Latest / The Steep Stuff Podcast / George Foster | From UK Fell Running to the Pikes Peak Ascent

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George Foster | From UK Fell Running to the Pikes Peak Ascent · The Steep Stuff Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, guys?
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Steep Stuff Podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, james Lauriello, and today I have a really special episode to bring you guys.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: None other than Mr George Foster joins the podcast our first episode, our first guest from the UK, which I'm really excited for.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: This was a super special one for me personally.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I got to spend a lot of time with George when he was here visiting for the 2024 Pikes Peak Ascent, where he had himself a great race, so I want to congratulate him on that.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, george is an absolute legend of the game.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know that name, hop on Instagram after this podcast and give him a follow.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: When I say legend, I mean like two world's teams George has raced on.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: He's won himself some big name races across the globe and has competed at some of the biggest races on some of the biggest stages in the world races like Series and All Ring of Steel Sky Race races like that.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So this is going to be a really special one.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Guys, I just want to give you a quick little update when I went back after there's some backstory to this podcast.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We were originally actually supposed to record this for possibly the first podcast ever at Bar Camp but because of the technology situation, having to lug everything up there and given our time situation, we actually wound up recording this at the Manitou Springs Library.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So there's a little bit of an echo.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So the sound quality is just not up to par on what I like to see for my podcasts.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a bummer as far as I did my best to edit out as much as I possibly can for the sound quality.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But there is going to be a little bit of an echo so I really apologize for that.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: We're going to have to have George on again the next time he comes out and give him a proper podcast.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So, guys, without further ado, my friend George Foster, hope you guys enjoy this one.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's time.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: We are live.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: We are live, george Foster.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast man.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks very much, yeah, thanks for having me.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: How's your week going?
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: uh, it's good.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, it's been a bit well, but I can't remember what day it is now.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: To be honest, we came in on monday from the uk, uh, stayed in boulder for a couple days and now I'm up at bar camp just above manitou.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So get ready for the race next weekend nice man, you must be loving it up in bar camp it's amazing.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's really good.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: No electronics nothing, just do you bring a book up there oh yeah, yeah, definitely, yeah, I've got a book and a crossword book.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So smart to me really, pretty much because you can only try.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like train so much up there.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: What do you?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: What do you?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: How many, how long are the days are you doing up there like?
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: um, well, because it's this close to the race I'm, and because I'm really not used to the altitude at all, I'm just sort of mainly like my sessions are just sitting around reading books I love it and trying to get my heart rate down, um uh, but yeah, I do like an hour pretty much, so I ran down today.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: That'll be my session.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I won't back up tonight.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: That's awesome man.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the podcast.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: First of all, I want to say thank you so much for coming on.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I know this.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: It's worked out perfect because this is the second year or second time you'll be here for this race, but you've always been, ever since the beginning, like when we followed each other on Instagram, like you've been such a big supporter.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I feel like most of my, my listens in Britain, great Britain and like the UK, all come from from you, and and when you share it, it really matters a lot.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So, thank you so much.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: No, worries, yeah, no.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: No, as we were saying before, it's just good to have something coming out of the States that's not ultra focused, you know, and like the racing scene in the sub ultra stuff in the UK and Europe is huge.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not all about UTMB and whatever.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So it's good to have something that reflects that.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: It's quite interesting to listen to a different perspective of stuff, because it's very easy for us, I guess, over on the other side of the Atlantic, to think that we've got it nailed down, the short distance stuff, but it's great that it's blossoming into something pretty prestigious in the US.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: yeah, it is wild how much growth we're having in the sport and it's experiencing this wild renaissance now.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: So from me to you, it's also interesting to get like different perspectives as well as like, because one of the things I think one of the big questions I had for you too, um, especially going into it is that in my research leading up to this, and even just from friends uh, I don't know if you know, you know, john kelly I know of john kelly.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: He's like he's gone over there and I think, he lived in the UK for like a year or two.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for his company.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: But one of the things he would always talk about is fell running and it's not.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It's not like a common discussed thing in America.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: We talk about trail running, ultra running, mountain running everything's got its own little lingo.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: but maybe you could talk about, like what fell running is.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of expect you to ask that, cause it's.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: It is a pretty unique British thing.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: It's not really anywhere else and even in the UK it's like it's in pockets of the UK that it sort of happens.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: So down south you won't get any fells.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Up in the northwest, where I live, it's fell running and fell comes from because we had so many different invaders over the years in the UK.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: It's an old Norse word for what's still in use, actually fjell, which means mountain.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: So it's just mountain running, but with a different name.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: That's so crazy.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And a lot of those words are still in use now in parts of Yorkshire and Lake District in Cumbria and that.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: So you could probably have a conversation with a Norwegian very roughly and get by with some of the words that we still use.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: That's so interesting, yeah, so it's cool, so it's got a link all the way back to 800 or 900 sort of AD sort of things, so a couple of thousand years.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: But basically fell.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Running is just how would you describe it Like?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: It's like orienteering for people that can't read maps and it's very simple sort of up and down our mountains.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Our mountains aren't massive, um, but they still pack a punch.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: It's.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: You know it's wet and windy and and pretty grim.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: In the uk for the most part, you know all the, all the cliches are true, um, and we just sort of race around the mountains.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: So you can have races typically.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I guess the average is probably about maybe nine, ten mile or so, and it can go up to about 20 miles of running, um, or down to like two miles of running, and it's just a a logical thing.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: You'll start sometimes in one spot.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: They're generally horseshoe races, so you start in one spot and finish in that spot as well, but it'll be um, you've got to get to that peak, that peak and that peak, and however you do, it is entirely up to you.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So as long as you're running, um, so it's straight line wins basically, and and people kind of race with their strengths.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: So some people are really good at running uphill, some are really good at running downhill, some are really good at running on um rough technical terrain, others will choose the sort of grassy options and all that sort of stuff, but effectively, yeah, you've got to hit these certain checkpoints and they're usually fell tops or mountain tops um one, two, three, four, five, six, whatever, and then get back down to the finish, um, and the fastest person wins pretty much see, that's like the best form of mountain running.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: In america we're very and this is a hot topic thing that I'll probably be talking about in later podcasts because now it's it's starting to come to the forefront where, like, we're all very funny about, like our switchbacks, it's like not cutting switchbacks.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Um, I just find it very interesting and just you, it's a, it's not just a european thing, because it's, I feel like it's done throughout the entire world, where people just it's, it's the whatever method is going to get you there the fastest and and the fastest way up, fastest way down.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Like it seems very logical, right, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, it's exactly that.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: I mean it's um and people, people will spend a lot of time recceing courses and that to find out the best lines for them, and you know the optimum thing, because generally I mean you, it's very old school like you have to carry a certain amount of kit each race.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: You can't use gps or gpx files or anything like.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: It's all map and compass, um, and so really trying to run quickly um, whilst looking at your feet and and so on, and not trying to fall off crags and all that sort of stuff is it's important to know where it is you're going.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: So you haven't got to get your map and compass out, um, or if you do it's, it's very quick check and it's back away again.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: So recce and routes is really important.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So yeah there's a lot of mountain craft involved in it, all that sort of stuff so normal american trail races must be so easy for you when you come over yeah, it's.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: I mean it's nice not having to think about where you're going yeah although I did get lost going up onto my company.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Not lost, but I took a wrong turn, did you?
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, I can see, which is almost impossible.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: What was it like?
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: instead of going making the left on bob's or bob's road or where the experimental forest is, you went straight, or something.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, that's typical.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Typical, a lot of people do that.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I, I remembered after a couple of meters but I was like oh fuck, but yeah, so it's, it's great.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: But I mean coming out to pikes and that, like racing in the states is awesome because it's just it's pure racing in that sort of sense, like it's just more athleticism rather than mountain craft, yeah, which is great, you know it's interesting to me because you see a lot of foul runners, you see a lot of orienteers that go into trail running and be highly successful, like you're, judith widers of the world and people like that.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Um and on in the uk side, I mean, there's just you know, there's so many to count and people come over there and have just like crazy experiences, like I was last week just following the spine race.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like oh my gosh, this is this is bananas, it is a bit yeah, it's a bit much that.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, we've got people like um finley wilds just just in the trophy akima record yeah which was killing johnny's record.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: So you know he's.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: We've got good runners and we always seem to punch above our, our weight really in in the uk in terms of oh my gosh, you guys, which is good have the best in the UK in terms of, oh my gosh, you guys have the best in the.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I mean some of the best in the world.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, was is Robbie Simpson?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: He's not South African, he's Scottish, right, he's Scottish, yeah, he's Scottish.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And then John Albin, of course.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, john Albin.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, i's cool Him.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: He's like very um interesting follow just because his uh, his training is just so dialed and he's very open about the crazy things that he's doing up there in Norway.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So, it's unique, Um.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about you.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about your background when, how did you get into running in the first place and how did it kind of blossom into this career that you've made?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: I guess I've been running since I was a kid.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: We used to do like 800 meters was the furthest we could run at primary school.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So I do 800 meters, which is, like you know, a fucking long way when you're seven or eight years old.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: And then high school did cross country.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: But I mean, it's so different in the UK to the US in terms of, like, how serious people take sports.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: There's no funding or there's no programs that you have in in the us in terms of, like, cross country and high school which then leads on to college or university teams and so on.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: It's just this, the enthusiastic amateurs.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Pretty much sums up the uk interesting um, so I ran cross country at school.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Um, I did okay.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I I was never right into it, but I did okay.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And then university got into rock climbing more than running.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So I just did rock climbing and sort of scraped through university and then sort of dicked around for a few years after that, just climbing, went to the States, bought a van in San Francisco, went up and down the West Coast with a bunch of mates for three months until the van died and then got properly into running in the army, went up and down the West Coast with a bunch of mates for a three-month till the van died and then got properly into running in the army really.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: So only about 10 years ago Climbing took a knock on the head because they're more into like running with boots and weight in the army and that rather than rock climbing.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So did quite a bit of that and sort of rekindled a love for it because I did enjoy it when I did it at school.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It's just there was no pathway for it to take any further and then sort of ran for the army a couple of times and realized I might be quite good at it.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: It's just like a funny old thing the more you do something, the better you get at it.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: And then really it was just after that.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I sort of got into running properly when I got a coach, uh, seven years ago or so, and I just took off from there really wow, yeah, what a career man I mean.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, qualify for a world's team.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: You ran in thailand, correct?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Thailand and austria, yeah, so oh, so you ran both years.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, dude, let's, let's, let's talk about these.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: So interested to hear about your experiences there yeah, well, I mean fucking hell like thailand was awesome.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: I'd not been there before, um, and yeah, just, it was that weird sort of covid time.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: So I qualified for the team the year before and had to re-qualify um and which I luckily managed to, because it would be a bit annoying to to qualify and then not make it the next time around but qualified for it.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Um went to thailand.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: We had a big team out there.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Uh, I mean, what a cool place.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Have you been to?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Thailand?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: no, never man, it's crazy is it.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, chiang mai we're at, so it was a really good course and, uh, to be honest, like I thought preconceptions of thailand and and their sort of relaxed attitude towards organization I thought it was going to be a bit of a shit show, but it turned out to be so good.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I've heard it was world-class.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the entire event was brilliant.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: They got some, some lads from the army into going like being the really remote checkpoints and everything.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: It was just brilliant Like such a good advert for the sport and such a good advert for Thailand, um for the sport and such a good advert for thailand, um.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: And I thought it was, yeah, absolutely awesome, um.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: And then didn't I mean didn't do amazingly well out there, but it was good to race, you know yeah, what was the qualification like for that?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: so for the uk it was, uh, proof of form.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So you had to just do a couple of races or a race that would show that you could compete at that sort of level within, I think, 12 months or six months of the actual race date.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Um, so they they did put on a trial race the year before and then decided not to bother with that and just did sort of proof of form for for the year that we actually qualified for town what race did you do, or what races?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: uh, so I did the lateland 100k um, which was a trial race the year before um, and then it was.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I did like mozart 100 in austria.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with there is.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, um, and then nice, 60k.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think that was it nice.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: You know that, yeah.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it was okay, um raced out there.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: And then austria was a bit different again, proof of form.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: So well, they had sort of a semi-trial race in gran canaria in february.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So trying to train for, like basically, west coast of africa running around the mountains of england in february was quite tricky I imagine very, very different experience um, but that went really well, like gran canaria was really good.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: That was sort of the high point of my sort of ultra running career, because I got quite badly injured after that.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Um, just ruptured a random tendon in my ankle oh, wow, and that was me out for basically 18 months.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Wow, um had surgery on it in january this year.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, to finally fix the problem, and I've just got back into training and racing properly.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Two months ago maybe wow three months ago, so it's been a bit of a ball ache.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Welcome back, man, yeah, but um so yeah, annoying.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: So I managed to race in austria, but it wasn't very good.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I had to drop out, basically, after you went to honchi kong right, or how'd you?
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: yeah, um, that's how it's pronounced.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Sorry, typical american pronouncing it wrong.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Typical brit, I probably that's funny man.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: All right, so you're back to form now.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: What else you got planned for the rest of the year?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: What else you got doing besides pikes?
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: um, when does this come out, this episode, whatever?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: You wanted to all right, I was going to say because I've got an england team to race, uh, but we're not allowed to say about it yet okay, I can wait sufficiently announced.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's fine.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: So I have actually no idea when that's going to be.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: It might be next week, or it could be, but that's the end of october, okay.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: So I've got pikes, pikes, ascent on saturday next week, yep, and then trofeo bernoni in italy.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Um, at the end of october, nice, and then it'll just be like road stuff, I think.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Try and get fast yeah, get your speed yeah I feel you there.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's what I something similar is.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: What I've got planned for this year is probably a 10, like a solid 10k block.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, get speed in 10k, take like three months to do that and then kind of transition back to I don't know.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's funny here because we have the incline.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: So have you ever played around?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: on it?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: No, I've seen people on it, um, and I I realize now what it is, because when I first came five years ago I didn't realize what the crack was with it.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: But see people coming off the trail and think, oh, there's a lot of people coming down from from Pike summit, but actually just coming off the incline, yeah, um so no, I've seen it, but it's probably a bit too close to the race now.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: It is too close, or also, or maybe after, I don't know Cause that's the give it a try, but, like I think, for me one of the things I want to do in the off season is try and like, run a, like, a, like what the level I think I can achieve on there.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So something underneath, like 23 minutes, something like that that's what the goal, and then I'm going to try to supplement that with, like, the 10k speed, and we'll see what happens yeah, yeah, see if I can translate.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I mean 5k, 10k speed for mountain running is, or for the short mountain running.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Anyway, it's like it's the way to go forward, I think definitely.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Dude.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I raced so many like sub 14 minute 5K kids this summer that I was like it's not even fair.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: It's so crazy, how fast they are.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: It's like yeah, yeah, so all right.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So that October race that I know you're not allowed to talk too much about, but like, will that be serving as something like more of a qualifier for the next year's world or no?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: No, no, this is purely just England, just England, yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: So, uh it's, we're quite lucky.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: We get the opportunity to represent our country twice almost, because the UK is made up of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Whereas the US is.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can run for your state maybe could you, I don't know Kind of yeah, kind of.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: So you just get that chance just to run for the US and obviously you've got 250 million people, not all trying for the same best, but you know there's a bigger pool to choose from, whereas breaking down into our sort of constituent countries in the UK there's more opportunity to race internationally um, and they're starting to recognize that.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: So england, this trofeo bernoni race and there was trofeo nesegio or something um in july.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Uh, they're sort of development squads for for england.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: So we have our main sort of races, like snowden international is a big sort of england race um, and then they're trying to just develop um junior into senior athletes or senior athletes that haven't raced for england before.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: They're trying to use these development races for them to give them experience of running um for england and that whole england setup.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: So I've sort of gone the backwards way about it, done sort of county running in mountain running and then up to gb and then going slightly back down in that sense to England.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: but it's still good to kind of get the opportunity to do it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I love how they have that.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: There's like an actual development program in a lot of ways, like it's not something we really have here.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: It's very much like burgeoning.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's just sort of started, but it's going the right direction.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's, I guess.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess we'll step up on some countries, yeah, in sort of sense.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: But I mean, like you get France and Italy where they've got, you're in the team for the whole year, aren't you?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: And then you've got team training camps.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: So the Italian team is a core team for that year I think it is I might be wrong and they go away to training camps all year round with themselves, which we don't do in the UK.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this One of the things I noticed is Italy, and it might be France, but I believe I know Italy definitely does where, if you were on, I think it's like their international team.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: You're like a part of the military right or something like that.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Like a lot of it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's um, the UK does it as well, Like the British army, similar ish.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: It's not quite the same.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: But Tom Evans um came from.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: He was a, he was a captain in the army, so they've got like an elite athlete program.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Very few people get on it and it's once you're on it, you sort of you get streamlined through your career in the army but you're effectively getting like an army wage, which is good, Whereas the Italians and I think the French yeah, I think you're right with the French they do, from my understanding, like you're in the army, but you're in the army by name only.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: You're a pro athlete, Right, Right, Paid by the army, and then you just go training all the time and then you might go and do it the odd career course to sort of further you in in your, in your discipline within the army.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: But that's about it.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Not a bad gig.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely fine.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: I mean at all.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about and I think it's like one of the biggest, one amazing career performance that you had was bob graham round oh yeah and I think it's something that a lot of american after jack kenzel uh broke killian's record, I think a lot of americans got turned on to it.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: They learned about it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I should say, um, do you think you could talk a little bit about what the bob graham round is and then your experience on it?
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: So it's around about 65, 66 miles of running.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: It's a circuit, starts and finishes at a place called Moothall in Keswick which is an old sort of trading building.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: It's like a little market hall sort of thing.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: You can do it clockwise or anticlockwise, but it's basically 42 summits, 42 fails, um, within 24 hours.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: That's sort of the idea of it.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: And if you can do that within 24 hours, you become part of this bob graham club, um, and you get a certificate and you go to a meal every two years or whatever it is, and sort of shake hands and clap each other in the back and all that sort of crap, um, and it's, it's great.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Like a couple of thousand people have done it.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: It was first done by, funnily enough, bob Graham back in, oh gosh, the early part of the 1900s I can't remember exactly when 1920s or 30s or 40s, I should really know, but I can't remember.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And the cool thing about him was he did it in 24 hours and then he was back at work the next day.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: He ran like a b&b um, guest house sort of thing in keswick, which is where where the moot hall is, um, and I just think that's really cool.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: I quite like that idea of just sort of getting on with your day afterwards because that's quite, it's a big effort, like yeah, um, and so it's been done by a few people, a few notable sort of fell runners and stuff and um, for quite a long time.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: The record was a guy called billy bland who lives down in, uh, the valley just south of keswick called borodell, um, and that was uh, 13, 53 I believe, or 52, um, anyway, some something on this line which is, which is fast, super fast yeah um, and that stood for a good sort of 30 odd years.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: So, and then killian jordan comes along and breaks it and lowers it down to 12 52 um, so takes a good hour off it, which is, which is wow, good, going like um.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: And then, and it stood like that for a while, that was 2018 when killian did it, um, and no one really got much interest in it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: It was just deemed this impossible record.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Now Like more maybe the name of Killian rather than the actual time, as we've seen when Jack went and just took half an hour off it, whatever it was he did, but everyone's like, oh fucking hell, killian Jornet, the absolute go blah, blah, blah.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: No one's going to get that time.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Bullshit, bullshit.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: And then sort of COVID happened uh, a woman called Beth Paschal, yeah, um, she ran it really really good time 14 hours, 32, I think it was um, which is awesome.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Like that's really close to to Billy's time, um, and I supported her on that.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: So, so it's, it's it's five legs um, and they're all roughly around about two and a half, three, four hours or so in length.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Um, and the idea is to for so I'm going back a little bit here um, the idea of to get into the bob graham club, you need to be seen to have touched every summit, um, and so you need to do it with paces and support, really, if you want to be part of this club and for your your time to be ratified, um, so it's it's usual that you'll have one or two paces or supporters per leg, um, and so I was one of those people that supported Beth on her round to make sure that she touched every summit, um, you know, to witness it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: What an experience.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cool.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: It's cool Cause that sort of opened my eyes to what it needs to take to do a fast time.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Um, I'd done one before in 2016, and, uh, uh, had a bit of an injury on the first leg and ended up getting around in about just under 21 hours, which was like my longest run, by that's a long day out dude.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it was huge um, and I always thought like I could probably do better than that.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, and then so, supporting beth on on her round when she had 14 and a half hours, I thought, okay, I could, I could probably get around best time, you know it comfortable.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I know I was on the last leg with her, so she was pretty knackered, but I still felt quite comfortable and, having seen her on the first couple of legs as well, the pace she was going off at it felt manageable.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: And so that was in the June or July of 2020, just after our lockdown sort of finished.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: A couple of months after our lockdown finished, and I thought I'd probably give it a go, or it just sort of planted the seed at the back of my head.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Um, I wasn't doing any long stuff at the time, I was just running sort of two, two and a half hour races, um, so all my training was geared towards that sort of stuff.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: And then there was a trial race for the world's team in september.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: They got cancelled, um, and that was what I was sort of aiming for and I thought, oh, oh, fuck, I've got all this fitness but nowhere to use it.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: And then the Bob Graham sort of popped his head back up and I thought, ah, give that a bash.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: So went around it in a couple of days to sort of familiarize myself with the course again, being really local to the round, it's quite easy to sort of know most of it anyway.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: How far is that from you?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Three miles to the start know most of it.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Anyway, how far is that from you?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Um three miles to the start.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, oh, dude, you're like right there, oh yeah, yeah, what a place to live.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good, like um.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I just thought I went around in a couple of days, um, did it in under billy's time in those two days obviously I had to sleep in between and stuff and I thought, oh, maybe I could do a pretty quick time.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: And then, uh, start of october, we got a good weather window, a couple of days where it was quite dry and sunny.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So I thought I'll just give it a bash.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: All the people that I'd sort of used to pace for it so they're all local anyway, so they could just take the afternoon off, work or whatever it was they needed to do and had a run around and it went quite well.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And that was it, but it was.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: It's annoying.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I'd love to do it again and properly go for it.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: I don't feel like I gave it enough.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Enough of a lead in enough of f.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: It was almost like on a whim.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: That makes sense, not not to belittle it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I you know, I'm glad I did a quick time, but, um, I think I could have gone faster you went like pretty substantially under billy record right Like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, okay, so still pretty solid.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Um, but I think it was.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I wasn't going for Killian's time, so it was just like I just I know I can go faster than Billy, I just I just get around it in 10, 15, 20 minutes off it and if I'd given it proper go and and work towards it and built my training around it, I might have even got, you know, much further off his time yeah um, not not anywhere near sort of finley, um or jack's times, but probably a bit more respectable than what I actually did.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Um, and it was good.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a great day out.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: It's a really good day out, like at the, at the core of it, you're just going out with a bunch of mates and having a run around, yeah, and it's just, it's really nice what did you do after?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: just have some beers and hang out or like yeah because it was still sort of that weird covid time, yeah, so the pub that you usually go to to get a pint was closed, so we just got some pizzas from a, from a takeaway and ate them in the square and then went home.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Nice, and I was back at work the next day a la Bob Graham.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Back to it.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, back to it the next day.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Wow, man, and it's just, I don't know.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: To me as an American we learn about these historical and just amazing FKT routes.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Like you know, in America we think about like some of the longer trails but also like the grand tetons and like even you know, pike's peak records and stuff like that.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: But over over in the uk, like the bob ground round was one that was like oh, this is really cool, like what, and I guess you could say like killing kind of brought that to the forefront when solomon did.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I guess it was like a video about it and you get to learn all you know the culture there and just like what goes into it and how.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: You know I just love the fact that you're running with a bunch of like pacers and like guys, like you know, it just makes it a little more fun.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: So just running by yourself yeah, exactly, and and like people have been back and done it without paces, like finley, finley wild went back and did um something daft in the winter, um only between the hours of darkness in the winter and solo, unsupported, and did a ridiculously fast time on that.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: That's terrible.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, the guy's an absolute monster.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: But there's the Bob Graham round in England, but Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland have got their own rounds now as well.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: So they're really good and they're probably harder than the Bob Graham because the Bob's really really popular, so that it's not really trail running anymore.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: It's it's trail running is there like basically a trail now?
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: So even the difference between when I did it in 2016 till 2020, um, there's, there's trods now that are proper trails, interesting and there was a guy in fact there's a um, a runner for one of the sort of nearby clubs.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: He comes up loads um guy called dave making and he was telling me about this line to go up onto one of the one of the nearby clubs.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: He comes up loads a guy called Dave Macon and he was telling me about this line to go up onto one of the summits.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: He was like, yeah, you need to look out for this rock and then, just past that rock, there's a weird tree with like a left-hand crooked bit, and you're like, okay, cool, and you get to it and you're like, oh yeah, there's that rock, there's that tree, and now it it's like you don't care about the rock or the tree, there's a path that goes all the way and you just follow that.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: So, like a bit of the magic's gone yeah um, whereas the stuff in in scotland and wales is that's proper running, like proper running I like that because I I mean it is kind of a bummer now that so many people go on it, because I think those little nuances are what make it special, you know absolutely yeah.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a yeah, just the sort of mystery of the place yeah, yeah, and that's like passed down through, you know, through generations that have done it before it's just, yeah, like oral tradition, that's um like storytelling.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool, it's interesting.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Now, what is the winter?
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Like running there because you I know you guys don't get like crazy snowpack, but like do you still do you ski at all?
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Like what do you do in the winter?
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: yeah, I mean you can ski if you don't like skis, you know, if you, if you're happy to sort of bash them around and get them all caught up and like knackered and that.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: But no, we don't get much snow.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: It's pretty fickle, generally warm and wet, it's like warmish.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: We get very.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: It's very dry here in Colorado, like I notice my mouth's like really dry all the time, whereas in the UK, because we're right on the atlantic and we get all that sort of the rain and the wind off the atlantic and that it's always quite wet, um, but generally it's quite mild.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: So our winters, uh, you might get, you might get sub zero temperatures every now and then, celsius um, but generally around about five or six degrees celsius in the winter.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: It's just grim, like it's just windy and wet.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: You don't see the sun for a while.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: We get the sun, but we don't get much sun yeah, so everyone's popping vitamin d tablets every day oh, yeah, um yeah, it's.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, it makes you a bit tougher, I guess oh for sure, man for sure we're sort of used to wet, rocky, technical, pretty gnarly sort of runs and all that sort of stuff.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: You can't really get away from it, but um, coming out here is pretty nice I was gonna say like I feel like in colorado is one of the few places I can live that has a wind like a true winter.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I used to live in florida before this.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Florida's sunny, you know, year round, but here we get 300 days of sunshine a year, like.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Even when it snows it's sunny here it's like.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: It's like comes out, snow comes out automatically.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: You can get sunburned, like in skiing it's crazy, um.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it is kind of nice to have that, uh, I don't know, be able to have that, whereas nice I.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I went.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I walked up to back camp on wednesday morning, oh no, wednesday afternoon, um, and I could hear thunder coming.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh fuck, I'm gonna get wet here and it's like spots of rain for about five minutes.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: And then it cleared.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, oh, that's your rain.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Then, yeah, it's quick man, it's brilliant, it's good, it's quick.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: You know it's changed a lot over the last few years.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like it has been getting I a lot of ways where it's just it's like a high desert here, it's very arid, um, and, yeah, the thunderstorms.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: I feel like when I first moved here, like five years ago, um, like I feel like the thunderstorms would happen every afternoon and we'd get like pretty crazy rains, uh, and even like hail and stuff like that, and like this last few years, like it hasn't been, no, yeah, it hasn't been that crazy.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, so I don't know it's uh, it's crazy.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Um, I don't know, climate in colorado is strange.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Our snowpack sucks too, I mean, does it?
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's terrible, like I think a lot of it's, because, just because it's so close to the sun that it'll I guess there's freeze thaw kind of thing um, just makes it like less beneficial, whereas like a place like utah, like the wasatch yeah, like their snow packs are so much better.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Do you reckon we'll get snow next week?
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Packs peak because they had snow last year, didn't they?
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: yeah, it snowed.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Uh, it snowed was last week or the week before yeah, yeah, yeah, up high yeah it's like a solid.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I think it like it was pretty substantial.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: It's like a solid inch or two.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: So I've got a buddy.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I I know you ran the rut before I have a buddy this weekend.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: That's there about to run the rut tomorrow.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: It is this weekend.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, um, but they just got snow last night, man.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Like substantial snow.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Fuck that when it's snowing like it's pretty, pretty extreme up there.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like I was watching like an hour before I came to meet you and the they were uh like cam smith and a bunch of guys were finishing.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Like literally, it's like there's like two inches of snow on the ground that's a great race, man.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Have you done it?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: I've not.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I was supposed to go do the vk this year and like because I have, um, I've just got a lot of like commitments with pikes for next week.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: That just with the scheduling it didn't work out, yeah that's a shame.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: No, it's brilliant, like they they used to.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: It's probably my best race experience.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So like best after race experience really.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it was just bizarre.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: They were like um, they had categories for wearing jorts and stuff.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: They had categories if you had like an american eagle shirt on, uh, you could get like mohawks on on the top of the vk and that you get tattoos did you get a tattoo.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: No, I wish I had I was in the queue and I was like I can't be.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: I was waiting, um, but it's just brilliant.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, fun, and like the.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: The prize was, um, uh, just like dollar bills, so I come second.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I got five hundred dollars.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: It was in dollar bills, so it's a huge stack.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, am I gonna get these back home from no way?
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Um, and I got like a wrestling belt and all that sort of stuff is is the that's crazy.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: It's fucking awesome.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really cool.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Oh my, what did you do with the trophy?
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Did you like ship it home or did you bring it home?
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I managed to squeeze it into my hand, into my um hold luggage and chucked out some clothes and just gave some clothes to the thrift store.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: What did you run?
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: You're in the 28K 28K yeah.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: David Sinclair won it.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I think that I feel like every podcast, like literally every person I have on the podcast, has been talking about him lately.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: He's a beast, I'd say he's probably one of the best in the world at this point.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably yeah, but he seems quite under the radar.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Does he not know us?
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, cool, I like that.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so just showed up to Speed Goat.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: This year cracked the course record.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: The course record first man to go under, first person to ever go under five hours, which is crazy, yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: So, your experience of the ride.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about that because, like, it's interesting to me that you come over from flatland, basically, and you can have success, and because, same thing with pikes, you got sixth in 2019 of the pikes ascent.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Like what do you like owe that to?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Just like your ability to adapt to altitude so quick?
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: um good parents, I guess yeah, good genetics yeah maybe, um, I, when I came over for the rut and pegs peak that was the same sort of trip, so I was at altitude here for a couple of weeks, um, and before that I'd come straight from the alps.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: So I was at altitude here for a couple of weeks, um, and before that I'd come straight from the alps.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: So I'd been in europe for, or like, the alps for a good maybe two months before that, so I was used to the altitude.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Then, um, I was just training to be a teacher, so we had a bit of time off before I started work, um, so I thought I'd go over and just like be a pro runner for as long as I can, like, my money holds up, um, and so, yeah, uh, just got quite lucky as well.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I think there was.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: We've definitely got lucky at the rut, um.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: So Davis and Claire just went off and, like last time I saw him was at the finish line, um, but the guy in second for a long time, um, I didn't see it but must have had a bad fall, because when I went past him he had sort of blood coming out of his head and that, oh wow, um, we were just by an aid station, so I managed to sort of get to an aid station and just sort of left him with them.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Um, so I was just lucky to get second there because he had a bad fall.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Um, but, uh, yeah, the ruts mega, it's really good.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Like bozeman, flying into bozeman, that was really cool.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: And going over the big sky, um, my first night there I went to a like a supermarket, grocery store or whatever, and got chatting to a couple of guys in the in the thing they recognized I wasn't from that local area, um, and they were like oh, cool, you're here for, you're here for the run.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, yeah, it's like all right, well, do you fancy going for a run.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, sound, that's brilliant.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: I'll meet you in the morning.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant, um, I'll meet you at the fire station at 6 am.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: I was like, okay, cool, where's the fire station?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just here, sound, right, I see you there at 6 am.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Got there at 6 am and they just hadn't turned up, so I was just there by myself in the middle of like big sky at this fire station, just like I feel like a right dickhead oh man yeah, just cool.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: So I just went for a run by myself and went back home to this airbnb.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: I was turning out and that was my sort of intro to montana.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I was like you guys are a bunch of assholes yeah, what the fuck that sucks.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna give me this like great story of like this beautiful run you went on.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: No, it was a good run, but it did like laps of the car park pretty much, and then went home oh man.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: So I just got stood up by these two random dudes at 6 am at big sky, so well, hopefully you beat their ass in the 28k.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't see him again to be honest, I didn't see him again, but, um, that was good, it was good, but the actual race experience after that was was mega.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can only get better after that, can it?
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: so yeah um, but yeah, it's still probably one of my favorite races to do that's cool.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: You think I'll ever go back, or?
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: um, I would go back.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I'd go back and do the vk.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get that tattoo.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, same, it's highly like.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Next, year I was watching, I was so bummed that I didn't go this year.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I had my registration and everything and I was like even had a place to stay and just didn't.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: I just didn't feel that hot.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: After doing all the cirque series races I was like maybe any little break, you know, and it's yeah it's a funny course because it's um a lot of it's on like ski runs and that yeah um, so it doesn't feel that aesthetically pleasing like you're not running around these beautiful mountain vistas once you get up high.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's beautiful for the sort of 80 of the course.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: It's just you're on ski runs and that's and that's fast too.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, uphill yeah.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Is there any like races in america that you haven't done that?
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Have your interests like sub ultra-Ulter or anything like that.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: I'd love to do the Mammoth series.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's next week.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know Might as well.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Hang around man.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I need to be back at work, unfortunately, but yeah, it looks really cool.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: So that time I was saying that we bought that van in San Francisco and went climbing up and down the coast.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: We went to Mammoth, we disco and went sort of climbing up and down the coast.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: We went to mammoth um, we got sort of snowed out of yosemite and drove over um into mammoth and it was just so cool, such a, such a nice place.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: There's a really good cafe there called stella brew.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, um, coffee shop, brilliant.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: So, um, that's like my blueprint.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: If I ever, if I ever owned a coffee shop in my life, I'd base it on stella brew that's, dope that's smart.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a cool place, wow yeah, so now mammoth and it's, it's.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: The course is unique.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: It's cool that it almost reminds me.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it doesn't have, I guess, got 50 percent of the vert that the rut actually has, but the course itself reminds me the way it's like aesthetically going over the mountain and it's kind of it's beautiful yeah, yeah, it looks great.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I saw the was it golden trail as well.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I saw the footage from that.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, they do a great job of selling races, don't they?
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And it just looked brilliant.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: It looked really nice.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that would be one to come over for, I think.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: So I know you haven't done like the Golden Trail series per se, like you've done series and all you've done ring of steel.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Uh, both during like did you wait?
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: The ring of steel year you raced.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Was that one of the ones that killian was in, or I?
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: think so I don't think.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I don't remember seeing much of him yeah, I think that was a yeah, I was surprised, like good, good research man, because I was wondering how you would do this, because yeah sort of.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not the most sort of active on on socials now.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: So yeah, nice one.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, it was good.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: That's a good race, like yeah, beautiful right yeah, yeah, proper.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Um, I mean, if you ever raced in scotland before that's, that's a full experience oh, it's on my list.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, really good.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, it's a full-on race.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Uh, so yeah.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: So now that was like my first ever mountain race, I think, like like european style mountain race.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: I've done sort of fairway running back home, but, um, that's hard yeah, yeah, starts out with like a straight up vk and just yeah, vk into very gradual climb into flat, fast running into a downhill um like a, just great, like I absolutely hated it.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: When I first did it I thought this is, I didn't get the hype, I thought it was rubbish.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: And then went back a couple of years ago and just sort of ran it as an effort, um with a with a mate of mine, and it was brilliant.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: We just sort of race each other along it and it was great.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like the most iconic mountain race in the world.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I feel like you know plus like I don't know.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: I find it really interesting because we get this like beautiful intersection of amazing fast marathon runners and you know, and then the best mountain runners in the world, and it's this clash of like who's gonna do better?
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And it's it's I don't know, it's really I.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I for one, and the reason I brought up killian's name was just like so blown away that he was able to win it again this year.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I was like damn dude, like that guy is unbelievable, didn't he?
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: so so no, I want to hear more about ring of steel, because that race really interests me and just the course itself seems aesthetically beautiful and just you know what do you guys say about that?
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, like I say it's, it's proper Scottish racing.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Like it bogs, um airy sort of ridgelines, um big ups and downs.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: It's just, it's got everything and it's a proper like British mountain race, is it?
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, definitely it's got everything and it's a proper like British mountain race, Is it?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely it's hard.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the record is, but I can't imagine it being super quick given the terrain you're on, like, given the distance as well.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: But yeah, from what I remember of it, you're on the road at the start for maybe a couple of K and then you start climbing, and then you keep climbing, you keep climbing, you keep climbing.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: You're along these ridges for a bit and there's a huge descent.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Um, some guy, american guy, actually shouted at me for cutting the corners on the zigzags and I was down.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: I was like fuck off, mate.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Um, got to the bottom and then you just basically just almost turn around and climb straight back out again, um, and then a bit more ridges and a big descent.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: So it's just two big climbs, or, yeah, two big climbs, two big descents, really, um, and lots of bog in between it's just, it's brilliant.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Dude, tell me about the bogs, because I've heard from john kelly the bogs are just disgusting like rough so, um, I don't know, you might not get that many sort of that sort of terrain in the in the us maybe no, nothing, not even close so my my boss at this pub used to work out uh, he was.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: He was the one that sort of got me into fur running um, and he told me a story once where he fell into this, into this bog.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: On this area just, uh, langdale, which is like one of the valleys in the lake district where I'm from, um, there's an area called mark ragmore and it's boggy, proper bog, and he fell into a bog and he's relatively short guy, probably five, seven, five, eight, whatever, and he said it was up to his neck in his bog and the only thing that saved him from sinking all the way down this bog was a dead sheep that he was stood on oh my god so they're serious business man.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's proper um the poor sheep yeah, the poor sheep saved his life, yeah he managed to get himself out, but yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I don't know how true that was, but I've been in bogs before where you go up to your waist or go up to your chest and you're like, fuck, this is holy shit.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: So it's like a swamp kind of, but like yeah like quicksand, but mud um oh man yeah, it's not.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: It's not terrible.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know of anyone that's that's died in them or anything like that Mainly animals like sheep and that will fall into it and can't get themselves out, but they're generally okay.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Generally you get your feet wet or up to your knee or something like that, yeah, but yeah, it's part of running in the UK and Norway is very similar, interesting.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you've just got to be quite good at running on a lot of mud and wet stuff.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: So shoes for you.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: You're like you need something with, like, aggressive lugs.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Like no none of this.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Like are like foofy, like pumped up kicks that we've got here.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you need.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I mean it's um.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: So I've got a friend, a guy called Harry Holmes, who's a I know I got it wrong last time, but he's like a.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: He's effectively he's got a PhD in how the earth moves around people.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know if that's I butchered that it's probably completely incorrect, but that's my understanding of it as well.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: So he was trying to design these fell shoes that that have the perfect sort of um sole pattern where there's the right lug depth but enough space between the lugs that it sheds mud and all that sort of stuff.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: It's a proper science when it comes to sort of running in the fells and that um.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: But I mean, people just get made do with whatever they've got, pretty much yeah various companies like walsh is.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: A is a british company based just south of where I live.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: Um, they've been making fell shoes, bespoke fell shoes, basically for for years, and that's all they really do um innovate as well you might.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say innovate it's like some pretty aggressive shoes.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Other other companies that added us have been doing.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: They've made like a fell shoe which is quite popular.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Interesting, um scarper started to do some more aggressive shoes yeah um, hoka had had a great shoe the jaws.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Shout out to the jaws.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the evo jaws, which is brilliant, but, um, if they can make that again, that'd be great um you and joe gray both yeah they're just brilliant, like they're brilliant, really good shoe, but hey, there we go.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Time to move on.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Um, uh, but yeah, you kind of do need something that's proper, like like a football stud yeah, cleats or whatever to run on it.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Do you do any cross-country races over there?
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I've heard the cross-country racing there is proper, it's legit.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so they've actually got the national cross-country tomorrow.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: Normally it's January, but they postponed it this year because of flooding, so it's in september, which is a bizarre time to have it.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: But there we go.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: Um, but yeah, our season starts october and runs through till, I guess, february.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: End of january, february, um, and yeah, proper cross country, yeah, more than covered in mud and really like long, long spikes on your shoes and everything and yeah yeah, it's great.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, proper racing.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: That's probably my favorite type of racing, because you just you leave everything out there.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: There's no, there's no way to hide, is there?
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: You just sort of yeah run as hard as you can for 8 10k and then, and then stop yeah, I was kind of following uh tom evans journey.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: He was did it.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I guess he like race it might have been yeah, I think it was last year through like january, tom evans day it was really fun to follow along.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I want to go run a cross-country race over there it looks like in america, our cross-country like yeah it's okay, it's different, isn't it?
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: you run like golf courses and that quite a bit don't you so?
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: It's fast running you, technically you are crossing the country, but yeah, it's a very different idea.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: It's not like mud.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah that's cool, um dude.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that really interested me was like just like how intense the winters are there and like, um, I don't know.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Like one of the things that like was really inspiring was lc davis recently did like a winter bob rant is that something?
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: You'd ever consider doing like um maybe at some point I supported lc on on that.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: I was on leg two with her, which is usually a pretty navigation.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: They're pretty straightforward, like you'd sort of once you get up high, there's one big climb and then there's then, like once you're up, you're up on a sort of plateau, um at this like hell velling range, um, but the you can sometimes get caught out by the wind up there.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: So it's pretty windy when we're up there, um, and it just made me think like I don don't know about doing a winter one.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I quite enjoy running.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: I don't want to ruin it by trying to run in this weather, but yeah, I've had it a few times where it's been pretty grim.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: So there was one time where I was supporting someone on a winter bob on that same leg.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Actually it was really snowing quite badly and freezing.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: I couldn't feel my face and I was just grabbing at my cheek and like grabbing and trying to pull and pull and pull and pull and the guy looked at me, was like what the fuck are you doing?
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Like I'm trying to get my hood up and I was like you're just grabbing your cheek and like my cheek was so numb I couldn't feel I thought I was trying to.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: My hood was stuck on my jacket and so I was just pulling my cheek because the wind was blowing that direction.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: My other cheek was absolutely fine, but because of the way the wind was going, my right cheek was absolutely freezing.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Holy shit, dude, that's great.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: So pretty, pretty full-on condition sometimes.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: But, um, yeah, and I don't know, we sometimes get days that are really nice.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: You know where?
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Um, it's a blue sky and and hard sort of frost on the ground and um got a friend kim collison, um, I think still has the midwinter record for the bob running in those sort of conditions, which is perfect.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you do get them, but living there helps.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: The reason I bring it up because I like to paint the picture for the audience too, because I think a lot of Americans just think of like London right.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: They don't think of like when we talk about mountain running and fell running and all this they don't think of like when you know we talk about mountain running and fell running and all this, like I think it hopefully opens up you know the world a little bit more for listeners to be like oh wow, like that experience you can get over there.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, 100%, yeah.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: There's more to Britain than London.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I live about six hours northwest of London, so just on the border with Scotland, okay, and if you want mountain running in the uk, it's sort of that's the area to be really in england anyway.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Uh, the lake district, uh, scotland, has got loads and loads and loads.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, north wales, in snowdonia national park, that's got loads and loads and loads.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's where altar trail snowdonia is okay, yeah.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: So I mean, we've got mountains and whilst they're not the biggest in the world, um, by any stretch of imagination, the weather makes them feel proper, proper, like days out.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: You know you get full value from them.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's amazing preparation for just about races anywhere, especially the alps and stuff like that.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah because, because we we get somewhere like here, or yeah, like the alps, and people say it's a technical course and you go and run in it and you're like, oh no, this is fine, nothing's technical compared to what you do, yeah, and like not not to say there's not technical running out here, but by and large, it's quite straightforward.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um, which is?
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: which is great, so we can you know, if you're, if you're used to running on pretty shitty conditions and terrain, then you can sort of fly down stuff you must laugh at like pike's peak.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: It's literally just there's.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: There's nothing like it's.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: I've ran down it today.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: It's so much fun.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just brilliant, like really flowy sort of running, isn't it's great?
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: it is, it really is really enjoy.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: That's.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: That's why I came back, because I remember it being awesome like running up there, yeah, and it's just such a great route going all the way up.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's an aesthetic line and it's so fast, man, like you know, I I think people forget like how, how fast you can go on that like really I don't know.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I've I've run the line a few handful of times, but I've just for me, I haven't run the race itself, just because, like I still haven't figured out that section right above bark, like the switchbacks, the upper w's above bar camp yeah it's like right at 11 000 feet, and I don't know how you do it, because I die dude, yeah, and I was on it today.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: I went up to the a-frame and just sat up there for a couple of hours, just like soaking in the sun yeah um, and ran back down and was just thinking like I remember that being the point after back camp, you get all the energy from back camp.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: On that is it what would you call it like the w's or whatever?
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I call the upper w's, but I don't know if that's I don't.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: That might not be the right term.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that that bit anyway before A-frame between is it bottomless pit or something?
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Yep, Yep, yeah.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Those sort of zigzags I just remember on the race, thinking, oh, I'm fucked, I'm really tired.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Now, this is.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: This is when it starts to really like.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah Sort of, and then you sort of rally a bit Once you can see the summit, once you sort of break through the tree line and that you sort of feel good about yourself again.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: And then it's, is it the golden staircase?
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right to the top Golden stairs.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: Me and Kieran Nye.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Kieran Nye, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's been on the pod buddy.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the way down.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: But I could see him and it was probably five meters away max.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I just couldn't get anywhere near him and he was looking at me, probably thinking, oh shit, I can't go away from him or whatever.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: But we were just like loggerheads trying to.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: I was trying to catch him and he was trying to go away and we just we're both so paggied that we couldn't we couldn't make any break on each other.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: It's brilliant that's funny, kieran's racing this year.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: You guys, I know, yeah, I messaged him to see if he was up for a run, but he's um.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: He lives a couple of hours south of here, doesn't he?
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I think he's.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: He's in gunnison, so it's like yeah, yeah, it's like three hours the other way yeah yeah, so that's cool.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Hopefully, hopefully better get better of him this year, but we'll see.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: He's going well, isn't he so?
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: yeah, yeah, he's, he's coming.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: He, he suffered.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: He was coming back from an injury too.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: I know this is his first like healthy, big, healthy year back.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: He's kind of back into it.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I know he did run pikes last year, but I think he was just coming out, I believe just coming out of injury.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, man, how do you feel with the injury?
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Feeling ready to go, like after that?
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: um, I'm feeling better.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: It's hard to know like it's.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: I see it like I'm.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: I'm 39 now, so I feel like I'm getting old, you know, in terms of running don't we all man yeah?
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: so it sucks a bit, but, um, so I feel like that was a a year lost.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: You know, like, rather than I mean if I was 29 it would be like, oh, that's fine, it's only a year.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: I mean it probably wouldn't feel like that at the time, but, um, with the benefit hindsight, looking back now, I'd be thinking, oh fuck it, it's only a year, whereas now it's like I'm gonna be 40 next year and there's not too many people doing the short stuff that are racing at that.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: So I mean, joe Gray is doing well.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: He's 40.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: He's 40, yeah.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: Andy Douglas in the UK.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: He's around about my age.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Max is 43, something like that.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: He might be older than that.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: Max King, yeah, yeah, so I mean yeah see, maybe I've got like quite a young training age.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah, just um it's whether my body holds up that's it.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: That's a million dollar question.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah definitely cool man.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, we're winding down.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: We're almost at an hour now.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Um, I've got some interesting questions for you.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: What, how about this?
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Who inspires you From like running Doesn't matter, life running, whatever.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: I've got quite a cheesy one, but like my grandpa he was a hill farmer up in on the West coast of Scotland.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: So again, tough guy, fought in the war and that won, won some medals and all that sort of stuff.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: And I remember hearing a story about him.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Um, he was out gathering some sheep on a on like a crag just near us, like a like a mountaintop near us or near the farm, and uh, he was in his he might have been early 70s and he fell off one of the crags there and put his the bone of his shoulder through the skin, oh shit, and just sort of like sucked it up, walked back down to the farmhouse, made himself a cup of tea, waited for my grandma to come back and was like, could you call us an ambulance?
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: I need to go to the hospital or whatever.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's a tough motherfucker and we just sat there just having a brew and that was it.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: So I thought I don't know like you get this sort of romantic idea of like toughness, don't you?
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: when you're a kid you're quite impressionable and I remember thinking like hearing that and and like knowing the guy I was seeing, just thinking fuck that's, that's what it means to be like tough, and so that I think, rightly or wrongly, that sort of um led me down a few career choices, um, and life choice and stuff, uh, so no, it's good, it's quite formative, so that's I think.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: So he's inspirational, probably always at the back of my back of my mind, thinking well, what would my grandpa do?
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Probably we just get on with it, wouldn't he?
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: that's right just get going.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, that's a crazy story that's a tough dude man yeah, the generation I feel like those guys that fought in the war, like, like I even think of, like my grandfather um.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: My grandfather turned 85, like last week oh cool he's.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: He's a tough old bastard man like I'm like, I think they're like kids these days and I always like make fun of, like the younger generation it's good, because you're always sort of like you.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: You measure yourself up against them, don't?
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: You yeah, yeah um, and you think, like I'm gonna, and for the good reasons.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Well, like, being tough isn't isn't a great thing all the time, but it it's, it's a it's better than some things you could probably do with your attitude, or your, your yeah, your attitude towards how you go about things.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: So it's good to, yeah, measure yourself up against them and then try and use their example and show others that are coming through the example and stuff and like, if it's raining a little bit when you're going to go out for a run, huh, who cares, just go, for you know that's right and that's, that's the minimum obviously, but it's, it's a good starting point.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, 100, I mean, dude.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of times I'm sure you get it even worse because your weather is crazier, but like just being unmotivated and you think back to them and it's like uh yeah, what would they do?
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: yeah, I'm going out for an hour, you know it's nothing.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny, yeah.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: What's your take on the aliens Um?
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: I've never seen any aliens.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: Until I see any, then they don't exist.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I, I think in a, in a universe as big as ours, and multitude of universes are out there there has to be other forms of life.
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: Surely, you know, like mathematically there has to be.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: But in terms of whether they've come down to, to our little bit on in our little universe, and that I don't know, I don't think so I find it really weird because, like for some reason, like the overwhelming amount of ufo sightings are in america yeah.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very strange.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've got some theories on that you never know, man, it's kind of wild, you know?
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, dude, thanks so much for coming on.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: No worries, I really appreciate your time.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Um, do you want to plug your instagram?
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: get you some instagram followers uh, yeah, um, so my instagram is gfozfoster, so everyone thinks my name's gaz based on that, because they just see the g and the z and just think, oh, it's gaz, um, so everyone calls me gaz for some reason, but my name's George, so gfuzzfoster and that's all I'm on.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not on anything else.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: So if you don't find me there, you won't find me fair enough, man, I'll put your Instagram in the show notes as well.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Dude, thanks so much for coming.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate this great conversation and hey, best of luck at Pikes man what'd you guys think?
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: what a fun episode.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: I really want to thank George so much for coming on the podcast.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Just a wealth of information and knowledge.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: We got to learn so much about what fell running was.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: We talked a lot about the Bob Graham round, which I know for us Americans is kind of like one of the more famous rounds or famous FKTs on that scene and just so amazing to have to talk, having spoken to someone that's kind of cemented their place in history, kind of running that round, which is pretty, pretty awesome.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Like I said, want to congratulate George on a great race at the Pikes Peak Ascent back in 2019.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: When he ran the race he took sixth place overall but he started in the second group.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: So like, almost I can't remember if it's 30 seconds or a minute back.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: The dude is a legend and just a good guy, so really want to thank him again for coming on the pod.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Really big apologies for the sound quality.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: That echo was driving me crazy and there's just, unfortunately, no way to edit that out.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: So no, sorry, Manitou Springs Library no future podcast there.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: So yeah, guys, hop on Instagram, go and give George Foster a follow.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: You can do that by just typing in georgfos.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: So gfosfoster, F-O-S-T-E-R and give him a follow, send him a message, let him know what you guys thought about the podcast and just send him well wishes on the rest of his mountain running season.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: So, guys, without further ado, I hope you have a great rest of your week.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you all loving this.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: Last but very not least, if you did enjoy this, please give us a rating on Apple and Spotify.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: Five stars would be amazing so we can get this out to the world and, yeah, so we can continue to grow our audience.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: Have a great week, Thank you.