks, cheap, right? So here's what I'd say — 70 bucks, I'm there, I'd do that for 70 bucks. 70 bucks is a really accessible price to participate in something like this, and 30 bucks is a get-along-and-hang-out ticket — really well priced, well done,

\[58:58\] trying to create something new, trying to create some hype about it, and made it affordable and accessible. I don't know how much HYROX costs to enter, because $70 for what appears to be Runderlust's version of a HYROX race — they're calling it the hybrid sim, but it's essentially an 8K run with a bunch of activities in between. I just did a quick Google — expect to pay over 100 to 200 US dollars, around 150 to 300 AUD — so you're paying half that to do a Runderlust version of HYROX. Well done, Runderlust.

\[59:29\] There you go — when's it on? It's on the 22nd of November, up in Noosa. Should we go up? Your Red Bull's a partner, yeah — you go there, OK. Well, I'd prefer to do the Cut. Is that the same weekend? I don't know, I think it's in November as well — 50K, they take it, and cut down each lap, start with 200 or so, cut down a few each lap, one and a half K. Yeah, I love the Cut, they even give you a toilet

\[01:00:00\] stop at the 10K. Oh, that's — so I could do that, 'cause that's the weekend before Noosa, and I'm not going to be doing this year, this year — so I can definitely go and do that. Should we do the Cut this year? I would like to do the Cut, let's do the Cut, we'll reach out to Steve — is it Steve? Steve — yeah, you can't remember, can you? Well, we'd pay to do the Cut, we'll reach out to Steve, we support local events, and I will pay to go along and participate. Quickly, if you're following

\[01:00:32\] the footy today — Brisbane to win the Norm Smith battle, Will Ashcroft, he'll go back to back, two years in a row, I think these guys are starting to play great footy at the right time again. If the Lions get on top and this becomes a free-flowing end-to-end game, Will Ashcroft's ad-lib style of football is set for September, he showed it last year, and I think he just attracts the eye when he's playing great football, and then suddenly this is a 23-year-old kid with two

\[01:01:03\] Norm Smith medals and two premiership medallions, and he goes to another stratosphere. There you go, you heard it from the ex-Triple M commentator. Hey, it's good to be back, it's always better that way. And if you haven't, listen — Dan Atkins is coming up, and like I said, I'm going to start comparing some training sessions, so for those who are interested in training, we've got some info now. Quickly, before we go, I've got one more thing — I need you to put your name to something, Courtney Atkinson. OK, what are we doing? Because I've just made an

\[01:01:33\] investment, and I need to know I'm not already outdated by the cool kids. OK, so, clothing-based — Salomon. Yes, I've invested in a pair of the Salomon ACS — the comfy ones — because the XT6, my fat feet don't fit into them. Are you going to wear them into the office? They're not uncool yet — no, OK, they're going like hotcakes, they're not outdated,

\[01:02:03\] I don't want people to make fun of me for having outdated shoes. It's still surprising me how many people are wearing Salomon — I haven't worn them yet to the office. OK, wear them in the office, mate, every 25-year-old you walk past is going to at least — as long as the 25-year-olds think I'm cool, when you get a head nod, you'll know what's going on. Righto, there you go — enjoy your weekend, and we will see you next week. See you next week.