Latest / Easy Double podcast / Raf Baugh: Duathlete, Physio, Coach, Mentor

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Raf Baugh: Duathlete, Physio, Coach, Mentor · Easy Double podcast

• 0:22
  Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Easy Double Podcast.
• 0:26
  Slightly different formats than usual, so this isn't your weekly
• 0:29
  episode with DNO and 9:00, but part of a new special series of
• 0:33
  interviews that we've been itching to get cracking with.
• 0:35
  So this is Easy Double Interview series episode 1.
• 0:39
  And without further ado, I'm delighted to introduce our first
• 0:43
  ever Easy Double interviewee. And it couldn't have been anyone
• 0:46
  other than now. Cue the Hollywood introduction,
• 0:49
  because this could be the most overdue interview.
• 0:52
  And then the listeners are saying it's the most highly
• 0:55
  anticipated interview. So this is a man whose
• 0:58
  fingertips are all over high performance in Australia's
• 1:01
  endurance scene. Former world #3 ranked ITU dual
• 1:05
  athlete, bringing a mix of experience as an elite athlete
• 1:08
  himself, a physiotherapist for some of Australia's most
• 1:11
  recognisable sports teams and greatest runners.
• 1:15
  He's a high level performance coach who specialises in
• 1:18
  physiological, biomechanical and psychological upskilling of
• 1:22
  athletes and he's the owner and founder of Frontrunner.
• 1:26
  Welcome to the show RAF 4. Thanks, Ryan, you legend.
• 1:31
  Thanks for having me. Now it's good to have you on.
• 1:33
  Took me 20 minutes that yesterday.
• 1:38
  It's the weirdest thing in the world.
• 1:39
  Is it a city of people like talking about you?
• 1:42
  It's weird. Yeah.
• 1:44
  So usually I would feel a little bit nervous for these episodes,
• 1:47
  but now that I know that like we're, we're interviewing you,
• 1:51
  it's, it's a lot less stress. Yeah, it just feels like a
• 1:54
  normal day, isn't it? So yeah, no, it's, it's always
• 1:57
  good to get the chance to sort of share and reflect on on the
• 2:01
  relationship with you guys, but also with running more broadly.
• 2:04
  So thanks for having me on. It's good, it's our pleasure.
• 2:07
  So have you, have you been on podcasts before I assume?
• 2:10
  When was the last time you've spoken to?
• 2:12
  Yeah, I think when podcasts first started, I think they're a
• 2:15
  little bit more sort of how you guys are starting.
• 2:18
  They're open and then eventually they'll become a little bit more
• 2:21
  if they get to scale a bit more commercial.
• 2:23
  And it tends to be like any commercial function.
• 2:25
  There's a funnel somewhere that leads into something with sales
• 2:29
  at the back end of it. And the the, the the people that
• 2:32
  get interviewed become a little bit more commercially then
• 2:35
  rather than information based in in who's on them.
• 2:38
  So depending on timing, I think there's, there seems to be a
• 2:43
  couple every now and then. But initially we we had this
• 2:46
  massive growth when COVID happened where there was a few
• 2:49
  symposiums and online discussions with physios and
• 2:52
  doctors. And we got on a few of those.
• 2:54
  And they were quite transformative for our business
• 2:57
  during COVID in terms of going from being on the ground
• 3:00
  coaching business to a digital 1.
• 3:03
  So from that initial one, there was a few with other physios and
• 3:06
  things like that. First of all, was actually Brady
• 3:08
  on Tell Me Your Tales way back. I don't know how far that was
• 3:11
  eight years ago maybe. And so, yeah, there's been a few
• 3:15
  every now and then that come up, but it's always nice.
• 3:19
  I find them a good framing exercise to reflect and stop and
• 3:22
  think about how you've changed your perspective since you last
• 3:25
  spoke of it. Because whenever you speak to
• 3:28
  where you're at, you sort of get to better rationalize how you
• 3:33
  see things rather than just having them ruminate around in
• 3:35
  your own mind. You get to articulate them and
• 3:38
  you continue to evolve and change over time.
• 3:41
  So your perspective is never quite the same as it was.
• 3:43
  It continues to to expand. Yeah.
• 3:45
  Well, I imagine so much has changed both in your world and
• 3:49
  in the broader running world since you spoke eight years ago.
• 3:51
  So I'm looking forward to unpacking your observations in
• 3:55
  that time. I know Raff's got a lot to
• 3:58
  share, so the format is going to be we're going to touch his
• 4:02
  background briefly as an athlete and a physio and then move into
• 4:06
  his his coaching journey and some of his philosophies there.
• 4:10
  So Raff, how did you first engage with the sports as a
• 4:13
  junior? How old were you?
• 4:15
  Yes, I think like most people, like every time when the school
• 4:18
  athletics carnival or the school cross country carnival came up,
• 4:21
  I became a runner for a couple of weeks.
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  And then the big social sports where I grew up were cricket,
• 4:28
  basketball and football. And so they were sort of the
• 4:32
  primary things that I did. And up until about year 10, I
• 4:36
  was probably the slightest guy in my football, basketball and
• 4:39
  cricket team from my age. So I was always much more
• 4:42
  economical than the other boys and probably better at running
• 4:45
  and maybe very competitive and very eager in the other sports,
• 4:49
  but not quite as competent. So I was always quite confident
• 4:52
  in running because at my school carnivals I would often,
• 4:55
  especially in the middle and long distance, always be quite
• 4:57
  competitive or win. And so, yeah, those primary
• 5:00
  school, high school years is where it sort of first started,
• 5:03
  not in a very structured way, but in a in a sense of building
• 5:06
  some confidence for for the task of running.
• 5:09
  Lots of people as juniors when running is involved, if they're
• 5:14
  doing any team sports, like the running side of things is
• 5:17
  everything people dislike. But did you kind of like it?
• 5:20
  Because you may be good at it or?
• 5:22
  Yeah. I think it's interesting how I
• 5:25
  think the things people gravitate to, they feel an
• 5:28
  efficacy for and the things they gravitate away from are often
• 5:32
  things they're not as competent with.
• 5:35
  So there was certainly that, like if we were doing like
• 5:39
  suicide runs or side to sides, the guys that were the best
• 5:43
  basketballers didn't necessarily perceive that they needed to
• 5:45
  showcase their basketball prowess with, you know, the, the
• 5:50
  running, whereas I would find that that was where I felt
• 5:52
  confident. So I'd always be very
• 5:54
  competitive with those particular parts of training.
• 5:56
  So definitely, I think wherever you have a higher confidence,
• 5:59
  you tend to be more motivated to showcase it.
• 6:02
  And then over time, I suppose you you learn to lean into the
• 6:06
  areas where you're not as confident and and try to expand
• 6:09
  and grow in those areas because that's more transformative to
• 6:13
  your performance. So yeah, I always enjoyed that
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  part of training. But yeah, the better the athlete
• 6:19
  at football or cricket or basketball, the less they were
• 6:22
  inclined to that being a big part of training.
• 6:26
  If you put talent and hard work side by side, how would you
• 6:31
  balance those scales for you? I, I don't particularly like the
• 6:35
  word talent, but I, I sort of probably am a sort of a God
• 6:37
  fearing person at heart. So I would say that people have
• 6:40
  a natural ability. So when I first saw, say, Peter
• 6:43
  Bowl run as a 15 or 16 year old, I would have been pretty aware
• 6:48
  this guy's got pretty much as much talent as anyone on God's
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  earth. If he does the work, he's going
• 6:53
  to be exceptionally good. So I can appreciate that talent
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  does play a role with a middle class western cohort of people
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  with an endurance sport. I was acutely aware that if I
• 7:04
  did the training I could be the vast majority of them.
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  And I was equally as aware that on a football field where I was
• 7:12
  keen to be very good, but I wasn't quite big and strong
• 7:15
  enough, I had some challenges in the sense that there were some
• 7:19
  guys that were were more capable than me.
• 7:22
  So I think the great thing about having a broad exposure is you
• 7:25
  have the humility of understanding the things that
• 7:28
  you weren't good at, that you tried really hard at and that
• 7:30
  you learnt a lot from. And then eventually you tend to
• 7:34
  find your way to the things that you have more quote UN quote
• 7:37
  talent for because eventually everybody wants to move into
• 7:40
  spaces where they feel they can become most expansive and
• 7:43
  limitless. So for me, that ended up being
• 7:46
  running an endurance sport because that's what I was
• 7:48
  inherently most suited to. And if I put in work, I saw the
• 7:51
  greatest return on that work. So at what age did you move from
• 7:55
  just kind of having a dabble at running to getting on the bike
• 7:59
  and kind of taking that training seriously?
• 8:01
  Because I guess you you're most well known as an athlete for
• 8:05
  being in the in duathlon, aren't you?
• 8:08
  So I mean, I think my upbringing was really broad and I don't
• 8:12
  think I ever really specialized. Like I was in the state
• 8:15
  development team for cricket up to under 16.
• 8:19
  So I played a lot of cricket. I was representing E Roman in
• 8:24
  football, but very much on the fringes of that district
• 8:27
  football. We had E Romano where I play
• 8:30
  junior football, we had Ben Cousins and a lot of very we
• 8:34
  were winning most of the like junior Waffle competitions and I
• 8:39
  was super eager, super hard working, but just didn't quite
• 8:42
  have that that physicality. I suppose I was a very late
• 8:47
  developer physically. So I was just sort of wasn't
• 8:50
  able to, you know, be what I wanted to be on the football
• 8:53
  field. And with basketball, it was a
• 8:55
  little bit the same because I was so slight and I was also
• 8:58
  much more academic than a lot of my mates.
• 9:00
  So we had a, a basketball program in Wilton where I grew
• 9:04
  up, which we were training with our wobble team, which is like
• 9:07
  the state domestic plus at school.
• 9:09
  And so a lot of the best basketballers were at our
• 9:12
  school. And so if you were the 10th best
• 9:14
  basketballer at your school, you were pretty clear that you
• 9:17
  weren't on a pathway to AUS college or a, or a state team
• 9:21
  because it was right in front of you, the guys that were.
• 9:24
  So I suppose about year 11, because I was quite academic, my
• 9:29
  teachers sort of pushed me towards the academic stream.
• 9:32
  And at that time, I sort of now I look back, that was probably
• 9:35
  where I started to move more towards running and triathlon.
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  So it was initially more towards a bit more serious running and
• 9:42
  straight away I had a bit of success.
• 9:44
  But soon after I had my first injury and then in year 12, I
• 9:48
  started doing triathlon because of a running injury and made the
• 9:50
  state triathlon team. So I was just always super
• 9:53
  active, right? I was always moving.
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  I didn't know what I wanted to be.
• 9:57
  Whatever I did, I tried to be the best I could be at and I was
• 10:00
  very driven, hard working. And so I always felt like I
• 10:06
  enjoyed pushing myself and competing, but I hadn't yet
• 10:09
  learned the discipline and the structure of training because
• 10:11
  coaching and like good quality support wasn't really as readily
• 10:15
  available then as it was now. It was more just like you saw a
• 10:18
  race you, you read some books like The Law of Running or
• 10:22
  something about Rob D Costello or Steve Moneguetti.
• 10:24
  Invariably you did too much and got injured and and tried to
• 10:29
  learn as you went along a little bit more than you do now, where
• 10:31
  you've got access to more coaches and information at your
• 10:33
  fingertips. That's interesting.
• 10:35
  Then I guess that where you're saying in the team based sports,
• 10:39
  you maybe suffered a little bit because of your late
• 10:42
  development. But with with cycling, I mean, I
• 10:46
  don't know too much, but it's a lot about your, your power
• 10:49
  output, isn't it? So when you did eventually have
• 10:51
  that growth spurt, that must have been quite kind to you if
• 10:55
  you're able to be very competitive on the bike.
• 10:58
  Yeah, cycling. Cycling was, was something that
• 11:01
  like I felt like a natural. It was what you put in, you get
• 11:07
  out. It was quite a, it was
• 11:08
  relatively linear improvement for me.
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  So I never sort of fell in love with cycling.
• 11:14
  It ended up being a mechanism for me to be able to compete as
• 11:18
  a professional athlete. I mean, we could probably jump
• 11:20
  ahead to it, but basically, I mean, I, I been a state champion
• 11:23
  runner. I was very happy.
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  We just competing in Perth. I'd never really left.
• 11:27
  But then when I started working, I was moving more down towards
• 11:31
  the career as a physiopath. And then around 2008, my brother
• 11:35
  died in a car accident. And I think when that happens, I
• 11:39
  think then I wanted to, I wanted to move.
• 11:43
  I would process the emotion of that by wanting to move.
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  And so I sort of rationalized like how, how fast do I think I
• 11:50
  could run? And my best guess would be 1350,
• 11:53
  I didn't think I'd started running early enough to be an
• 11:56
  Olympic level runner. And so I thought, well, I can
• 11:59
  either go to Sydney every year and Melbourne every year into
• 12:02
  the Melbourne track Classic, the city track, so he can try to win
• 12:05
  a number of state titles. But I don't in my heart of
• 12:08
  hearts believe I'm good enough to be an Olympian in running.
• 12:12
  Or I can see a mate of mine who at that stage, Paul Mackay had
• 12:17
  been fifth in the World Drathlon championships, who was a tough,
• 12:21
  hard working guy. But in my heart of hearts I
• 12:23
  thought, well, if he can get fifth, I think I can get fit,
• 12:27
  you know what I mean? I can travel around Europe like
• 12:30
  he was doing. I had a lot of respect for how
• 12:33
  hard he worked, but also my heart of hearts thought, well, I
• 12:36
  know that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm capable of competing at a
• 12:39
  similar level there. So the duathlon probably came
• 12:42
  about as quite a it was more like, I don't want to be sitting
• 12:46
  in an office working. I've realized, life short, what
• 12:48
  do I want to do? I've always loved sport.
• 12:50
  I want to test myself and be a professional athlete for a
• 12:53
  period of time and see how far I can push it.
• 12:55
  I don't want to just live a life where I've got regrets of not
• 12:58
  having had a good crack. And I literally weighed it up
• 13:01
  like that. Do I want to go try to be the
• 13:03
  fastest runner I can be? And both had pros and cons, but
• 13:06
  I just chose to pursue duathlon and, and that was sort of it.
• 13:10
  I started cycling pretty much 100 KS on the bike a few days
• 13:13
  later and built up into the duathlon from there.
• 13:18
  So yeah, it, it's sort of, I had exposure to cycling, I had
• 13:22
  exposure to triathlon, I had exposure to running.
• 13:25
  I had an example in Paul of someone who is one of the best
• 13:27
  in the world, who I knew I could relate to.
• 13:30
  And once my mind was made-up, I was like, well, that's that's
• 13:33
  what I'm going to try to become. I want to try to become the
• 13:34
  World World Drathon Champion and off I went.
• 13:37
  Yeah, and if you're saying about being able to process emotion
• 13:40
  through training, then being on the bike just allowed you to get
• 13:43
  out there for hours as well. Yeah.
• 13:46
  And I think it's sort of is always hard to get objectivity
• 13:50
  when you're reflecting or or trying to contextualize past
• 13:54
  events because it's only a version that you're sort of
• 13:56
  trying to reconstruct. But certainly whenever I want to
• 14:00
  process where I'm at now, I like to be alone and to have time to
• 14:06
  really reflect and be moving, but not necessarily moving as
• 14:08
  quick anymore like before. I was probably running away from
• 14:11
  it a bit now, I realized, but moving and being active was a
• 14:15
  chance for me to sort of be with my thoughts, be alone and try to
• 14:19
  rationalize what was happening, what I wanted to take from it.
• 14:24
  And also just have time to reflect on some good times you
• 14:26
  had in, you know, with him or, or those sorts of things.
• 14:30
  Now there's those 3 hour cycles of 30 minute jogs around
• 14:35
  herdsmen. Yeah, literally, I look at it
• 14:38
  and I mean, anybody who knows me, I mean, now I probably think
• 14:42
  with meditation I probably transcended the ADHD, but would
• 14:45
  have said that I had ADHD. So the three hour rides were
• 14:50
  like purgatory for me because I like to get things done quickly.
• 14:53
  I don't necessarily. I would train as a means to
• 14:55
  compete and I didn't have the discipline that a lot of the
• 14:57
  athletes that I coach have. I needed.
• 15:02
  It took a lot for me to have that discipline.
• 15:04
  Like when I was competing in duathlon, I had a great mate,
• 15:07
  James Attard, who used to live with us, who was much more
• 15:10
  disciplined than me. And he helped me be able to have
• 15:14
  more discipline than I'd have on my own.
• 15:15
  Whereas I would wake up in Spain and go to the coffee shop and
• 15:18
  three coffees later be delaying going for a bike ride.
• 15:21
  He would, you know, he would crack the whip, we'd get out the
• 15:24
  door. And I was probably inherently
• 15:26
  more competitive than Jimmy when the race gun went off.
• 15:29
  I was probably much more inclined to want to really
• 15:31
  suffer, to try to win. But in terms of discipline, he
• 15:34
  taught me a lot in terms of how I needed to train to be
• 15:36
  successful and. Whilst all this is going on, I
• 15:39
  was like a a young fleet. What's your relationship like
• 15:43
  with partying and stuff? Did you have any interest in
• 15:46
  that? I think like at university I
• 15:49
  probably found my feet a little bit because I went from being
• 15:52
  the smallest kid in school to being 6 foot and developing a
• 15:56
  two or three-step on the dance floor.
• 15:59
  But once I sort of once I sort of saw, you know, like I'm
• 16:03
  always sort of watching and trying to observe the patterns
• 16:06
  where I am, I sort of, I didn't see much good happening after
• 16:09
  12:00. And I saw that, you know, it
• 16:12
  wasn't really something that I had much interest in staying out
• 16:15
  later. I would if I went out when I was
• 16:17
  younger and I had, let's say I was interested in a girl.
• 16:21
  I was, I was interested in a girl.
• 16:22
  I wasn't interested in girls, you know what I mean?
• 16:24
  Like I would be very much intentional about what I was
• 16:28
  even then. Like I didn't need just to go
• 16:30
  for the sake of it, you know what I mean?
• 16:31
  If I was out with the boys having fun, I was out with the
• 16:33
  boys having fun. If I was out, you know, with a
• 16:37
  uni event like my wife I met at uni, I pretty much knew straight
• 16:41
  away I was interested. So my focus tended to to be a
• 16:45
  bit more in her direction than than a general need to stay out
• 16:49
  and and do too much. At what point then did you start
• 16:53
  to go to Europe with the Geo Athlon?
• 16:55
  Because I've seen, I was doing some digging in the results
• 16:57
  yesterday and seeing you, you racing in Ireland.
• 17:00
  Yeah, it was around 2000 and 2008 I think 2000 and seven,
• 17:06
  2007 I went and started. My mate Cam Johnson was at the
• 17:12
  time married to Benita Johnson. He was a physio as well and
• 17:15
  Benita Johnson was a world cross country champion.
• 17:17
  He came back to Perth to do some more study and so I went and
• 17:21
  worked with MTC and got the chance to also work with some of
• 17:25
  the Schumacher's sort of group loosely.
• 17:28
  And also a guy now called Dan Lloyd who started the Global
• 17:31
  Recycling Network and was based in Teddington and working a bit
• 17:35
  with Rob Mottram, Bonita, a few of the athletes while Cam was
• 17:38
  back doing some study. And so I did a few running
• 17:43
  races, do Athlons then, and then probably more galvanized a long
• 17:46
  term commitment, like I said, after my brother died, where I
• 17:49
  was, you know, much more focused on it, probably partly out of
• 17:53
  necessity, partly out of having a bit of exposure and feeling
• 17:56
  like I wanted to explore it more fully.
• 17:58
  So the first year we went back, we lived in because my son was
• 18:03
  born of at the end of 2007, December the 10th, 2008, we
• 18:12
  lived in France. But basically we're living in a
• 18:14
  car going from race to race around Europe.
• 18:17
  And in doing that we ended up doing a race in the north of
• 18:20
  Spain, in the Basque Country where I met France was cool, but
• 18:24
  I didn't find as much synergy with the French environment as I
• 18:29
  did the Spanish. Spanish was a bit more rough,
• 18:31
  industrial middle class, like hard working, tough people.
• 18:34
  And I found a really good synergy with people there.
• 18:38
  And so I started racing for a Spanish team in the Basque
• 18:41
  Country called Her Day by or her Day Try, which was in the, it's
• 18:46
  like a little inlet near Mandaka, which surfers would
• 18:48
  know. And they had a big trail running
• 18:51
  and a big duathlon and triathlon scene there.
• 18:53
  It's just tough, hard working people that loved endurance
• 18:57
  sport. And so I raced for that team for
• 18:58
  the next, I think three years. And basically the team would
• 19:02
  give us a house to live in for the time that I was there, which
• 19:06
  was very generous of them, and I would race the local races there
• 19:10
  and then travel to France or other parts of the continent
• 19:14
  where races were on. How did the way that you trained
• 19:17
  at the time differ to how these Europeans were training?
• 19:20
  Was it similar or? Well, so I very much when I was
• 19:23
  in Australia, I actually only did Lydiard style aerobic
• 19:27
  training. So I did no intervals, no,
• 19:31
  literally I, I would basically just divide my year into two.
• 19:34
  Like between April and September was my in season and between
• 19:40
  sort of September and March I would have a bit of a break and
• 19:45
  then start to to build my aerobic training through until
• 19:48
  Christmas, jump on a lot of group rides.
• 19:50
  I didn't do a lot of interval riding either, just riding
• 19:52
  groups. And then when I got to Europe, I
• 19:55
  would start to do the races and some threshold work.
• 19:59
  And I did that so that I didn't feel as though I had to try to
• 20:02
  maintain my peak form when I was working back in Australia.
• 20:06
  But when I got to Europe and I had more time to recover, I
• 20:10
  could also almost guarantee that my first race would be my worst
• 20:13
  race because I'd come off a aerobic base without having any
• 20:16
  exposure to lactate or any exposure to.
• 20:20
  Any sort of intense training, but I was mentally then able to
• 20:24
  fully focus on competing and build momentum for in the first
• 20:27
  part of the year, normally the European Championships and then
• 20:30
  the second part of that season up to September, the World
• 20:33
  Championship. So it was more like Lydiard was
• 20:36
  probably a big influence for me back then, like when I was in
• 20:38
  Perth was just literally ride five times a week, run 7 * a
• 20:42
  week, no intervals. And off that sort of training I
• 20:45
  would run typically very low, 15 minutes or 31 minutes for 10K.
• 20:51
  And then when I went to Europe and started doing the intervals
• 20:53
  and started to not have to work and just became fully focused, I
• 20:57
  could, as I started to race every week, become much quicker
• 21:01
  than that. So I mean, we'll get to today's
• 21:04
  training philosophies later, but now it's very scientific and a
• 21:08
  deliberate approach, isn't it? So perhaps it didn't start out
• 21:12
  exactly like that and you've just kind of expanded your
• 21:15
  knowledge throughout the years. Yeah, I think I'm not.
• 21:19
  Like I said to you, I'm not as inherently disciplined as some
• 21:23
  people like I I also had to be aware that I needed to be able
• 21:27
  to sustain the training. So a lot of a lot of what I did
• 21:32
  needed to be, I needed to sort of be able to enjoy a bit more
• 21:37
  balance when I came back. I'm not as structured as some
• 21:40
  people are that I, that I coach or whatever, but I've sort of
• 21:44
  needed to find what worked for me.
• 21:45
  And it wasn't the same structure and coaching offerings that that
• 21:50
  we have now that we're in place. So I sort of just found what
• 21:54
  worked for me. And even though I knew the
• 21:55
  science I would have applied in a way that worked for the family
• 21:58
  and worked for me. And when I came back to Perth,
• 22:02
  for instance, like my, my, my brain always, if I'm doing the
• 22:08
  same thing, a lot of times, not so much now actually, because
• 22:11
  I've, I've probably learned to sort of be very present with
• 22:13
  what I'm doing. But certainly when I was
• 22:15
  younger, I didn't like to, if I'd won two or three state
• 22:19
  championships, some guys need to win 10 but don't want to then go
• 22:22
  to the national championships. Once I've won 3 or 4 state
• 22:25
  championships, I want to test myself at the national.
• 22:27
  Once I've won a national, I want to go to the world.
• 22:28
  My brain and my natural inclination was when I was
• 22:32
  younger to explore being limitless to the extent that I
• 22:35
  could. And so I didn't like staying
• 22:38
  still in the sense of trying to just be content with doing the
• 22:42
  same thing again and again. So I needed to sort of try to
• 22:46
  expand and test myself in different ways.
• 22:48
  And that meant that if when I got back to Perth between
• 22:51
  September and March, there was a fun run that was on a Sunday
• 22:54
  morning at 6:00 and I'd ask my wife and my my son to be in
• 22:59
  Europe. First six months, I wasn't about
• 23:02
  to leave the bed when I wasn't really motivated to go to the
• 23:04
  race. That's just how I was.
• 23:07
  I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that's, that was sort
• 23:09
  of how it was. It allowed me to sort of
• 23:11
  decompress, get a bit of a routine, have my family and,
• 23:14
  and, and and work feel as though they were a bit of a focus
• 23:17
  because people are trusting you to help them with healthcare and
• 23:21
  and then find a way of them when I went to Europe, becoming more
• 23:24
  fully focused. When you reflect back on your
• 23:26
  career as an athlete, what is your most proudest achievements
• 23:29
  or your best race you would say? Well, my last race and it was
• 23:33
  interesting because you know, like I think in life when you
• 23:37
  sort of my last race, I got third of the European
• 23:39
  Championships in Limerick where my daughter was at, my second
• 23:43
  child was about to be born. And I could get into a mindset
• 23:46
  when I was fully focused where I would touch on a degree of focus
• 23:52
  that was almost so tunnel vision that it would have been my wife
• 23:55
  might argue that it was approaching narcissism.
• 23:57
  When I start, when I get into that mindset of trying to win
• 24:00
  things as part of you comes out that I didn't always like in
• 24:04
  myself. So I explored that on that day.
• 24:07
  I had a day where I was 20 seconds away from winning the
• 24:09
  European Championships. I was completely on for the full
• 24:13
  race. We ran just over 30 minutes for
• 24:15
  the 1st 10K. We rode very fast around the
• 24:18
  last 5K and just on 15 minutes flat.
• 24:21
  And it was very, very challenging.
• 24:23
  But also with my daughter about to be born, I thought, look, I,
• 24:28
  I don't know if I can push that hard and also become this person
• 24:32
  that I need to become to compete like that with two kids.
• 24:37
  So it was time for me to sort of wrap it up.
• 24:39
  So it was good in a way that I'd reached a level that I felt was
• 24:43
  I was very satisfied with, to the point where I don't really
• 24:45
  even think about it much unless you'd ask me.
• 24:48
  I don't feel as though there's anything I left undone.
• 24:51
  But I also realized that the parts of my personality that I
• 24:54
  needed to access to become as competitive as I was, there
• 24:58
  weren't parts of myself that I needed to continue to explore.
• 25:02
  I guess recognizing that in yourself then, does that give
• 25:05
  you like a whole new level of respect for like the the elites
• 25:08
  who are at the top of their game and sacrificing absolutely
• 25:11
  everything to be there? Every single thing is a trade
• 25:16
  off and I don't renounce or glorify anything.
• 25:20
  I think everything is a chance to explore and learn and then
• 25:23
  choose now, choose, OK, do I want to persist with this or do
• 25:27
  I need to choose to move on from this?
• 25:30
  And so I think I understand to some extent some elements of it
• 25:35
  and I probably really admire. I sort of have sought out people
• 25:39
  who achieve similar or much greater success, who have a more
• 25:43
  balanced temperament. And so when I look at sort of
• 25:46
  say the young Australian kid, Cam Cam Myers, I see when he
• 25:51
  first came to Leonora as a 16 year old, I see a really poised
• 25:55
  young guy who doesn't have a lot of ego, who is exceptionally
• 25:58
  good. It seems to come to him a lot
• 26:00
  easier and he doesn't seem to be as forceful to have to, to get
• 26:08
  to the level to be such a an outstanding athlete at such a
• 26:11
  young age. So he just may be more
• 26:13
  disciplined, right. So if I had had a coach who was
• 26:16
  a military soil coach who hadn't been able to break and
• 26:19
  discipline some of the habits I had of being a bit of a
• 26:23
  inconsistent like person with training, and I had a had good
• 26:27
  structured coaching, I might have been able to epigenetically
• 26:30
  mold my behaviour a bit earlier and been able to sustain a
• 26:33
  higher level of training and more success without having to
• 26:36
  be so, you know, assertive and competitive to bring that out on
• 26:41
  race day. So it depends a lot on the
• 26:44
  environments you find yourself in.
• 26:46
  But I think for the athletes that are more ego driven, who I
• 26:49
  do see that they're forcing it a bit.
• 26:51
  Yeah, I can see, I can see parts of that that I understand also
• 26:55
  for them how hard that is. And I can ask them a question
• 26:59
  that might allow them to decompress a little bit.
• 27:02
  But I generally like working with athletes who are less like
• 27:04
  I was, who are more disciplined, because I'm naturally curious to
• 27:08
  learn about their personality and view.
• 27:10
  So someone like Dean Menzies, I've found a great deal of
• 27:14
  insight from how he goes about what he does because it's very
• 27:18
  different to me. My wife is very different to me.
• 27:21
  I like learning off people who see the world through a
• 27:23
  different perspective so I can broaden my own view.
• 27:27
  Whilst all of this is going on with the career and stuff, are
• 27:30
  you studying or does that come later the the degree in
• 27:33
  physiotherapy? I'd already got the degree and
• 27:37
  literally I'm not a structured learner.
• 27:39
  I very much found, again, I've found getting that degree wasn't
• 27:45
  easy for me. I had to sort of really be
• 27:47
  disciplined to focus and get get through that.
• 27:50
  I like just being able to learn off people.
• 27:52
  So I like being around people and getting the chance to to
• 27:56
  form a relationship with different people from different
• 28:00
  backgrounds and broaden my knowledge base through
• 28:03
  storytelling and through question asking.
• 28:07
  So after I got through uni, I probably haven't been the most
• 28:10
  disciplined. I haven't thought of going back
• 28:12
  and doing a postgrad, put it that way.
• 28:14
  Have you always been that way, inclined to be so inquisitive
• 28:16
  about people? Yeah, yeah.
• 28:19
  I think it's always been my nature because it's
• 28:22
  storytelling. Like when I was a young boy, it
• 28:24
  was Alan Border with Cricket or so I've always been like, most
• 28:27
  young boys love superheroes, right?
• 28:29
  If I ask you who was your superhero?
• 28:31
  Was a kid first of all in a cartoon or, you know, mass media
• 28:35
  sense, who was your superhero? Other.
• 28:38
  Man. And then who was your sporting
• 28:40
  superhero? Steven Jarrell, Which you know,
• 28:42
  Steven Jarrell. Yeah, yeah, he was Liverpool,
• 28:44
  wasn't he? The red?
• 28:46
  Yeah, yeah. So I think as a young boy, like
• 28:49
  who loves sport in a middle class suburb, like that's your
• 28:52
  superheroes are athletes. My superhero was Alan Border.
• 28:56
  He was so tough and gritty and he would have such a solid rear
• 29:01
  guard that I just loved watching him back.
• 29:03
  So I used to watch cricket for hours.
• 29:05
  And so when you see human sporting theatre is always more
• 29:09
  exciting for me, or human theatre is a much, much more
• 29:12
  exciting then then using my intellect to dissect a problem.
• 29:17
  Because I've always sort of realised you can't drink the
• 29:20
  ocean with a straw. So if you want to try to think
• 29:22
  you can solve a problem, there's more to the world than the brain
• 29:25
  can ever fully intellectualise. It's a human experience that we
• 29:29
  have. It's not a intellectual
• 29:31
  exercise. So when I'm dissecting a
• 29:33
  problem, I've never sort of felt that I'm able to get to a point
• 29:37
  where I'm content. Because when you look at how
• 29:40
  study, intellectual study works, it tends to keep dissecting
• 29:43
  things down to a point where you can't really the correlation
• 29:47
  that have been drawn so reduced in terms of what variables they
• 29:51
  consider that. I don't think it gives a very
• 29:53
  broadview. I like to sort of, I would the
• 29:56
  metaphor would be get up in a helicopter and look at a broader
• 29:59
  view of what's happening and try to look at what variables are at
• 30:02
  play. And I've always enjoyed being in
• 30:06
  that perspective. Not just being able to keep
• 30:09
  breaking things down into the minute detail, but to be able to
• 30:13
  understand there are people that are very good at that and ask
• 30:15
  them a question that expands my knowledge in that regard.
• 30:18
  But not want to be them, but to be content.
• 30:20
  To be me, and understand that I'm very good at seeing how
• 30:23
  variables interact and how they interact broadly, and to use my
• 30:27
  natural strength of intellect in the way that I was best designed
• 30:32
  to do it. If we look at what you learned
• 30:34
  from an academic perspective compared to yourself, when you
• 30:39
  learn about how your body interacts with training, and
• 30:43
  then when you're in the environment where you're working
• 30:46
  as a physio surrounded by other elite athletes, did you learn a
• 30:49
  lot from that environment as a physio, as a working physio?
• 30:53
  Yeah, I think humanizing people is one of the great things of
• 30:57
  asking questions because everyone or just working closely
• 31:01
  with people, like when you get to meet someone who you have
• 31:05
  looked up to, all of a sudden the, the the way you view them
• 31:09
  changes. And so I think ultimately having
• 31:12
  that ability to, you know, have different approaches to learning
• 31:16
  and different people to learn from is something I encourage
• 31:19
  sort of everybody to do. But for me, the way that works
• 31:23
  best for me is to understand like, say, when I look at
• 31:25
  running and I look at someone who's a sports scientist who
• 31:29
  hasn't run a lot, I'm acutely aware.
• 31:33
  And I don't think I'm just serving my own bias that they're
• 31:36
  blind spots are experiential and they start to become very binary
• 31:40
  in their views of what's right and wrong.
• 31:42
  When there's so many variables at play that you can never get
• 31:45
  it right or wrong. You can just get it slightly
• 31:47
  more right and slightly less wrong because there's no
• 31:51
  absolute correct way of doing anything.
• 31:53
  So when I find when people become very stressed or very
• 31:58
  fixed in their view, they become very binary and they start to
• 32:01
  say in absolute terms this and that, the world doesn't exist in
• 32:06
  that form. And I don't try to ever think
• 32:08
  that I could work it all out. I love just trying to understand
• 32:11
  more, observe correlations and and things that I see that seem
• 32:16
  to to be more natural in alignment with better outcomes.
• 32:21
  And then try to then sit at home with a nice glass of whiskey and
• 32:24
  reflect on what am I seeing there?
• 32:27
  What would I take from that? How would I reconsider my
• 32:30
  approach from that? And that happens very slowly now
• 32:32
  because there's been so much time I've been watching and
• 32:35
  engaging in coaching and learning.
• 32:36
  But that's how I like to like to learn.
• 32:40
  So how did how did front runner first come about?
• 32:43
  Did it start as more of a physiotherapy movement or was
• 32:47
  that when you initially transitioned into coaching?
• 32:50
  It was front runner initially. No.
• 32:52
  So it actually started. So in 2000 and 2000 and 2001
• 32:58
  there used to be a running and cycling event in the gold fields
• 33:04
  in Leonora where we now have the Leonora Golden Gift.
• 33:06
  That was a 20K ride, 5K run and me and a few mates used to do it
• 33:10
  every year and we'd go out, do the race and then the mine went
• 33:15
  bust. They pre sold their gold at a
• 33:17
  rate that was too low to match the cost of production so they
• 33:19
  went bust. But I met the Shire president
• 33:23
  and rang him and said, oh look, why don't we organize a, some
• 33:28
  sort of a substitute event because we, all the boys all
• 33:30
  love the trip. We came up with the idea of the
• 33:32
  mile and I had to come up with a ABN and a trading name.
• 33:35
  So I called it our front runner sports management.
• 33:37
  So I literally, we organized, initially it was event
• 33:41
  management. So we organized that event.
• 33:42
  We organized what's called the Gallipoli Fun Run and we
• 33:46
  organized for quite a few years off the back of the Perth
• 33:49
  Criteria series, the Perth Mile series.
• 33:52
  So initially it was events and then I was working as a physio
• 33:55
  for someone else. Eventually that sole tradership
• 33:59
  became a A company and a company became a physio and a coaching
• 34:03
  business a bit further down the track.
• 34:04
  I, I always struggle to describe it to people, particularly in
• 34:08
  England, because everyone runs for the clubs like whatever your
• 34:12
  towns called essentially. And I'm trying to describe front
• 34:15
  runner as like, then I'd do it some sort of justice in terms of
• 34:18
  the size of what it is in Perth. So how would you talk about like
• 34:22
  what the scale it's got to? Yeah, So I suppose the way the
• 34:26
  coaching started, like I when I had a bad bike crash and broke
• 34:32
  my jaw, broke my wrist and I couldn't actually physically my
• 34:36
  right wrist, I couldn't actually do physio.
• 34:39
  So that was just after my son was born and I had to, I had to
• 34:44
  make money because we didn't have a house, we didn't have any
• 34:46
  money at all. We didn't have a brass razzoo.
• 34:48
  So I had to, I actually literally first started doing it
• 34:52
  because I had to. I, I had done some coaching at
• 34:56
  Hale School for their PSA cross country.
• 35:00
  I couldn't work as a physio. So I started working as a physio
• 35:03
  tutor for Curt and Uni at the hospitals and then because I,
• 35:07
  yeah, I was aware that my arm was pretty badly busted up and I
• 35:10
  wouldn't, didn't think that I would be able to do as much
• 35:13
  hands on physio down the track because of how bad the break
• 35:16
  was. I started coaching and we were
• 35:18
  the first people outside of Pat Carroll in Queensland in
• 35:21
  Australia to really be coaching. So I quickly got legs and grew
• 35:24
  very quickly and was a lot of fun.
• 35:27
  So it started there and then eventually, I suppose as it's
• 35:31
  grown, I've found that I'm more inclined towards the, I would
• 35:35
  say even in running businesses, I'm more of a coach with a very
• 35:38
  lateral view of the business structure rather than a boss
• 35:40
  with a hierarchical view of it. So I've, I've continued to sort
• 35:45
  of always think, well, how can we, how can we serve running as
• 35:49
  a sport and never sort of bastardize or take advantage of
• 35:54
  helping the sport, which has given us a lot and offers
• 35:57
  services that people can choose if it suits them.
• 36:00
  So from there, we've now got obviously kids programs in
• 36:03
  three, 3 levels. We've got women's only programs,
• 36:07
  we've got elite recreational triathlon.
• 36:12
  So there's a few different programs, but each person who,
• 36:15
  who manages their line has, has responsibility for a demographic
• 36:19
  or a group of people that they're most suited to managing.
• 36:23
  And so it's expanded into sort of almost like a, it's almost
• 36:27
  like a sociological experiment into the life cycle of a runner
• 36:31
  from first steps to their full potential or self mastery is how
• 36:37
  I would describe it. Like we're not necessarily
• 36:39
  always a solution, but we've always got a solution for a
• 36:42
  runner as they progress from starting out.
• 36:46
  And by having all that breadth of engagement, it's allowed me
• 36:50
  to really understand what happens when it happens,
• 36:56
  hypothesize why it happens. And now be in a position where
• 37:00
  I've sort of deferred or delegated or share
• 37:04
  responsibility for some of the commercial responsibilities that
• 37:07
  kept me away from coaching for a while.
• 37:10
  To now feel as though, OK, now I've got a good head around
• 37:12
  this. And so for me now it's really
• 37:15
  executive coaching personally or elite coaching or junior elite
• 37:18
  coaching. Because now I want my sort of
• 37:21
  time to to be fully focused on on coaching some Olympic level
• 37:25
  athletes from WA because I think that's what what I would like to
• 37:29
  to really challenge myself to do and then continue to better
• 37:33
  manage the commercial responsibilities around that
• 37:36
  with great people, but to fully focus my attention on that
• 37:39
  objective. I think you touched on it
• 37:41
  earlier when you referenced Dean and Deans mentality.
• 37:45
  So you have like a deliberate set of attributes that you can
• 37:49
  identify and people now that make you want to coach them or
• 37:53
  show you good coach ability potential.
• 37:56
  And how did you come to identify these attributes over the years
• 37:59
  of coaching? Well, I think by being sort of
• 38:02
  very curious, I could put my, I would put my hat on the fact
• 38:07
  that I don't think any coach who's working with elite
• 38:11
  athletes has done as much work with kids as what I've done in
• 38:14
  terms of kids at six years of age and then watched for 10
• 38:17
  years. Which kids?
• 38:18
  It's progress, which kids don't to the point where now I'm like,
• 38:21
  OK, I think the biggest thing is to understand the context.
• 38:25
  So if I see a kid at a primary school track stars program who's
• 38:30
  got a lot of elasticity, it looks like a jumper, I'm going
• 38:34
  to say to their parent, look, it's great your kids with me and
• 38:36
  they can continue to come to track stars.
• 38:38
  But I would recommend that kid goes a little athletics because
• 38:41
  Australia has a really great program for those skill based
• 38:44
  sports where long jump, triple jump, high jump.
• 38:46
  The kid is clearly got a natural aptitude for an event group and
• 38:51
  I'll tend to refer them to a specialist coach or a for a
• 38:54
  program very early if I think I can see a really top level
• 38:58
  ability. Not just keep them with us
• 39:00
  because it's convenient commercially to do it.
• 39:02
  Similarly, the kid who's going to be a great marathon runner
• 39:05
  won't look good. They won't.
• 39:07
  They won't stand out unless you keep going back term on term and
• 39:12
  seeing a kid who's a little bit slider smaller.
• 39:15
  They won't be sprinting fast. They won't be winning the middle
• 39:18
  distance. They won't be the best, but
• 39:19
  they'll be keeping showing up. The distance runner shows
• 39:23
  themselves by being a self motivated introvert who finds an
• 39:28
  intrinsic joy in running. And so that young person, I've
• 39:34
  got a young girl now who just won the state short course cross
• 39:37
  country. She's she's got she loves
• 39:39
  movement, she's an inward person.
• 39:42
  She's very, very gifted. She'll be a very good athlete.
• 39:44
  I can see it. I saw I can see that endurance
• 39:47
  athlete now and not many people can see it because they'll be
• 39:50
  seeing the kids that are more athletic.
• 39:51
  But the character is what's going to be defining of a
• 39:54
  distance runner. So when you see like a Jess
• 39:56
  Stenson, you can her ability to be.
• 40:00
  So consistent in the marathon. I mean, the first marathon over
• 40:03
  a decade ago I think was 231. She's born for the marathon.
• 40:06
  Dean is born for the marathon. He's a self motivated introvert
• 40:10
  who processes the world inside his own head.
• 40:12
  And so when he's going through adversity, he's good at dealing
• 40:15
  with it. Whereas if you come across a kid
• 40:17
  who's very athletic, loves to go, but then when things get
• 40:20
  tough, they want to talk about it or quit, they're never going
• 40:22
  to be a good marathon runner. So you but that will be a better
• 40:25
  middle distance runner than what Dean or or Jeff Stinson will be.
• 40:28
  So trust everyone to be themselves, but trust that you
• 40:31
  see them well and anyone who starts early, who keeps going
• 40:34
  gets very good at what they're meant to be good at.
• 40:36
  So I think that the identification of talent is 95%
• 40:41
  of an adult gait is shown in a child before they're 5.
• 40:44
  So when I'm looking at a kid at track stars, I can already see
• 40:47
  their biomechanical future to a significant extent.
• 40:50
  What's the natural genetic attributes they're given?
• 40:52
  And then with the right stimulus of epigenetic exposure to a
• 40:56
  training environment or a group, what would be God's gift to this
• 41:00
  kid that I can sort of somewhat predict that would mean that I
• 41:05
  need to either say, stay with front runner or go to another
• 41:07
  group or go to little athletics or push them in a direction.
• 41:10
  And a lot of the kids might be wanting to be a footballer or a
• 41:12
  basketball or something else. So you're just playing a small
• 41:15
  adjunctive role to their primary focus, right?
• 41:17
  But the ability to sort of predictively model makes me
• 41:21
  think that if I had a coach Dean instead of at 28 at 15, which is
• 41:26
  why I'm now trying to coach 15 year olds, I wonder how fast he
• 41:29
  would run. Because I don't think
• 41:30
  psychologically I've I've met someone who is as adept at being
• 41:36
  accountable and disciplined to a process of psychological self
• 41:40
  mastery as Dean. But physically, there's a few
• 41:43
  things that limit his ceiling of potential that physiologically,
• 41:47
  like the VO2 Max needs to be developed in a high school
• 41:49
  athlete. You can progress it in an adult,
• 41:51
  but when someone goes through puberty and their heart and
• 41:54
  lungs grow, there's an opportunity there for you to
• 41:57
  create a big engine and a massive engine.
• 42:01
  And so often times you have to really get that window to be
• 42:07
  really defining one in terms of developing a high VO2 Max.
• 42:10
  Whereas the younger part before puberty, it's more than
• 42:13
  neuromuscular development of speed and technique and agility
• 42:17
  and and A and a psychological confidence in the task itself
• 42:21
  for the person to feel a sense of efficacy.
• 42:24
  Where do you think your biggest inspiration in terms of coaching
• 42:27
  has come from? Because I know you've kind of
• 42:30
  met some interesting people and I'll let you talk about that,
• 42:33
  but how have you kind of gone all the way around to come back
• 42:37
  to where you are today? Well, I think like we talked
• 42:39
  about with sport, it's always storytelling.
• 42:42
  So you know, Cosmo to finding Mike Tyson in a jail and
• 42:45
  training him to be world champion.
• 42:46
  I remember watching Mike Tyson when he was staring at guys
• 42:49
  before he fought and being scared 10,000 kilometres away.
• 42:53
  You know, like I think those stories like of someone taking
• 42:58
  coaching someone to be the champion of the world is very
• 43:03
  exciting. So with that was Pat Clohesi and
• 43:05
  Rod de Castella. Like I got the chance to spend a
• 43:08
  few nights. Gosh, I didn't even know when it
• 43:10
  was with Pat Clohesi at his place a few years ago.
• 43:12
  Just a just a beautiful, benevolent bloke who was very
• 43:17
  good athlete himself, very humble, very quiet.
• 43:20
  Dick Telford is extremely like I've had a few times where I'm
• 43:24
  coming at a problem, seeing a pattern and yeah, that makes
• 43:28
  sense. I'll ask him a question and it's
• 43:30
  not like it's all the time, but the way he understands it, I'm
• 43:33
  like, oh, that, that makes sense.
• 43:35
  He just reframe how I look at it.
• 43:36
  So I like to seek out sage type wisdom.
• 43:39
  I don't like to to spend as much time trying to gauge the
• 43:42
  perspective of a peer. I'll probably try to go to a a
• 43:47
  senior counsel to use a legal term and get someone who I think
• 43:51
  has more experience than me and trusted that experience.
• 43:54
  If they've been passionate and directional for a really long
• 43:57
  period of time with anything that that will be quite
• 44:00
  masterful in helping me to understand the situation better.
• 44:03
  So Dick Telford, Pat Glahessey. But I love the stories of
• 44:07
  success. I love, I don't know, sport can
• 44:09
  move you to tears like that When you see someone like when John
• 44:11
  Stephenson, who I've known since he was a kid, won the
• 44:13
  Commonwealth Games, you know, that was fantastic when I saw,
• 44:19
  you know, different races, like where you see someone find the
• 44:23
  best version of themself and do something sensational.
• 44:26
  Andrew Lloyd at the Commonwealth Games with, you know, you know,
• 44:29
  John and Googie, those sporting moments.
• 44:32
  I suppose you you you do link the coach to the to the athletes
• 44:36
  success and I'm always curious to to hear both version from the
• 44:39
  coach and the athlete of what happened there.
• 44:41
  I know one of my one of my friends from England was looking
• 44:45
  at some of my training last year and he had been reading about
• 44:49
  the marathon himself and he come across Canova and he actually
• 44:53
  messaged me and he was like, hey, have you heard of this guy
• 44:55
  Renato Canova? Like a lot of the stuff you're
• 44:58
  doing looks similar to like kind of the stuff he talks about.
• 45:01
  And I know you, you had a chance to spend a couple of hours or a
• 45:05
  day with him. So how did that come about?
• 45:07
  Yeah. Well, so obviously I'd read a
• 45:10
  bit about his specificity in the marathon training.
• 45:14
  And I think he's he's sort of a forbearer to sort of like
• 45:17
  psychologically the marathon feels very hard, but
• 45:20
  physiologically it's relatively moderate.
• 45:22
  If you take away the fact that there's a a finite fuel source
• 45:26
  of glycogen that if someone's very good at the marathon,
• 45:29
  they're utilizing at a rate where they need to replenish it.
• 45:33
  And even if you can train them to burn fat, well, they're still
• 45:35
  going to run into issues with glycogen unless they can fuel,
• 45:40
  get fuel to to help counterbalance it a bit.
• 45:42
  So he he though understood, I think that in a way that made a
• 45:48
  lot of sense to me that the psychological fear that the
• 45:52
  athletes had was transferring to the coaches.
• 45:54
  So coaches were becoming very nervous about like almost like
• 45:59
  mystical about how to prepare for a marathon.
• 46:01
  And they were doing all sorts of neurotic things because they
• 46:04
  weren't confident. And he was just like, well, if
• 46:06
  you do something that more directly correlates, even like
• 46:09
  mathematically with the demands of the task, the athlete won't
• 46:14
  won't only be more confident, they'll perform better.
• 46:16
  And so that's where the higher degree of specificity comes in.
• 46:19
  We're in our training, we start to take a good general
• 46:22
  conditioning and convert it to being much closer to race
• 46:27
  specific stress in that specific part of the preparation.
• 46:30
  And the major benefit to that is actually psychophysiological.
• 46:33
  It's the, the athlete feels that the training has a higher
• 46:36
  correlation with the race and therefore thinks less because
• 46:40
  they have a deeper confidence that they're prepared for the
• 46:42
  task. And, and, and I'm speaking to
• 46:45
  sports psychologists that link it similar to the military.
• 46:48
  Like if you're going to be in the SAS, you're going to do
• 46:50
  simulations of the military war zone.
• 46:52
  There's a natural reticence to want to do it, but you have to.
• 46:55
  And so it just sort of calls out the elephant in the room and
• 46:58
  deals with what it is that needs to be done rather than be
• 47:02
  fearful of it. Be a quick synopsis.
• 47:05
  They're training in terms of a marathon build for an
• 47:09
  established athlete. That's one thing I've noticed.
• 47:12
  It's very deliberate and very periodized, isn't it?
• 47:15
  You target different energy systems for specific periods of
• 47:18
  time and you kind of build this overall picture that allows you
• 47:22
  to to compete at the marathon. Yeah.
• 47:24
  And it's sort of when you're working with athletes that work,
• 47:28
  everything is about context. And I try to sort of, we always,
• 47:32
  always try to get more and more detail in the context.
• 47:34
  I don't coach any runners that are absolutely full time
• 47:38
  runners, right? They're working there, got
• 47:41
  families, many of them. So I have to accept that life
• 47:45
  will throw variability at them. So the training has to be
• 47:47
  relatively conservative in the general preparation.
• 47:52
  And over time with someone like Dean, we spend a lot more time
• 47:56
  in the upper aerobic or the upper zone too type work in our
• 48:01
  long runs to be more conditioned to handle a bit more
• 48:04
  specificity. And I wouldn't necessarily do
• 48:06
  that with someone who's running their first marathon.
• 48:08
  So the context is sort of everything.
• 48:10
  And and the danger with group training is people want to do
• 48:13
  what the guy they look up to the most is doing, and sometimes
• 48:16
  that's too much for them. So there's always the
• 48:17
  juxtaposition of different load tolerances within a group and
• 48:20
  you're trying to juggle the benefits of the group with the
• 48:22
  loading of the athlete. But generally, yeah, we want to
• 48:25
  build a very good general capacity physiologically, teach
• 48:29
  the body to oxidize fat well, train the gut to absorb
• 48:32
  carbohydrate while we're running and then do a few really acute
• 48:36
  polarized high intensity or high specificity marathon sessions.
• 48:41
  And I think like in the 800, the Fast 8 track club, Justin
• 48:47
  Rinaldi does really similar specificity at the 800 and he's
• 48:51
  having, I think it's just a logical approach, right?
• 48:53
  Hit the guys at the intensity, they're going to race that and
• 48:56
  let the body adapt that what it is that they have to do to be
• 49:01
  successful at that event group. And his successor, I find it
• 49:04
  really fascinating to watch just how many guys now he's got
• 49:08
  running really well. I think it's a great example of
• 49:11
  great coaching where he's coming up with a very logical,
• 49:15
  mathematical almost approach and the results are logical and at a
• 49:19
  very, very high level. So whatever event group you're
• 49:22
  working with, you have to sort of layer an ideal scenario,
• 49:26
  which is what would an absolute professional athlete be able to
• 49:29
  handle? Then what would an athlete who
• 49:31
  I'm at be able to handle relative to that and where is
• 49:34
  this particular athlete on their athletic journey?
• 49:36
  In terms of loading with Dean, he's run probably 70 or 80,000
• 49:41
  kilometers. His durability is very high.
• 49:43
  Someone who's only run 5 or 10,000 kilometers trying to
• 49:46
  train like him, It's not going to work as well because they're
• 49:49
  not as durable yet. That was one thing I picked up
• 49:51
  on when we would do some of those specific marathon
• 49:55
  sessions. You would say afterwards to
• 49:58
  ensure that anything you do in the next 4872 hours is at a very
• 50:02
  low heart rate because your cortisone levels are going to be
• 50:05
  so high for this. It's such a high risk time that
• 50:08
  you need to recover properly. Yeah.
• 50:10
  So the inflammatory markers, the stress hormones all go into a
• 50:16
  situation where your immune system is much more at risk and
• 50:20
  your musculoskeletal system is much more at risk.
• 50:22
  So again, if someone's really conditioned and they're running
• 50:27
  a, an ultra marathon, you, you might run 5% less intense and
• 50:31
  choose to go again because they need to be able to deal with
• 50:33
  that amount of inflammatory marker and cortisol.
• 50:36
  Again, it completely depends on the athlete and the goal, but
• 50:40
  for that specific context, I felt that that was the right
• 50:45
  message for the marathon runner because it is still relatively
• 50:48
  intense. But again, if that was an ultra
• 50:50
  runner or a half marathon runner, the feedback and the
• 50:53
  type of prescription of exercise would be different.
• 50:55
  So I think the big thing with coaching is that you use very
• 50:58
  broad principles, but a very deep understanding of context
• 51:03
  and Physiology and bio mechanics of the event the athlete is
• 51:06
  trying to be successful at, to try to prescribe exercise that
• 51:09
  has a very high specificity relative to that event.
• 51:13
  And if you just imagine and that coaching is always just three
• 51:15
  things, specificity, progressive overload and reversibility.
• 51:19
  And so ultimately what is the Physiology of the event this
• 51:23
  athlete is choosing to do? What is the basis of load that
• 51:27
  this person brings to me as a precedent?
• 51:30
  So that the progressive overload needs to be something that you
• 51:34
  perceive to be appropriate for that particular athletes
• 51:37
  athletic history. And if you overcook everything,
• 51:42
  it's reversible. So you have to be aware of risk.
• 51:45
  And we always, I always try to have those three key reference
• 51:51
  points and that allows me to reflect and think, OK, if I'm
• 51:54
  training at a young middle distance 1500m runner, what do I
• 51:59
  think for this age of their development is most appropriate
• 52:02
  for them to be the best 1500m runner they're going to be in 10
• 52:06
  years time? And for that young girl who's
• 52:08
  prepubescent, it is. Let's make sure this girl loves
• 52:12
  running and is very, very fast and has a bit of aerobic
• 52:16
  training to be fit. And know that if I give her more
• 52:19
  load every year and add weight training in when she goes
• 52:22
  through puberty, that by the time this girl gets to 17, I'm
• 52:25
  going to have a girl who's ready to go.
• 52:27
  And really, you know, it's, it's like you can never perfect it,
• 52:31
  but it's the best job in the world, put it that way, because
• 52:34
  you're always trying to model. How are we going to bring out
• 52:37
  the best version of this person? And when you get people that are
• 52:41
  really committed, it's a great privilege to try to help them
• 52:44
  bring forth that that potential. Essentially, it's like trial and
• 52:48
  error over and over again, and then you keep refining the
• 52:50
  methodology. You're never going to get it
• 52:53
  right every time, but you don't want to get it wrong twice the
• 52:56
  same way, you know? So you've got to keep.
• 52:59
  Yeah, you've got to reflect. I spend a lot of time what
• 53:02
  works, what doesn't. What am I doing?
• 53:04
  Why am I doing it? What am I observing?
• 53:07
  And that makes it a really, it's like a really fun challenge.
• 53:10
  It's a really enjoyable vocation.
• 53:12
  I'm really happy that now I can focus more of my energies on
• 53:16
  coaching because it's, it's like psychology.
• 53:18
  You can never work it all out. So you can never you I could do
• 53:21
  it for three lifetimes. You never stop learning and you
• 53:23
  get to see the best of people and you get to help people
• 53:26
  through challenges. It's it's a good job.
• 53:29
  Within Front Runner, do you deliberately try and build
• 53:33
  specific small training groups that can kind of go off and do
• 53:37
  their own thing, or does that just kind of happen naturally
• 53:40
  due to the size of it? I think sociologically human
• 53:45
  beings tend to function well in certain size groups, and you
• 53:50
  can't pretend that they don't. It's like I don't try to control
• 53:57
  social dynamics at all much anymore, except for to sort of
• 54:01
  try to observe what I'm saying and make sure that the broader
• 54:04
  values are in alignment with a code of conduct or what have
• 54:06
  you. But let's say if I look at
• 54:09
  adolescent female athletes, it's very important for them to have
• 54:13
  a very tight social connection, but for me as their coach to
• 54:16
  allow that to happen and observe that happening without being
• 54:19
  party to it. So the social, the socialization
• 54:22
  that exists for them with each other is I can see very
• 54:25
  important for them to enjoy their running, to feel a sense
• 54:28
  of bonding with each other at school.
• 54:30
  But I will give a higher level of coaching and leadership so
• 54:34
  that I don't become part of the discussion that might be about
• 54:37
  other groups or or so forth, right?
• 54:40
  Similarly, when we've got a middle distance group that are
• 54:42
  training with Frontrunner Tuesday and Saturday together,
• 54:46
  but join the distance guys on a Thursday, you'll naturally find
• 54:50
  that on Thursday the middle distance guys gel together and
• 54:53
  the distance athletes gel together in the warm up.
• 54:57
  It's human nature when that's happening.
• 55:00
  If you try to be, you can't. I can't socially engineer
• 55:05
  everyone in the world to get along, so I just allow people to
• 55:08
  choose what's best for them. Have a physiological model of
• 55:13
  training where my coaches, who I've pretty much all coached,
• 55:17
  myself or Ben's coached, have them all understand the
• 55:20
  principles that we're applying when we're trying to help an
• 55:22
  individual. And then have them understand
• 55:25
  that if this training session is a tempo run for a recreational
• 55:29
  runner and this is a advanced tempo session, or this is a a
• 55:34
  speed session for a middle distance runner.
• 55:36
  They can see all the sessions that all our coaches are running
• 55:38
  across a week and choose the environment that suits each
• 55:42
  athlete's training program. If that program suits the
• 55:46
  athlete and the training goal of the of the coach.
• 55:49
  But you can't get everyone to get along, run, get along, run.
• 55:52
  Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible in the human
• 55:55
  condition, especially at the moment when you look around the
• 55:57
  world. So I don't attempt to try to do
• 56:01
  anything other than have a broad set of Fair minded principles to
• 56:05
  allow people to coexist. I guess that's one of the
• 56:08
  hardest parts of being a coach then is when there are potential
• 56:11
  fallouts and upsets within the group because you have no
• 56:15
  responsibility or expectation to manage it.
• 56:18
  But in thinking about best practice for the group and
• 56:21
  productivity, it's essential that it's, it's sorted out,
• 56:24
  isn't it? But thankfully, because of the
• 56:26
  environment that you create, I guess it doesn't happen all too
• 56:29
  often. Yeah.
• 56:30
  And I think understanding that coach, like, I think that was a
• 56:33
  good thing about coming from a physio background first.
• 56:36
  Like I sort of have a professional responsibility and
• 56:39
  I have a boundary around like I wouldn't go out drinking with
• 56:42
  athletes that I coach. I just don't do it.
• 56:45
  Now some people might say, oh, that's a bit like they want to
• 56:48
  feel that bond with me. I'm like, well, realistically,
• 56:53
  by being in those situations, you become vicariously engaged
• 56:56
  in certain things that that might happen.
• 56:58
  That I don't think of the role of a coach.
• 57:00
  That's just my view. I've come from an ethical
• 57:03
  framework where I'm being taught certain principles of
• 57:07
  professional conduct where I just don't think it's
• 57:09
  appropriate. So I don't do it.
• 57:11
  And that that's something that I don't care to change.
• 57:14
  I don't, I'm not. I'm friendly, but I don't want
• 57:19
  to be party to to certain things.
• 57:21
  That's not not my space to be in.
• 57:23
  We can still have a whiskey post race though, aren't we?
• 57:25
  Yeah, a brief 1A brief one. Yeah, 111, always only one.
• 57:32
  I think that people may have picked up on it throughout the
• 57:35
  conversation and perhaps you directly referenced it, but
• 57:39
  you're very spiritual and mindful in in your
• 57:43
  reflectiveness. When did when did you start
• 57:46
  being interested in in that? I think, I think most people
• 57:49
  have some exposure to it, but for me, I think COVID with,
• 57:55
  with, with me, I, I probably more aligned with sort of like
• 57:58
  Eastern or Buddhist teachings because I don't, I don't like
• 58:01
  sort of to think of institutionalized structures of
• 58:06
  power and status as being particularly resonant for me.
• 58:10
  So I like the fact that Buddhism is more akin to a sort of
• 58:14
  neuroscience. It's very synergistic with
• 58:16
  modern neuroscience in a lot of ways where you, you can take
• 58:20
  responsibility for your view and be responsible for your views
• 58:24
  and then choose to, to use your energy first and foremost from
• 58:28
  an inward out perspective rather than reacting to the world
• 58:31
  around you. And so during COVID, like don't
• 58:34
  forget, it was like a dark clouds kicked in and the world
• 58:37
  was sort of shutting down. And I was like with a few
• 58:40
  different businesses, I was driving home from work and we're
• 58:43
  going to have to shut this business down and I'm going to
• 58:46
  have to shut the physio business down and the coaching business
• 58:48
  down. And I was trying to, my brain
• 58:50
  was naturally trying to work out, well, what, what am I going
• 58:52
  to do here? I'm going to lose everything.
• 58:55
  And then I had just like a lightning bolt moment.
• 58:57
  Like, mate, if you lose everything, everyone loses
• 59:00
  everything. Like my my ego was attached to
• 59:03
  all these things that I was trying to control when
• 59:05
  ultimately when I stopped and reflected on it, in that moment,
• 59:09
  I thought you are essentially just a middle class guy who's
• 59:13
  got a good work rate, who can think, who can do and who likes
• 59:17
  to spend time with people whose company you would choose to
• 59:20
  have. That's it.
• 59:22
  And if that's what is important to you, this is actually a great
• 59:26
  opportunity to take responsibility for all the
• 59:29
  things that you're doing that aren't in alignment with that
• 59:32
  and start to systematically become rich by giving things
• 59:34
  away that don't serve you. And so that they say in Buddhism
• 59:38
  that you can slip into stages of awareness that are deeper.
• 59:41
  That moment for me was like a lightning bolt, unlike boom, OK.
• 59:44
  And then I started to explore different concepts with my
• 59:47
  business coach. And I already, because of the
• 59:50
  growth of our businesses felt at different times.
• 59:53
  The return commercially might have been what other people
• 59:58
  sought from business but wasn't. I wasn't even though they were
• 1:00:01
  commercially successful, I wasn't intrinsically feeling a
• 1:00:04
  great joy for what I was doing. So my business coach, each year
• 1:00:07
  I try to pick a different business coach who can allow me
• 1:00:10
  to further expand in an area. And we'd already started to talk
• 1:00:15
  in the direction of the fact that I had a bias towards more
• 1:00:18
  Buddhist type views of things and not conventional Western
• 1:00:22
  science. So we're already pushing it in
• 1:00:23
  the direction, but that helped kick it along.
• 1:00:25
  And, and from there, I've probably preferred to continue
• 1:00:29
  to explore that myself and not have any other business coach
• 1:00:33
  anymore and to trust that, you know, if I go to an accountant,
• 1:00:37
  he's going to try to tell me how to pay less tax and make more
• 1:00:39
  money. If I go to a business coach,
• 1:00:40
  he's going to tell me how to grow my businesses.
• 1:00:42
  And there's a certain point where I want to define what is
• 1:00:45
  important to me, not from an external lens, but from an
• 1:00:48
  internal lens. And to have the liberty to do
• 1:00:51
  that is, is, is a luxury. But it's something that I want
• 1:00:54
  to make sure that I hold onto because it's, it's something
• 1:00:58
  where if you can spend your life doing what you're really
• 1:01:01
  passionate about, it is it is a much more enjoyable way to live
• 1:01:05
  than doing something that might materially make you look more
• 1:01:08
  successful to another person, but internally doesn't feel
• 1:01:11
  resonant with what you think happiness for you looks like.
• 1:01:14
  So my first reference is always what makes me intrinsically
• 1:01:18
  happy. And then from that point, as
• 1:01:21
  long as it doesn't negatively impact others, I'll just go
• 1:01:23
  about my business quietly and spend much more time with much
• 1:01:26
  less people than what I was spending in before before COVID.
• 1:01:31
  I guess as time's gone on, your relationship with it or how
• 1:01:35
  integrated it is into your life has probably slowly grown to the
• 1:01:39
  point where, not that I'm saying that you're a preacher now.
• 1:01:42
  But just in listening to you talk to us and the conversations
• 1:01:46
  and the different perspectives you can put on things, it's
• 1:01:48
  probably rubbing off on the athletes a little bit in terms
• 1:01:52
  of just making us a little bit more intrigued and a bit more
• 1:01:55
  reflective. Yeah.
• 1:01:56
  So I think if you if you look at fundamental physics, the amount
• 1:02:00
  of energy in the universe has never changed since the
• 1:02:03
  beginning of time. The amount of energy in the
• 1:02:05
  universe has never shifted. So when you're giving or using
• 1:02:08
  your energy, the question becomes for the context that I'm
• 1:02:12
  in, is what I'm doing efficiently using my energy in a
• 1:02:16
  manner that I find intrinsically satisfying?
• 1:02:18
  Or is it wasting energy in a way that doesn't serve my best
• 1:02:22
  interest or doesn't offer any value to anybody else?
• 1:02:25
  So I will never try to find myself in a situation where
• 1:02:28
  there's gossip or idle chatter. I try to lead people to a higher
• 1:02:32
  level of thought that would make them try to be discerning how
• 1:02:36
  they distribute their own energy to bring forth the best version
• 1:02:39
  of themselves and to make a positive difference to others.
• 1:02:42
  And when it becomes calamitous or or filled with drama, I just,
• 1:02:47
  I just try to steer as well clear as I can from it because I
• 1:02:50
  don't have any. There's no growth, there's no
• 1:02:53
  effective use of energy in that. So it allows, I suppose, if you
• 1:02:58
  look at competing for the athlete, if I am never stressed,
• 1:03:01
  if one of my athletes senses that refs never overwhelmed,
• 1:03:05
  they will sense energetically that they feel more reassured in
• 1:03:09
  my presence. There's no doubt about it.
• 1:03:10
  So every single young person who goes into a running race is
• 1:03:14
  stressed because it's going to be difficult, they're going to
• 1:03:16
  be suffering. If I'm there to guide them and
• 1:03:19
  I'm not going to be suffering, why would I create more drama or
• 1:03:22
  more stress for that young person or that athlete?
• 1:03:24
  I will should provide objective, reassuring counsel that allows
• 1:03:29
  them to find the stronger, more reassured version of themselves
• 1:03:31
  to execute something that's the best version of them.
• 1:03:35
  And so some of these teachings or some of the the learnings or
• 1:03:38
  reflections that I go through, it's like also understanding
• 1:03:41
  that if I try to be all rah, rah, rah and to, you know, to,
• 1:03:46
  you know, indulging of my own role in an athlete's
• 1:03:49
  development, essentially my role is just to be a servant to the
• 1:03:52
  athlete. And I don't serve them well by
• 1:03:54
  being too rah rah, like I serve them more by being reassuring,
• 1:03:58
  constant, strong, stable. And they thought, therefore,
• 1:04:01
  they have the ability to bring forth more of what at that given
• 1:04:05
  point in time, they've got in terms of potential.
• 1:04:08
  And, and I really enjoy that. And it's also much better for my
• 1:04:10
  wife, my kids, my daughter, you know, like I can hold a
• 1:04:13
  conversation with my daughter for, you know, four times longer
• 1:04:16
  as a teenage girl than I could before I started to become much
• 1:04:18
  more patient and present. And it's helped in a lot of
• 1:04:22
  ways. Thank you.
• 1:04:24
  I think we've gone through your journey as an athlete, as a
• 1:04:27
  physio and as a coach now quite methodically.
• 1:04:30
  So we do have a lot of, well, a few listener submitted questions
• 1:04:34
  before we move on to them. Is there anything you feel like
• 1:04:36
  we've missed throughout your journey?
• 1:04:38
  No, mate, that's been great. OK, then let's see what the what
• 1:04:42
  the listeners have asked for you to answer.
• 1:04:46
  We might have to dodge a couple. Yes, please.
• 1:04:51
  How have you noticed that running culture has changed
• 1:04:54
  recently? And I guess perhaps we could
• 1:04:57
  reference you're the owner of the Running Centre, the shoe
• 1:05:01
  shoe shop in Perth. So maybe that would be involved
• 1:05:04
  in running culture as well now. I think it's just, it's been a
• 1:05:08
  really fun time. Like we've started a run club
• 1:05:12
  again at the shop. We're getting a lot of young
• 1:05:14
  dynamic people wanting to work at the shop, wanting to get into
• 1:05:18
  running. I think it's been a great time
• 1:05:21
  to see the information sharing, like your podcast or podcast
• 1:05:24
  like yours, how it's expanding people's exposure to and feeding
• 1:05:29
  people's passion for running. So I think in terms of offerings
• 1:05:33
  with coaching, with information, with racing, it's just been a
• 1:05:37
  really fantastic thing to be part of.
• 1:05:39
  And yeah, I can't say anything but positive things about the
• 1:05:46
  fact that something that that probably you and I both love,
• 1:05:48
  that we love has become more mainstream and and more popular.
• 1:05:53
  It's great it. Was that the trip that you went
• 1:05:55
  on to Texas? Was it last year?
• 1:05:58
  That was quite high in terms of seeing the like the global
• 1:06:01
  effect of it. Yeah, so I, we, we saw it like I
• 1:06:04
  think the first thing when you see a shift like we started to
• 1:06:07
  see an increase in sales at our little running shop in Perth and
• 1:06:10
  you start to think it's you like your attribution is we must be
• 1:06:14
  doing something fantastic where. But then I thought, I now I'm
• 1:06:16
  hearing and this is happening everywhere.
• 1:06:18
  So then all of a sudden realized, no, it's just a
• 1:06:20
  broader movement. So I went to the Boston Marathon
• 1:06:22
  a few years ago and went to America and these run clubs were
• 1:06:26
  starting to kick off and pop off.
• 1:06:28
  And I was sort of getting my head around it because I was not
• 1:06:31
  quite understanding of what the the buzz was.
• 1:06:34
  And also the people doing it were a bit younger and cooler.
• 1:06:37
  So I was trying to understand. Then we, I've started to see it
• 1:06:40
  happen here. I've got my head around it more.
• 1:06:42
  And then we went to the one in Texas and I suppose I was more
• 1:06:45
  sort of understanding of what energy people got from going for
• 1:06:51
  a run where they get flooded with dopamine, oxytocin,
• 1:06:53
  serotonin, endorphins. And then at the start of the
• 1:06:55
  run, you don't know anyone. By the end of the run, you're
• 1:06:58
  happy to talk with everyone because all those hormones, the
• 1:07:00
  same hormones you get at a nightclub or on a night out.
• 1:07:03
  So I started to understand the context and, and, and so I
• 1:07:07
  thought we've got to bring that back to our shop and, and the
• 1:07:12
  culture over there where the integrations and the branding is
• 1:07:15
  much more available for you to access was really cool as well.
• 1:07:19
  So the brands had all their best athletes just meeting people
• 1:07:23
  you've seen on TV or heard of on YouTube.
• 1:07:26
  And there's not just one of them, there's dozens of them.
• 1:07:28
  And you've seen the latest tech and latest products and the
• 1:07:31
  scientists that have designed the product.
• 1:07:33
  It's almost like just a a symposium of running, like a
• 1:07:36
  running nerds dream, you know, fantasy week.
• 1:07:39
  Yeah. Yeah, sound like cool
• 1:07:41
  experience. Changing direction slightly,
• 1:07:45
  Your relationship with mana, how would you describe that?
• 1:07:47
  Well. When we started the Leonora
• 1:07:50
  Golden Gift, well as a boy, obviously I'd heard of Mana's
• 1:07:54
  because he was third in the, you know, World Championships and he
• 1:07:57
  won the Commonwealth Games in Canada.
• 1:07:59
  And his story was very much the most pop popular version of
• 1:08:04
  running that I saw as a young boy.
• 1:08:05
  And then when we decided to start running an event in the
• 1:08:08
  gold fields, part of my strategy was to get him as the ambassador
• 1:08:13
  because he was from a gold mining town.
• 1:08:14
  He was the most visible runner and he was on the Eastern
• 1:08:17
  seaboard where we could make people aware on the Eastern
• 1:08:20
  seaboard 20 something years ago that we had this running race in
• 1:08:22
  the gold fields. So he, he's just a great guy.
• 1:08:25
  But he was also commercially, he's one of those guys who, I
• 1:08:29
  mean, I've probably done 15 things with him because he's
• 1:08:32
  such a good guy. He has an enduring brand value
• 1:08:37
  as Steve Monaghetti, where he offers a perpetual benefit to
• 1:08:41
  anybody associated with his name by being such an upstanding sort
• 1:08:47
  of successful and, and engaging person.
• 1:08:50
  And, and I think, you know, every time we've ever bought him
• 1:08:53
  out here, hopefully it's been a win for him, but it's a win for
• 1:08:55
  us because people want to keep spending time with the guy
• 1:08:58
  because he's such a lovely bloke.
• 1:08:59
  And that's a great credit to his character.
• 1:09:02
  And when we're in Ballarat, he went for that run with us
• 1:09:06
  without even. All I had to do was buy the guy
• 1:09:08
  coffee. World class bloke, top, top
• 1:09:11
  fella and great for our sport as an ambassador, Robert.
• 1:09:15
  So yeah, just I'm not obviously he's best mate or anything, but
• 1:09:19
  just from, I spend a fair bit of time with him and he's one of
• 1:09:23
  the best. Yeah, it's good that we got to
• 1:09:26
  benefit from your relationship with him because it is so
• 1:09:29
  inspiring to be around people like that.
• 1:09:31
  It's not every day you get the opportunity to, but that's
• 1:09:34
  thanks to his character and his openness, yeah.
• 1:09:38
  Yeah, top fella. I guess the sport now is on like
• 1:09:41
  a massive upwards trajectory. We've seen the boom and then now
• 1:09:45
  kind of from a media point of view, they're trying to I guess
• 1:09:48
  get as much focus in terms of fans of the sport and we do you
• 1:09:52
  think we're going to continue on this upwards trajectory or where
• 1:09:55
  do you see it going in the next 1020 years?
• 1:09:59
  I probably don't have a 20 year lens but I reckon certainly in
• 1:10:02
  Australia, like for instance, you know, in the build up to
• 1:10:06
  Brisbane, there's a way that's going to become become, you
• 1:10:10
  know, massive in the next 7 years.
• 1:10:14
  The global increase in participation means that it's a
• 1:10:17
  numbers game. More people doing it, you're
• 1:10:18
  going to get more people pushing it, more people striving, more
• 1:10:21
  people evolving, more people improving.
• 1:10:23
  The standards going to continue to rise, hopefully in an ethical
• 1:10:27
  way. I think sometimes I'm a little
• 1:10:28
  bit cautious of some of the things that I observe and see
• 1:10:32
  and human beings being, being human beings, you know, there's
• 1:10:36
  some, some of the things I see that to my, my eyes a little
• 1:10:39
  bit. But more broadly, the depth of
• 1:10:41
  running will continue to, to grow as more people run.
• 1:10:44
  And I think the good thing with it is a lot of these young
• 1:10:46
  people that are coming to the sport are coming to it as very
• 1:10:49
  fit, strong, psychologically stable people who could choose
• 1:10:53
  to do something else, but are choosing running.
• 1:10:55
  Whereas a lot of the time in the past running's attracted a bit
• 1:10:58
  of a off to the side, slightly more neurotic, slightly less
• 1:11:03
  maybe robust psychologically. If you look at saying Ned
• 1:11:07
  Brockman, he's a very people who are of the traditional will
• 1:11:11
  would say what's he doing? But he's a very fit, very
• 1:11:13
  strong, very robust guy. And there's more of those sorts
• 1:11:19
  of young people coming into running who are very good
• 1:11:21
  athletes and psychologically quite tough.
• 1:11:24
  Whereas a lot of runners traditionally identified very
• 1:11:27
  heavily as a runner, not as an athlete and you know, very sort
• 1:11:31
  of like narrow in their view and getting more young people who
• 1:11:36
  are more robust and committed and engaged in running.
• 1:11:39
  We'll see the standard at a Subelite level go up as well.
• 1:11:42
  Guys like. Go on, say.
• 1:11:44
  Guys like yourself, you know, guys like Ollie, the military
• 1:11:48
  guy around 2:24 and it's good running.
• 1:11:50
  You guys could choose to play soccer or do 1000 things, but
• 1:11:54
  running is the beneficiary of your choosing running and the
• 1:11:57
  standard goes up as a result of that.
• 1:11:59
  You, you touched on Brisbane there at the start and I know
• 1:12:03
  that you've called a few races and you're not shy from jumping
• 1:12:06
  on the mic because you get yourself in the commentary box
• 1:12:09
  in Brisbane. Mate, I am trying to get a
• 1:12:12
  commentary gig at the Sydney Marathon.
• 1:12:13
  I'm trying to hit up Wayne Larden.
• 1:12:16
  Look, I like doing it, but I probably think I like that young
• 1:12:20
  Mitch guy. It's straight at it.
• 1:12:21
  I think there's some guy, some guys with a much bigger profile
• 1:12:24
  than me that are good at it. So we'll see.
• 1:12:25
  I'm open to it if it comes my way.
• 1:12:27
  But my main one is to want to coach someone to be there at
• 1:12:30
  Brisbane or a few ideally to be there in Brisbane.
• 1:12:33
  That would be where I would be most satisfied.
• 1:12:35
  So that's the the focus. Again, slight change of
• 1:12:38
  direction, but the listeners have always been intrigued about
• 1:12:41
  your your music taste because they must.
• 1:12:44
  They see the rails that you put on and they're very impressed by
• 1:12:46
  the diversity of the song traces.
• 1:12:50
  So we have a question about your favorite rapper or rappers.
• 1:12:53
  Yeah, so I think it's like when I was a kid growing up, it was
• 1:12:57
  all run DMC or Public Enemy when I was a young, young guy in
• 1:13:01
  Williton. So that that's probably the
• 1:13:03
  first stuff of it. And then like if it gets grimy,
• 1:13:07
  it depends on what mood you're in, right?
• 1:13:09
  So I like something sort of a bit gritty and grimy from time
• 1:13:12
  to time, like pop smoke or or something like that.
• 1:13:15
  If I, if I want to get, you know, my energy up or I have to
• 1:13:19
  do something like that's administrative at work that I
• 1:13:23
  don't really want to do, I'll listen to rap music just to get
• 1:13:26
  some energy flowing and it makes me get quite up and about.
• 1:13:30
  And then there's, I suppose, those that you might listen to
• 1:13:32
  if you're going to go out between the easy listening and
• 1:13:36
  then the dancing part of the night, you know, Chris Brown or
• 1:13:39
  Michael Jackson, that sort of space where that's one thing in
• 1:13:43
  my relationship with my wife, I get to say no is when Michael
• 1:13:46
  Jackson, come on, comes on, she always wants me to start
• 1:13:49
  dancing. I say no.
• 1:13:50
  And on the second or third song, I submit to her request and
• 1:13:53
  start start dancing. So, yeah, more of a spin.
• 1:13:59
  I've got a spin move. The funny thing is, oh, no, we
• 1:14:04
  won't talk about it, though. It's it's overstated out.
• 1:14:07
  But come on, I'll talk about it too much.
• 1:14:09
  It's a geeky, awkward spin move that occasionally comes out on a
• 1:14:12
  repeat every 30 seconds, but I'm trying to attract some
• 1:14:15
  attention. You did.
• 1:14:18
  You did experience the Travis Scott concert, didn't you?
• 1:14:21
  Recently. My son wanted to.
• 1:14:23
  I had never heard any Travis Scott music until the concert,
• 1:14:26
  but my son loved him, so we did go and watch him in Sydney,
• 1:14:31
  which was fun to see. He knew every word, that every
• 1:14:34
  song. And a few other parents and I
• 1:14:35
  was sort of sitting up there with our kids at the Gradstead
• 1:14:38
  who were underage and needed us to be there trying to work it
• 1:14:41
  all out. But it was definitely energetic.
• 1:14:42
  I'd give him credit for that. It was, yeah.
• 1:14:44
  It was energetic. And the weekend came out and it
• 1:14:46
  was, it was, it was a big, big, big energy.
• 1:14:49
  Yeah. If you could coach any elite
• 1:14:52
  international athlete, I guess, who's currently competing now,
• 1:14:57
  who would it be and why? Not to put pressure on him, but
• 1:15:00
  I just think when I first saw that Cam Myers at 16, the poise,
• 1:15:04
  I'm like, wow, this that that kid is, is an absolute an
• 1:15:10
  absolute amazing young athlete, so phenomenal.
• 1:15:15
  And I think anything is possible with that guy.
• 1:15:17
  And obviously there's a lot of water to pass under the bridge,
• 1:15:19
  but he he is a special, special talent.
• 1:15:21
  I. Didn't say the other day that he
• 1:15:24
  hasn't had a single injury since he started training at 13, so
• 1:15:27
  hopefully his body is durable for it as well.
• 1:15:30
  The thing, the thing that struck me the most was just when he was
• 1:15:33
  16 and he won in Leonora against grown adults.
• 1:15:37
  The psychology, it's the, the poise and the, the ability for
• 1:15:42
  him to be psychologically still at such a young age and be so
• 1:15:46
  poised is rare, rare, rare, rare.
• 1:15:50
  And that's, that's the gift. He's physically and
• 1:15:53
  physiologically and biomechanically very sound, but
• 1:15:55
  psychologically he seems like a very, very competitive but
• 1:16:00
  scented young guy and we're lucky to get to see him race.
• 1:16:03
  I look forward to seeing him race every time he runs now
• 1:16:05
  because I'm a massive, massive fan of him and the way he goes
• 1:16:09
  about it. I think the the other questions
• 1:16:12
  that we have you've answered throughout.
• 1:16:14
  So we've got biggest influence on you growing up and you've
• 1:16:18
  touched on various people and you've mentioned some of the
• 1:16:21
  favorite races that you've watched and the the favorite
• 1:16:25
  race that you competed in obviously being the the European
• 1:16:28
  Championships in Limerick. So I think we've covered
• 1:16:31
  everything off there. Is there anything else before we
• 1:16:35
  wrap up? Thanks for looking forward to
• 1:16:38
  having you back in a few weeks, mate.
• 1:16:40
  But thanks for having me on or I commend you guys for getting
• 1:16:43
  this this podcast up and running.
• 1:16:44
  No, because I haven't watched. No thanks, thanks for being #1
• 1:16:48
  and I'm looking forward to the listeners getting it in their
• 1:16:51
  ears because there's there's so much gold in there.
• 1:16:53
  No thanks for having me mate and look forward to, like I said,
• 1:16:56
  catching up in a few weeks when I'm back in Perth.
• 1:16:58
  Yeah, we'll go for a coffee or a whiskey.
• 1:17:01
  Sounds good. All right.
• 1:17:02
  Thanks mate. Cheers mate, bye.
• 1:17:04
  Bye. The.
• 1:17:51
  The.