EP65 - EGO, PBs & MARATHON INTEGRITY | SHOULD COURTNEY DECLARE A TIME? + JESS STENSON BREAKS THE AUSSIE RECORD

[00:00] In the Beginning, Episode 65, Courtney Atkinson. Before you say a word, we're starting today with a voicemail sent in by your friend, Doc Benny Walters. Please press play. "Courtney, Liam, just got back from my run listening to the latest podcast. Love the episode, by the way, but I've got two things I want to mention. Firstly, Liam just started to crack into you, Courtney, about your predicted times, and I'm sorry but I agree with Liam. We want to hear your thoughts,

[00:32] we want to know what you feel about your running, and we want to know why you won't be happy with your PB. This is a big issue for retiring runners as we age, and there'll be a lot of people out there who feel the same. I want to know why you won't be happy. What's wrong with getting older and slowing down? It's a problem because ego comes in front of your passion, and that's something that interests me and I think listeners would be interested in too. So I want you guys to unpack

[01:02] that." Go for it, Liam. Get into him, make him talk. Point two: I'm afraid it's a bit of a call-out, the Taylor Swift thing — you immediately started saying, well, we must have a lot of girls listening, which I think is a bit sexist. Boys are allowed to listen to Taylor Swift too. And I also have a slight confession for you: in my rock band — shameless plug for Autostaxis, that's a phonetics-themed rock band on the Gold Coast — we've actually started playing a Taylor Swift song, and I didn't know the words, so I've listened to it over and over again on repeat.

[01:35] And I do that when I'm running, so I feel like I've probably contributed to Benny's thing. Anyway, I'll sign off — thanks guys, keep up the good work. The plug. Thank you, Benny. And yeah, being the best medical rock band on the Gold Coast is kind of like being the tallest dwarf. Every hospital Christmas party we've played this year, we've been sought after, sought after. Courtney? Yes, Liam, Benny makes a great point. Why — before I press you on this — what is it in your brain that says, "I

[02:09] don't want to declare a goal time"? He's probably hit it on the head: ego. Is it ego? It's a bit of ego, right, it's a bit of ego. And has that always been the case, or is that an ego thing now as you age out — were you always like that, even when you were racing? Yeah, of course. I mean, you wouldn't be racing at the top if — everyone who races at the top has got a bit of ego. You don't have to show it, that's a different thing.

[02:39] Say more, what do you mean by that? Well, you can be a real extrovert — there are definitely athletes out there who you'd say are egotistical and headstrong in public, and you can show that. But I'd suggest any athlete who gets relatively high up in their discipline has a base level of ego, or you wouldn't be there. So let's take the sport that just jumped to mind while you were talking. Let's go to tennis.

[03:11] Yep — Nick Kyrgios: extrovert, egotistical player. And I don't mean that as a negative, because I love Nick. My comparison: Roger Federer — well, I was going to say that — seemingly carries no ego. So do you think Roger Federer has no ego? Of course he's got one — everyone's got an ego. But are you saying he's got a big ego? I'm saying underneath, the ego is what drives part of it — I mean, the ego is what's driving you as well, don't you think?

[03:42] Like, I'd argue that some of the best — Michael Jordan was never shy about declaring what he was going to do, so much that he'd tell the players on the court before he did it. That's what I'm saying — extrovert versus introvert is going to show their ego in very different ways. So you can have a big ego but be an introvert. I think the baseline is, yeah, maybe the extrovert's ego just looks bigger. Yeah, but I'm just saying I

[04:13] don't believe there'd be too many people in elite sport who don't have an underlying ego about wanting to be the best at what they do. Because if you don't believe you can be the best, how could you ever win a race? And then what's the point? So that would be the difference, I reckon, at the top end — if you're always going into races believing you can't improve to eventually be the best, what's the

[04:44] point? What's your goal in sport — are you just sitting there for participation? Did you ever win a race you didn't believe you could win — was there ever a race where you won and thought, "oh, I didn't think I'd win this today"? When I was young, for sure, 100%. I remember a race — on the Gold Coast beaches. It wasn't really in the triathlon space, but this was in the days when Japan was booming, and there was a lot of Japanese construction investment coming into the Gold Coast.

[05:14] I can't remember who sponsored it, but it was an aquathon on the beach at Surfers Paradise, with some soft-sand running — you'd go out and do a swim, then come back in, run on the hard sand, go back out and swim. They positioned it as triathletes versus the Water Ironmen, so the swim leg was enough that the Water Ironmen could get a real advantage. But then once you got onto the

[05:44] sand, obviously the runners and triathletes would have an advantage — except they put a soft-sand section in as well. If I remember correctly, I remember Grant Hackett's older brother, Craig Hackett, racing in it, but I think the guy I was racing — and I was 17 at the time — was a guy called Chippy Slater, who was in the early days of triathlon on TV as well, right up there with the Greg Welches and the Brad Bevans. Brad could have even been in there, I'm not sure. Let's bring up Brad Bevan —

[06:15] remind me about Brad. But yeah, in this race I was 17, racing the best in the business in Australia, guys racing on TV. But of course, I'm a young kid, I had a bit of ego and thought, "I'm a surf swimmer, I can do this," went out there and just did it — and won. And won, yeah — it kind of took over. I think that was the first time I ever properly won some coin. And when I say properly won some coin — some coin that would

[06:46] actually let you change, yeah, change it, exactly — but it might have been thirty K, or something. And to bring this back to the question Benny asked in the voicemail — he thinks it's ego getting in the way of you telling us what time you want to run at Gold Coast for the marathon and the T100 10K, right? The T100 10K in March, Gold Coast Marathon in July — two races you're going to be participating in. And yet, ego's not getting in the way of that, realism's getting

[07:18] in the way of that. The reason I don't want to put it out there is I actually don't know — I honestly don't know. The ego is saying, "I don't want to be any slower than I used to be," yes, but I honestly have no idea where I'm at to be able to tell you a time. And I'm not the type of person who's going to put a time out there and — you're right, I'm not the type of person who wants to get torn down for kidding myself. It's just that I actually don't know. That's my honest answer — I don't know.

[07:49] Look, to Benny and everyone else out there who wants me to press harder — I can look in Courtney's eyes right now and see there's nothing to be gained by pressing further. I think that's an honest answer — you're not going to get an answer because I don't have one, I really don't have one. But he's challenging me — OK, so the next part of that question was: at what point do you let go and just be happy running for the sake of running, rather than to make competitions? If you're going to go into a race, there's competition, so you're going to be driven.

[08:19] Yeah, I actually don't think that's a stage — if I want to participate, I can just go out and run, I don't think that's it. I don't think you age into that, I think that's part of who you are as a person. I think if you have that competitive fire, it might not burn as brightly as it once did when you were competing on the world stage, but I don't think it's ever going to go out. I can imagine you at eighty years of age entering surfing competitions and wanting to win — not surfing for the love of surfing, but surfing because you want to be the best eighty-year-old

[08:51] out there in the water. And keep listening along, because we've got some audio later — the marathon integrity unit, the other thing we spoke about last week, that's the answer to this, what we're talking about is going to come later. For me — this is just me personally, everyone's got their different reasons to run, 100% — but the purpose for me to go and enter an event and a race is there's going to be some type of goal, there's

[09:22] going to be a competitive element, and to make competition's still going to be the number one thing. Before we move on, because there's more we want to talk about with the marathon and the T100, Brad Bevan and the Croc — oh yeah, what do you want to tell us about the Croc? Swam with him Monday morning, you're kidding. He came down — we had our group down there Monday morning, Ty Dalka's little social swim group we've got going on. And two weeks ago, we saw — I was walking up the beach with the crew,

[09:52] Steve King comes along, another Uncle Toby's Ironman from back in the day, Trevor Hendy and those guys. We're walking up the beach and Brad's just having a coffee, and we're like, oh, what have you been up to, how is he? He's great — what sort of shape is he in? I can tell you what, he can still swim, he can still swim, no worries, keeping up with it. But yeah, he jumped in. And for me, like I've said plenty of times on this podcast, I've never really had heroes, but Brad was the one guy I

[10:23] always wanted to emulate. So to be back out there swimming next to him — did you ever race him? Brings it all back, yeah, 100%. Did you? So again, I love it when we find moments on these podcasts — we're anything but structured here on In the Beginning, it's something we might look at next year, but we have a tendency to zigzag all over the place. For me, when I find moments to unpack you, the elite athlete, Courtney, I'd love to lean

[10:53] into it. Brad Bevan — not a hero, but someone you wanted to emulate. Do you remember when you first raced him? Can you take that dodgy brain of yours back to the first time? I can't remember the first particular race, the specific one. Do you remember an era, or a season? I remember a particular race — and I remember it under a

[11:23] cloud of maybe I didn't really beat him. What do you mean, tell the story. So, we're racing a TV series — I think at the time it wasn't Duesbury sponsoring the series on TV, it might have been the Accenture era, the consulting firm sponsoring it at the time. We're racing up here where the Southport swim pool now is, there used to be a different car

[11:53] park — we used to race around the car park there. I'd probably been in the series for a few years by then, making my way up — I might have got tenth in the first year, and re-qualified to move up, I think tenth, fifth, fourth, third. Brad had been winning — he'd won the series more than anyone, every year — so he was the man, the guy to beat. On this particular day there were three races. The first race, I can't remember where I got, but there was a race that finished with a run,

[12:24] and we were sprinting around — I was sprinting after Brad, trying to emulate him. We came around the corner, about twenty metres to go, and I shot up the inside and gave him the shoulder — gave him the shoulder, yeah, borderline. Did I impede him? Got the shoulder out, right? I didn't realise I'd done it at the time, though.

[12:54] I don't believe that. No, I don't believe that, I don't. I look back — I don't want to call you a liar on this podcast, but I don't know if I believe that. In the heat of the moment I put my body in there to get to the line first, and as a young kid doing that, he had every right, looking back at the footage, to just call me out as a little shit. But he was too nice a guy — I don't think he said anything, I think he let me have it and just

[13:24] let it go. Was that the end of the Croc? No, no, he went on to win that day — he went on to win plenty more after that. But that moment meant everything to me, and it was borderline — did I really get there first or not? And look, the beauty of it is I then went on to take the mantle when I won it — and won as many, nearly as many years as Brad did, over the following four or five years. But that's why

[13:56] I remember it, that's the moment. The reason I remember it is because I did something I'm not proud of — it was borderline, if not over. It was close to the edge of what's fair racing. Yeah, 100%. It's one of the few times I'll probably question myself on how I carried

[14:26] myself in a race. So many times I've said I'm conscientious about doing the right thing, there's no point cutting corners, don't do this, don't do that — but that was borderline. Did you really get there first? Did anyone ever say anything to you about it? Obviously Brad didn't, but did any officials, anyone see it? I don't think so, no, no, no disqualification. But me — right, so how would you feel putting yourself in Brad's shoes for a moment, someone doing that to you? Do you think you'd be able to carry yourself the same way

[14:56] Brad did about it? I'd like to think I would. OK — and another one of the podcast's favourite things to do is take a story and convert it to current-day sport. V8 Supercars is going through an interesting phase at the moment — it's just finished its first-ever series with an actual finals component to crowning the champion. Years gone by, it's the most consistent performer across the season who wins, with maybe three races left in the year. This year, for the first time, they introduced a finals format where the top ten eligible drivers came into the Gold

[15:28] Coast round, then after that it was the top seven at Sandown, going into the final race of the season with only four drivers eligible to win the championship. Now, Broc Feeney — in the old format, best driver of the season, one more pole, I think he broke a record for most poles, most race wins throughout the season — and yet on the final day, his championship hopes get bumped out of the race. Chaz Mostert crowned Supercars champion.

[15:59] And everyone knew that could be the case the whole season — is it right, is it wrong, that's just how Supercars set it up. But I'll tell you what, they were bloody good sports about it, everyone. You could have thrown the toys out of the cot over that. I thought people who criticised Broc for showing emotion the way he did were unfair — that's just an athlete showing what it means to him. The great thing is, at the awards he went on to win pretty much every other award except

[16:29] the series itself. They all knew where the goalposts were at the start of the year, yep, that's the truth of it. Chaz's team — and this is from talking to some people — approached it like football teams do, where it doesn't really matter if you're not winning midway through the year, what matters is peaking for finals. And they peaked for finals — they were the best team in the finals series and drove like it, and that's why they won the championship. Do other teams need to change their approach for next year? Maybe. Yep, that was something we'll

[16:59] circle back to — no, no, I'm not letting you go on this one, because there's another interesting aspect. There's the playoffs, there's the athletes racing, but the whole point of Supercars is it's a commercial business. Sure. So you could also argue: who won, by winning at the end? Well, Supercars won — the end result, that team won, spectators won. But I'll tell you what, I bet commercially there was still a lot of value in fourteen wins by Broc for his team, you know, over the year.

[17:32] There's a lot going on, and if you're a sport trying to convert casual fans into more engaged fans, that finals system — best year ever for Supercars, was it. There were so many good races at that back end. Even if they haven't picked up a heap of new spectators, well, we know they've kept the ones they've got anyway. Sorry, to go all the way back — I love where this has taken us. You mentioned the Croc, wanting to emulate him, you race him, you hip-and-shoulder him, you filthy mongrel. How did it feel when you walk up

[18:04] to him on the beach down the Gold Coast — is it, "there's the guy I used to race against, there's the guy I wanted to emulate, there's the guy I bumped"? How do you see Brad now? Is he just a peer, or does he still sit on that pedestal a little bit for you? He's on a pedestal, of course. Yeah, that doesn't go away I think. There's twofold to it — I've looked at him like that my whole life, and

[18:34] that was 100% the guy — when I was a kid, I was looking at him going, I just want to be him, I want to do what he does. Like a young footy player watching the AFL on TV, wanting to emulate whoever it is out there on the Gold Coast now — all these midfielders wanting to emulate someone — that's what Brad was to me. He was the guy that when I was a

[19:06] kid, I wanted to race like. But he's also a generation older, so I've still got a heap of respect for the generation that went before me, because I wouldn't have got the opportunities I had without what they did before us. Triathlon was a bloody niche little B-grade sport — maybe C-grade — and we made a life out of it, all us guys, because of what they did before. That didn't happen without those guys, so.

[19:37] You talk about — yeah, you can see that in every sport in the world right now, the idea of what NBA players are making on a contractual basis these days, even when you compare it to what Michael Jordan got paid, versus what AFL players are getting paid now. I work on a radio show with Spida Everitt, and by comparison with what he got paid, it's incomparable. I've just been trying to Google Brad Bevan to see if he's got a marathon time we can compare you to — I'm going to take a stab, I don't think Brad ever raced a marathon.

[20:08] I could be wrong. So, for everyone still hoping I would press Courtney — we're going to leave pressing him on the time until we get into the early new year. Can you make a commitment now though — can you predict what you can run? I can't do that now, but can you make a commitment to me, in advance of the T100 which we're both signed up for, that once you go and run it — if people out there haven't yet signed up for the T100 10K race on the Sunday, we start at the Broadwater where the Gold Coast Marathon starts and finish in Surfers Paradise, it's going to be an unbelievable

[20:39] event. Go and sign up for the T100 online — the Gold Coast is the first event of this World Series. T100 — I'm just bringing up the website, t100triathlon.com/goldcoast. Go sign up for the 10K road race, make In the Beginning Podcast your running team, because we've still got plans in place for that — I'm in the team, you're in the team. What I'd like is a promise from you here before we move on — before the race on the Sunday, I want you to commit to

[21:10] a goal time. I can't do that in my mind right now, but I can commit to having some fun with it once we get closer. Also, for those who missed out on putting us as their team — you can go back into your entry and just edit it, add us under your club, there's no drop-down menus or anything, it's just In the Beginning Podcast and you'll show up as part of our crew. And thank you to Brett, who went back and checked that you could do it, and said you can do it very straightforwardly.

[21:41] While we're talking Gold Coast races — congratulations to the Gold Coast Marathon crew, not just because they sold out in a day, but because they've been crowned the best marathon in all of Australia and New Zealand. If you want to run a PB, the Gold Coast Marathon has been crowned the best marathon in Australia and New Zealand for that goal — it's the number one choice for a flat, fast personal best in the newly released Hill Hounds

[22:13] guide — a data-driven analysis, Hill Hounds, a data-driven analysis of twenty-eight major marathons across Australia and New Zealand, has crowned the Gold Coast Marathon the region's best course for runners hunting a personal best. All the marathons were weighted across elevation gain, temperature, humidity, fastest time, altitude, and interestingly, popularity indicators — i.e. Instagram mentions. Right, that was part of the weighting for this ranking. The Gold Coast came out on top thanks to its pancake-flat

[22:45] profile — just sixty-two metres of elevation gain across the forty-two Ks — combined with cool racing temperatures in July, averaging eighteen degrees. Do you reckon that means more PBs, more people posting? Well, and I'll be fascinated to see if they do this study again, how it rates, because it's sold out faster than it did last year. And in the notes here, you've got the top five — so for those of you who've run the Gold Coast and don't want to run it again, want to chase something else: Christchurch came in at number two, yep, Wellington number three, so a couple of

[23:15] Kiwi marathons, then Melbourne, then Perth. Melbourne then Perth, OK, so I reckon those two Kiwi ones — weather, weather makes a big difference, nice cool conditions for a marathon. So, what about the Gold Coast Marathon? Yep, speaking of marathons — I'm going to let you go first because you've got the Aussie stuff you want to talk about. The Valencia Marathon — we forecast it a little bit

[23:45] the other week because it was happening last weekend, and this is the marathon of the month. It's been the flavour of the month in the marathon world for the last couple of years — it's where seemingly all the fast world marathon times are being run at the moment. There was a great crew of Aussies, particularly in the women's field, lining up for the Valencia Marathon last weekend, and we have a new Australian women's marathon record holder, Jess Stenson. She broke the record of Sinead Diver when she ran 2:21:25 to

[24:20] finish fifth overall in the women's race at Valencia. Congratulations, such a great performance, such a fantastic performance — 2:21:25. She knocked ninety seconds off her PB over the distance and came in just nine seconds ahead of Sinead's time. I don't know what that's like — I know what chasing a PB is like, and I'm sure Jess would have been conscious of her old PB, but coming down that final

[24:50] kilometre with nine seconds in it — like, how much at that level of running is nine seconds for Jess? Is she thinking, "I've got this"? God, I don't know — at what point do you think she would have gone, "I can do this, I've got this record"? A hundred metres out, five hundred metres, a kilometre out — we're guessing, I don't know, it'd be a good question to ask someone who's been in that position. I'd think you're on pace, but I don't think you'd really know until those last five hundred metres or so, and I suppose it also depends how well you know the course

[25:22] distance — I don't know if you watched it or not, but what's interesting is her splits compared to Sinead's — they basically went through halfway at the same time. Right, so she negative-split that. We should always research this stuff. Where did Sinead run hers? Same course, I think — that'd be interesting. Also in Valencia, in 2022, same course, very similar course. I looked this up because I was interested —

[25:52] the reason I reckon this race has become so popular: one, it's fast, we know that, but two, it's the money, that's why they're getting so many entrants. What's the money? So, prize money is earned the hard way at Valencia — there's no guaranteed minimum payout. I'm just reading this: instead, runners must deliver top performances to claim their share of the winnings. And while the eye-dropping one-million-euro world record bonus

[26:23] steals the headlines, there are plenty of lucrative rewards on offer for places. So do you think — and again, we could have researched this, but it strikes me — that Jess probably scored a bonus for breaking a national record? What did she run? Because here it goes: a victory under two-oh-four for the men or two-twenty for the women is worth seventy-five thousand euros — but that's for the win. She didn't break 2:20 — beyond that, second place, third —

[26:56] where'd she come, fifth? Even fifth place — sorry, even finishing twelfth can earn a runner between one and two thousand euros. So there's good money down the field, for some reason I was thinking that was going to be a lot better, that's why they get the depth. The other thing — and people can feel free to call me out here — it was very lopsided in finishing numbers, women versus men in the results, which was interesting. I would have thought in marathons at

[27:26] the moment you'd get equal fields — in terms of how many turn up to race, how many turn up. If you looked at the women's Valencia field — and unless I was watching it live, anyone who knows this please chime in, criticise me if I'm wrong — as I was watching, they might still have been coming across the line, but I don't think so. Jess was seven minutes twenty-four seconds behind the winner, Jocelyn Jepkoske, who ran 2:14. No, this isn't about the times,

[28:00] it's about the sheer number of elite athletes running in the race. Interesting discrepancy to me, when you have a race that obviously supports the men's world record — the first-place finisher in the men's marathon, John Korir from Kenya, was two minutes off the world record set by Kelvin Kiptum in Chicago in October 2023.

[28:30] But you don't want to talk about the winner, no, no, I'm here to talk about Alex Yee — the gold medallist in the Olympic triathlon from Paris, who's been focused on running. He ran in London — this is quite amazing, to put it mildly — he's run 2:06:38. Put it in context: he won the Olympic triathlon gold medal, Paris was only a year and a half ago.

[29:00] This is the best Olympic-distance triathlete in the world, correct — Alex Yee, gold medallist — has just run the second-quickest British marathon of all time, 2:06:38, only behind the great Mo Farah. How long has he been running, focusing on the marathon? Well, since the Olympics — he probably took a break, and then decided he wasn't just going to go off and run some marathons, he was going to target the marathon. 2:06:38 — so he was just over fifteen minutes per 5K in his

[29:31] splits, and very even the whole way through. But where I'm going with this — we're talking triathlon here, but it's his running that's turning heads. He's the second-fastest runner ever among triathletes — we talked about Hayden Wilde when he went and ran up in Japan, and I believe he's a New Zealand 10K record holder. Even as a triathlete right now, this is an era that's unprecedented, firstly, but two,

[30:03] can you imagine being a multisport athlete sitting there, a younger guy going, "as if triathlon wasn't hard enough, now to be the best triathlete I not only have to be the best at three sports, I probably also have to be the quickest runner in my country"? To put that into context — we interviewed Andy Buchanan, I've got his time in front of me. So now I'm a triathlete, I probably can't just

[30:33] race my triathlons, on the side I probably should also be making the Olympic run team. Alex Yee's time — did he beat the record? Sixteen seconds slower than Andy Buchanan, than our Australian record holder. And that's his second marathon? Second marathon. Put yourself in Alex Yee's shoes, Courtney — should he switch? What's the benefit? Should he say, look, I've achieved, I've literally

[31:05] proven I'm the best in the world at triathlon — is the carrot of chasing a national record in the marathon, and perhaps going on to win one of these big marathons, enough? Should he switch, could he switch? Well, he's switched — he's just done that. But I don't imagine he's hung up the goggles and the helmet. I'm not, I don't follow him closely enough to know what his intentions are. Sit down with you, Courtney Atkinson, says Courtney: mate, I'm at a crossroads, I need your sage

[31:35] advice. I'm sure he doesn't need my advice. I want your — he doesn't need it, but he wants it. I mean, I don't know — what would you tell him to do? I know what I'd tell him: go for the Olympic gold medal, for sure. You'd tell him to go for the Olympic gold medal. And I believe — I have no idea, but I believe — that's what he's probably going to switch back to, going into LA, because the reality is he's never going to win the marathon. He's in his second marathon,

[32:05] he's six minutes off the world record. Yeah, true, but when's the — actually, I shouldn't say that, because, and you know how I like to be — to me, Alex Yee has the opportunity to etch his name into Olympic folklore, not just Olympic history, because there are plenty of athletes in Olympic history who've won multiple gold medals. I don't know if there's ever been a multiple gold medallist

[32:35] in men's triathlon — as in winning two Olympic golds. Yeah, that's been done before — Alistair Brownlee. But I know for a fact there's never been an Olympic triathlon gold medallist who's then gone on and won the Olympic marathon. OK, that's going to happen, Liam said — they're unsettled. What, if he did it? Courtney, let's just focus on what we've got. No, no, no, no, you're talking, you're talking out of your ear.

[33:06] Put him into that — suddenly that becomes one of the great Olympic stories of all time, it would. But you're just talking out of your ear. Nah, nah, let's just focus, Alex, let's just focus on what we've got here — chase that marathon dream, go for it, if you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take, Alex. You're focusing on something that's already happened — they'll name stadiums after you, Alex, this is statue stuff, Alex. Back to it — if you're a triathlete at the moment, you

[33:38] know, because I raced through the era of Alistair and the Brownlee brothers, right, who at that time were seen as freaks, absolutely, they were breaking it all — once-in-a-generation. Well, he's the next generation and they're kicking it. Let me ask you this: is there a statue of the Brownlee brothers anywhere? You don't think so, do you? I bet you — I bet in Leeds there's a statue. I guarantee it, it's undeniable.

[34:10] If Alex Yee went on and won the marathon in LA, he'd get a statue somewhere. Anyone listening, let's settle back — there's a triathlon sculpture. Yeah, oh, this is weird. Oh no, they've stitched me up here if you've led me down this path: "Champion triathletes the Brownlee brothers saw a statue unveiled in their honour on Friday. Alistair and Jonny were on hand to see the artwork, called Triathlon, go on show in their home village of Bramhope. It's been put up in Jubilee

[34:41] Copse Park as a permanent tribute by villagers to the brothers' achievements." There you go, they got one. Yeah, I wouldn't be happy with that, I reckon they've been hard done by there. Oh my god, we should try and put this picture up — they've been hard done by there, that's, that's, look, I'm sure they're proud of it, but I reckon they've been hard done by. It looks like a grade-three art class has been given a wood chisel — it looks like what's left over

[35:11] at the yard after the wood-choppers have been hacking away. They do have a — there you go. Well, congratulations, simply incredible. Absolutely. Hey, can we stay with some Olympic talk? Yes — you're about to come into some money. No, you're not eligible for this. I did open my email yesterday and saw this and went, oh, are they? How far are they going to — there's a retirement grant coming out for Olympians. Yeah, so the Australian Olympic Committee, the AOC, has brought

[35:41] out this Olympic Retirement Fund grant. Hey, look, you're not going to retire on it. So what is it, what would — OK, stop. Yeah, if you went to the Olympics to race, you made it, you're representing your country — oh, OK, just let me bask in this thought for a moment, OK? Yep, you do this. I'm in the chat, you could do this with Liesl tomorrow — I'm in the chat, oh, I reckon you'd have a good chat about it. You finished your race, you

[36:11] decide I'm done with my sport — how much do you believe you should get paid to go and race for your country at the Olympics? Or do you believe — that would be, not even nice, but you earn, or you deserve — see, the wording is interesting. I think you should

[36:46] warrant payment for your efforts and services. Now, where it gets tricky is if you're a sport where — golfers go to the Olympics, right, they should not get paid by the AOC — golfers like Cam Smith and Marc Leishman, these boys do not. I'd hope that if they're eligible for this, they're declining it. The assessment criteria will include a means-testing threshold — great, fantastic, thank goodness, yeah, because they'd

[37:16] — well, they're not stating what that threshold is — you'd have athletes lining up at the AOC's office, and Cam Smith turns up with his private jet next to him, I'm not happy, all right, I'm not happy. Well, you can be happier because it's been means-tested. I do think — oh, look, hey, but let's go back here. What's that? That's also such a today's-world thing you've just said. What do you mean? So why does Cam Smith, who doesn't

[37:46] deserve it any less than the heptathlete? I'm not saying he deserves less, it's a needs-based thing, he doesn't need it. I would hope that Cam in fact — but do you think that's fair, that you go to the Olympics and someone gets it and — well, you know, yes, no, a little bit of individual versus society. I'm a socially progressive person, and I'll give you an example: the way I vote at most elections is not for myself,

[38:19] my life, my family's life — we're in a position where we can pay our bills, we can put food on the table, we've got a roof over our heads. We vote at elections for what we think will make where we live a better place for other people, that's just how we approach things, because regardless — I mean this in a — I'm so fortunate and lucky to have the life I have, to have

[38:49] grown up the way I have, my parents, my family, my friends, all that sort of stuff. Regardless of who's in government, I'm going to be OK, that's just the reality of my life. Hence, when we vote, I actually don't vote for who's going to necessarily make my life better, because my life's great — I try to vote for

[39:21] so what I mean is, I'd like to think, to bring this back to the sport, that the athletes who don't need this money aren't taking it. Ash Barty's an example, right — Ash Barty's a bronze medallist at the Olympic Games in tennis, a three-time Grand Slam winner, whose prize money is in excess of twenty-one million dollars. She doesn't need the AOC grant, don't need it — but I'm saying, do you think it comes back to fairness? Sure, so you're

[39:54] seeing fairness from the point of view of, well, you've already got it so you don't need it — which, to me, then that's a handout, right? So you're calling the Olympic Retirement Grant a handout? Well, it is, it is a handout — well, it is, but it's not a handout, because I feel like "handout" implies you haven't done anything for it. I think everyone who earns their right to go to the Olympics — and I realise I'm now arguing against my own point here. Well, that was my goal, trying to bring you

[40:25] around, Liam, bring you around. I love that they're doing this, because I know a lot of athletes — well, we both agree — who have walked away from their Olympic careers without much to show for it. I'll play devil's advocate here for a moment: you guys chose to do that, you chose to pursue a sport, you chose to pursue a sporting career where you knew there wasn't much financial remuneration on hand. You made that choice, you live and die by the choices you make. Yeah, yeah, but Australia in particular is a country where we put so much of our national identity into our sporting achievements.

[40:57] I feel it's not quite the least we could do, but it's certainly something we should be doing, providing this sort of funding to athletes post-retirement. Yep, oh look, we both agree this is a great initiative, don't get me wrong, we're just discussing it like we usually do here. But I see it as a slippery slope when you start to go, hey, OK, here's a different example —

[41:27] I'm in the same sport, triathlon, let's take triathlon — let's not even use names, but you've got two triathletes going to the Games, yep, they both race, they're both going through exactly the same training, everything else all the same, but neither medals, OK, so neither gets the — so it's Courtney Atkinson in Beijing, thanks for rubbing it in, sorry.

[41:59] And by the way, they're not retrospectively applying this Olympic retirement fund, Courtney, I'm not fighting for my own money here, OK. But you've got two guys, the same thing — one happens to have made a bit more money in the last two years than the other. One gets paid the retirement fund, one doesn't — what's that like? Yeah, it's a good question, I don't know what the answer is, because I think then you'd probably be looking at the source of the income — because if someone's managed to leverage their

[42:29] profile in their sport, even if it's an e-sport, and I've gone and done a better job, then why should I get penalised for doing exactly that? And then suddenly you're talking about taxing it, and oh god — good news, put it this way, I wanna see Ben Simmons lining up for the Boomers in LA in the basketball, but if he turns around and starts asking for this grant money, I'm off him, I will be off him. Good news, moving on from Milan

[43:00] onwards — they've obviously put a bit of a pool aside to help these athletes, and in all fairness, there's a lot of sports in the Olympics that are one hundred percent non-professional. Those athletes are purely putting aside a lot of their time and their life to go and represent the country in a sport that doesn't pay outside of that. I also love that there's a programme at the moment called Grow for Gold, happening here on the Gold Coast, where they're actually contracting some junior athletes with funding to help them pursue their dreams for

[43:31] Brisbane 2032, which I think is fantastic as well. There are some great private organisations out there — over the years I've been involved, I was involved as a young kid with the MLC Foundation, yep, we were really young at that stage, they were giving to those with the — yeah, you know, Uncle Toby's did a great job, the cereal company, supporting foundations and things like that. Whether you like her or not, Gina Rinehart is the reason a lot of our swimmers can get to where they do. So basically, also, post-partum —

[44:04] if you're returning to Olympic sport post-birth, I think that's great for our female athletes out there who decide to go off, just like you would at work, you come back and — just on that, yep, shout out to one of your peers, Ash Gentle — don't know if you've seen the story, but the rough week she's had, I haven't seen — she's going to be competing in the T100 triathlon in Qatar, and she suffered a miscarriage.

[44:35] Yeah, really, really sad news. And I'm not betraying any confidences here, I don't know Ash, but she posted about it, and I thought the way she wrote about it — I don't want to overdramatise it, but it is a step forward for the realities of female professional athletes. We've seen other things within the female sporting realm, the Wimbledon white uniform issue and what that does for women too. But I thought the way Ash posted about it, that she said there shouldn't be shame in

[45:06] this, that she shouldn't have to hide it — yeah, just a shout-out to Ash, because she's an absolute icon of triathlon, and we talked about what she's achieved at Noosa in the lead-up to it. The fact that she posted that this week — that's very sad, yeah, it really was. As someone who's gone through that myself, in my family — but well done to Ash for being able to talk about that as a professional female athlete. Anyway, right, what have we got time for, Courtney, how are we travelling? Let's get onto some running news. Running news, yep, now —

[45:37] OK, you've got a bit of audio there for us, Liam? Stand by while I prepare this audio, Courtney. Whatever's this account called — the running, official-unofficial, yeah, let's — I mean, they're getting plenty of attention, the integrity unit, yeah, let's just call it the integrity unit, we talked about it last week. They're getting plenty of traction, so they don't need us talking about it. "Unofficial Time" is the handle — Official Marathon Time Integrity. They're up to thirteen thousand

[46:07] followers now, last week we were talking about them very early on, and in one respect, what they're doing — well, what I saw this morning actually makes a lot more sense. There's a bit about you don't want people bashing each other online, no, that's a slippery slope, it's also boring, yep, however, what I read them say this morning, it's what they'll —

[46:39] they're trying to target, I believe, is people out there making money off running coaching and all of the above, doing it in what they're arguing — I'll use the word — a fraudulent way. You're running a business off it, and that's targeting — that's different, yes, individual, so your first-timers and your everyday runners out there, because they're obviously getting sent a lot of stuff into

[47:09] them, and they've said they're not going to go on the negative approach to that — they call it out, but they're going to do it in an educational way, to say, hey, do you know this, this, this? But anyway, let's not talk about that, you can go and look at it and make your own mind up. This was one particular person who's been called out by Official Unofficial, and they've responded — he's come out and responded, and I think he's missed the point. So I'm going to play a little bit of audio here, it picks up midway through.

[47:39] He's been called out about the time he posted running the Melbourne Marathon, I believe — but this is him talking a little bit about it: "It's about chip time and marathon distance being different. Now, for ninety-nine percent of runners, we're not professional athletes, we're not going to run the exact distance the event sets out to be. So naturally, at events with, say, a GPS watch, it's going to read a bit short or a bit long depending on where you run.

[48:11] Like, there's people at drink stations, you're weaving in and out, so your distance is going to vary. So I want to clarify that I didn't run a sub-three marathon in Melbourne — the actual marathon itself. However, since I did a 42.6K run, I naturally ran a bit faster for that distance, so over the marathon distance, so42K, I did run just under three. However, the Melbourne race itself, I was two minutes over

[48:43] what it was, so — yeah, OK. So now, this is again what we're saying about this account — I think the mission they've set themselves is to identify people who might be trying to make money off coaching, or as an expert, based on fraudulent times. Will you support that? That's good, yes — I don't think they want to, and we don't support the idea of just knocking down everyday runners and nitpicking over minor

[49:13] details. But this is an interesting one, Courtney, because what this fellow is defending himself on is that he's suggesting his chip time for the Melbourne Marathon was three-oh-two, but his watch said he ran 42.8 kilometres, and he's justifying it by saying he ran further than the course, or under the — and he's acknowledging what he's saying is incorrect, he's saying he's a sub-three-hour marathon runner based on the time he would have run.

[49:44] So this is really — I'm very strong on this, and it's really simple, OK. Because I believe this guy, obviously they're keeping on him, he's obviously doing some type of business off it, whatever else, who knows. But the point is, here's the point: if that doesn't matter to you, don't race. If the event time isn't what you're there for, don't race, OK, go and run.

[50:15] Go and run along Beach Road with your watch and do whatever to your heart's content. But basically, you want to turn up to a race, you want to leverage the race, and then you decide the race time isn't good enough for you? This is absolutely ridiculous, OK. At this stage, no, this is — I like it, I like how passionate you are about this, this is great, because I agree — I think if you ran the Melbourne Marathon in three-oh-two,

[50:45] irrespective of what your watch says or Strava says or anything like that, if the Melbourne Marathon gives you a three-oh-two time, you've run the Melbourne Marathon in three-oh-two, and if that's your fastest officially recorded marathon time, you are a three-oh-two runner, you are not a sub-three-hour runner. I was speaking with a fella at surf lifesaving with my kids' nippers the other weekend, right, having a chat, got chatting about running, I said, I love running. I said, what events

[51:15] or what have you got coming up, or what have you run? And he said he ran — I think he said he ran Gold Coast in a three-oh-five. I said, wow, that's great running, well done. He's like, yeah, but I've run sub-three before. I'm like, oh cool, where did you run sub-three? He's like, oh, in Melbourne. I'm like, oh cool, you ran the Melbourne Marathon. He said, no, we were training for it, COVID hit, so my friends and I went out and ran around Albert Park. And I said, you're not a

[51:46] sub-three, you're not a sub-three marathon runner. He's like — because he said, yeah, we ran 2:50. I'm like, mate, that's not a sub-three-hour marathon — it doesn't count if it's not in a race, it doesn't count, it doesn't count, it doesn't count. Well, no, it counts to you — be proud of it, but don't go and leverage the facts. All right, so this is where we're getting very clear, it's getting a bit more clarity around that. So, amazing, like, if that's what you choose to do with your mates and

[52:20] you go out and run, and that's the best gauge of distance you've got — yeah, all well and good, but you can't leverage unofficial times. Well, you can, but you shouldn't. And I don't even care if you go and tell everyone, "I went and ran along the beach with my mates and did all this," here's my Strava file, whatever it is — good on you, that's amazing, we're not

[52:50] downplaying that. But if you're not content to go to a race and take the race time, which is a ratified, measured gold standard, irrespective of the people you have to weave around at drink stations — exactly, because it's part of the race. I'd hate to break it to a lot of you out there — the way they measure the course, which we know from last year when we did the Gold Coast Marathon, they take the tangent on the corners, but they also add a metre buffer across a lot

[53:22] of that course, so there's give and take within that measurement as well, which could go either way. But whatever you want to say about your times, if you choose to leverage those times into a business, for followers, for dollars, whatever it is, I understand — but I don't think you can then cry foul when people call you out on that, you're opening yourself up to fair and well-researched criticism. Yep, anyway, before we finish up today,

[53:56] I think it's time to check in on our old friend, friend of the show, Jelly Roll — yes, because it seems like Joe Rogan's obviously listened to the episode and thought, oh, he seems like a character. I did wake up to a few messages actually saying Jelly Roll's on Rogan, Jelly Roll's on Rogan talking about everything. I listened to the first about twenty minutes of it on the way to running this morning, and one of the things — because I always say consistency is key, but Jelly's

[54:31] put it in a much nicer format, which I'm going to steal — consistency is the magic. He was talking about his weight loss, because it doesn't matter what you're doing, running or weight loss, whatever, consistency is the magic, there's no silver bullet, consistency is the magic, I love it. When people have asked me about the Jelly Roll stuff, the thing that's stuck with me most out of that is what he said to us about people sending him their workouts or their runs — "you want to impress me, send me,

[55:03] send me what you were eating, send me what you ate, send me what you've eaten that day," because that's realistically where the battle is won and lost for most people. I'd like to think if we'd had those two, three hours — that Jelly Roll said to us, "oh, I'm used to talking long-form with people now," but we had thirty minutes with him. I would like to think that some of this stuff in this episode we would have got in my

[55:33] head — I'm like, I know where the conversation could have kept going with Jelly, and some of the stuff — in this Joe Rogan episode, I encourage people to go and give it a listen, because we love Jelly, he's a friend of the show. He talks about the fact that he couldn't get sexually excited because of his weight, and he talked about how close to death he was — you can go and listen to it, yeah, there's some amazing stuff in it, and in my mind we would have got all this out of him if we'd had that, if he hadn't had to go on stage in front of a Brisbane crowd to perform his songs.

[56:03] That's how I'm thinking about it, but yeah — and then there's more from Jelly's world, because when we were up there with Jelly, obviously his team were amazing in having us around and looking after everybody. The person, I suppose, who's helped him a lot with the weight loss is his chef, Ian Larios, and we had some great chats with him on the night. Now, his background is actually with UFC, helping fighters

[56:35] strip. Yes, and now, with Jelly, he's pretty much daily helping cook meals, but he's off on his own adventure too. I said I'd actually love to — and I'm not going to make any promises — but I'd love to go and catch up with him and go for a run, because he was a super interesting dude to have a chat to. His Instagram is Chef Larios, L-A-R-I-O-S, go and give him a look. On the 28th of February — I'll talk you through it.

[57:08] On the 28th of February, he's running four hundred and sixty kilometres around Bali in five days — that's the goal. He's trying to set a record for the fastest time run around Bali. He's setting a fundraising goal as well, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars — enough to build thirty-three homes for families and kids who urgently need them. That's about three hundred miles in American distance. But yeah, on the 28th of February he's going to be chasing this goal to break the record for the fastest time around Bali. Because that's where he was, you know, living and hanging

[57:40] out. And he's had it in the back of his mind for a while, and he wanted to get around the island, and he's going to do it in February. We'll put a link in the show notes as well if you want to go and check it out more, and even — amazing guy, get behind him. You and I both spent a bit of time with him in the green room, if you like what Jelly Roll has to say. Yeah, and you've listened to our episode and listened to Rogan's episode about his running journey and his weight-loss journey — come and support, come and support Ian, because he is

[58:10] definitely one of the men behind all of that. Yep, now we've got another episode coming out next week — let's see, I'm going to be in Japan. But we still, again, we never want to let you down, In the Beginning family, so we do have another episode coming out next week. You need to provide me with some trails for Japan. That's right, you said you've got some trails you want me to run in Kyoto while I'm over there. I do. And we're sitting at lunch, sitting at a beautiful spot, and we had, we had, we had our Christmas lunch, we had our Christmas lunch.

[58:41] Had a work Christmas lunch sitting down at Billy's, the other week — yeah, good, worst spot we could have picked. You know, the day after I was sitting in Sydney having another Christmas lunch, and I was up at the Rocks, and it was a good day too, it was blue, and I was thinking, it's that time of year, isn't it, Christmas is here — this season, this is the season. Lots more to come next week, we're going to wrap this one up. In the Beginning Podcast family, can we just remind you: another one, T100 in March next year, sign up for the 10K run.

[59:13] Courtney and I are going to be there on the Sunday running it, Courtney will have told us his goal time by then. If you do sign up, make sure you make In the Beginning Podcast your run team. Lots of exciting stuff on the way, we'll see you next week — have a good week running.