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Iain Best | Balancing Training and Family, Uphill Racing, The Future of Trail & Mountain Running
479 Plays13 days ago
Iain Best is back, and a lot has changed since we last spoke. He is now a dad of two, still racing hard, and still finding ways to train with purpose when sleep is broken and life is full.
In this episode, James and Iain go deep on what “real” consistency looks like, how Iain shifted from ultras into the world of mountain and skyrunning, and why uphill racing became the thing he could not stop chasing. It’s an honest chat about identity, ambition, and keeping the love of the sport alive while the sport itself keeps changing.
They also zoom out on trail running in Australia, from the volunteer roots that built the scene to the more commercial era we are in now. And to finish, Iain shares what is coming next: a stack of races at home, then a big move to France mid-year with a massive European calendar on the horizon.
In this episode:
- Training and racing as a new parent, without pretending it’s easy
- Why uphill became Iain’s weapon, and what it changed in his running
- Skyrunning, VKs, and the pathway from ultras to the mountains
- Lessons from the Army, injury rehab culture, and discipline that actually holds up
- Where trail running is heading, and what we do not want to lose along the way
- The plan for 2026, including a mid-year move to France and a packed racing schedule
***Don’t forget, use code PEAK at Bix’s website for 20% off Bix products, exclusive to PPP listeners!***
Thanks for tuning in to Peak Pursuits! Connect with us on Instagram @peakpursuits.pod to share your thoughts, questions, and trail stories. Until next time, keep hitting the trails and chasing those peak pursuits!
Follow James: Instagram | Strava | Website
Follow Iain: Strava
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License code: K08PMQ3RATCE215R
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Transcript
Introducing Ian Best: Racing History & New Fatherhood
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Peak Pursuits podcast. My name is James Sieber and today I'm joined by Ian Best back on the show to go a bit deeper on the huge stretch of racing he had last year and now since we had him on the main show in early December as brand new father of two.
00:00:33
Speaker
In this chat as we alluded to on the main show a few weeks ago we're going to a lot deeper into Ian's background Get an insight into what his current training and life is like and have a really good conversation about why good enough can be the perfect answer in some periods of your year and of your training.
00:00:51
Speaker
Ian has had a really interesting pathway. He's come into the sport, into ultras and then dropped back down into the mountain of sky running world. And professionally has spent his entire career in the army working his way through. And as you'll find in the conversation with Ian, we can really see how that has shaped his mindset as an athlete. Ian is also a historian and a lover of trail running and specifically the uphill and mountain running side of things. And so we do go a lot bigger picture on the sport. We get into the history of uphill racing in Australia and what the current state of it is, whether we're losing it,
Transition from Ultras to Mountain Running
00:01:28
Speaker
gaining it. And what really struck me is how we're so built upon the people and not just by the events that are there for us. There's so much more that is thrown into this conversation with I was incredibly gracious with this time and very easy and interesting to talk to. i absolutely love this one. And then we finish off with What's Ahead, which has some fun races domestically and then a very action-packed half a year across in Europe with his family. Alrighty, with that, let's get to the podcast with Ian Best.
00:01:59
Speaker
Ian, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for doing this. How are you going? ah Good. Thanks for having me back. I feel feel special to get an invitation back. I didn't screw it up the first time. No, not at all. And you were on with Sim and I back in, was it late November, early December? think was early December, it was after Biller. And was great fun. And it was really hard back then not to just pepper you with the questions once you were talking. I'm glad we got the opportunity to come in and do this now that you're, well, we've got that introduction to you and life has changed a bit
Balancing Training with Family Life
00:02:32
Speaker
for you now as well. So I'd be curious to see what's looking forward, but also fun to look back a bit more as well.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing it goes. So the last time that you were on you ended it very much saying that you were excited to get into training. You just had a pretty busy four peaks where you GSEL 28 where you won, and then into Billa Skyrun, which you also won, which was what, five five races over sorry three races over five weeks.
00:02:59
Speaker
super excited to get into training since then you have welcomed your second daughter so congratulations for that thank you how how has that getting into training period gone for you yeah so i don't think anyone with or without kids has any sympathy when i say that i'm like tired at the moment where're We're kind of a month into this new this new household order that I have created. And it's twofold. Obviously, having having a kid has its demands, having a second child has its demands. But I have tried to maintain training. yeah um It's just the goals that come out of it have had to change. So
00:03:36
Speaker
where i otherwise would really focus on like quality and like really specific things. I might take a time the time to get to a specific hill because that hill replicates what I want out of a session. um The quality is essentially just going out the window. I'll still do sessions like what maybe coaches would refer to as quality, but like really just volume is my goal. If I can get enough volume in, I figure that's good enough. Okay. and So far, that's gone reasonably well. Some days better than others.
00:04:09
Speaker
Today's a good day. Yesterday was a terrible day. um And yeah, we're just playing it by ear. And I had a good chat with my coach about it. And he's like he keeps reminding me not to not to push too hard with it. But yeah, the goal is to maintain volume. And then as things get better, I can reintroduce like the real high quality training. But honestly, i think volume is where it's at anyway. So that's that's good.
00:04:35
Speaker
but Interesting to hear you say that given the sort of races that you're doing. So we'll come back to that. But what's ah what denotes a terrible day such yesterday? ah Yesterday was like a sort of I'd been up since 1 o'clock as in 1 a.m. kind of thing.
Parenting and Individual Interests
00:04:50
Speaker
And then I had a hill session followed by i was meant to do gym and some stair mill stuff in the afternoon. So all kind of high demand.
00:04:59
Speaker
Which I sort of did, but when we took, like the quality was out of the window, are those hill reps were maybe barely getting over what a jogging pace is kind of thing. Like I did it, but did I do it kind of thing. But as I said, the fact that I got out there and I did the time on my legs and I went up and down a hill and unfortunate where I live, the hills, my backyard basically, yeah that's an absolute tick in the box. That's a win in this sort of stage.
00:05:29
Speaker
So yeah yeah, very self-induced fatigue. I don't want to ah don't want to come across as woe as me for my life choices. Yeah. How have you found second versus just having one? Because every time I speak to a parent, it seems like it gets kind of disproportionately harder.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's um it's a different experience. Like the way it's kind of unfolded has been very different. And my involvement and what I can get involved in has been different without kind of going. too much on that rabbit hole. I obviously have a bit more of like a family caretaker role with a four year old um and then trying to look after my wife while she really tries to make sure a one month old has enough. um But I'm actually we' really fortunate. We, i don't want to take credit for this. I think she's, we're just lucky. She's really good. But our four year old, we shaped very heavily the responsibility of like, you're going to be a big sister and framed it really positively. And she's been great.
00:06:31
Speaker
Uh, instances of jealousy. Like if we want space and we need her to be calm and go to a room and play, she, she does it like she's been absolutely amazing. So we haven't had to deal with sibling conflict yet.
00:06:42
Speaker
ah So yeah, it's ah it's different but So far, it's been pretty good, I i think. Have you found it hard? that's tight I'm looking for wood to touch. Sorry, I can look on my desk as wood. I'll touch it for you. um Have you found it hard to, like, trying to word these questions is always a bit bit tricky because you never want to, like, downplay how incredible it must be to have a ah a baby bring something into the world, like someone that means so much to you.
Military Life and Running Motivation
00:07:14
Speaker
But then training also obviously means a lot to us. Like running is a big part of our lives. And so when you do have to go, okay, this is just not the time of the season to try and build anything. Can I need to take a step back? Especially given how well you were finishing off last season, was it hard to go, okay, I know i'm just going to have to put everything into maintenance now. and And when you have to make those decisions of like, today isn't the day to push a session, I'm just going to take the easy run.
00:07:37
Speaker
ah I'm actually kind of, backwards in terms of my psychology. it's It's weird and like, go with me with this. Hopefully what I say makes sense. But I've always done better when I'm busier.
00:07:51
Speaker
I've always found it far easier. Like if you controlled 23 hours of my day and gave me one hour to go for a run, i would probably run for 59 minutes and 58 seconds. Whereas if you said, Hey, I need you to do 20 minutes of work, but otherwise you have the full day to do what you want. You better believe I will procrastinate and like, um really struggle with the motivation like the confines of a busy environment with that like work or now family have been i don't know i just respond quite well to it like i respond really well to it if you say you've got an hour great i can i can work with that and i can do what i can within the time um i'm fortunate that we're we both my wife and i have this year off we're taking 12 months leave so we're taking a long service leave
00:08:35
Speaker
And we've come, everyone's got a busy job, so I'm not claiming I was any busier than other people, but came from a reasonably demanding job into this.
Ian's Athletic Journey: From Childhood to Coaching
00:08:44
Speaker
So like the the pressure is different, but I can still find an hour and a day to go for a run. Yep.
00:08:52
Speaker
I think I had a bad parenting moment the other day because I'm also trying to get my four year old into this. Like that's I think most running parents, are they secretly want their children to like their hobby. and SJ is a great example. When she talks about going for a run with her son and stuff like that, she clearly loves it. And I hope to be similar one day with my daughter.
00:09:16
Speaker
um I mean, in our sport, what the the role model of father daughter must be the Bartholomew's. ah Yeah, so maybe maybe one day my daughter will make a documentary about me running. yeah cool um But yeah, the bad parenting moment was I was actually going out for like just a a quick sort of 30 minutes in the afternoon. And as I was walking out the door, she was like, Can I come?
00:09:38
Speaker
um And you only have like this brief moment and I sort of negotiated with her and then I, I went on my run I was like, that was actually a really bad parenting moment.
00:09:48
Speaker
Um, so then I, I went back and took her out for a run. Um, so that one's yeah. The, the pull of like being a parent and the running is I'm not getting it perfect. That's absolutely right. Uh, and that's for sure.
00:10:02
Speaker
Um, but. don't know, my wife and I kind of agreed going into the family thing. We wanted to have our own things and our own identities. And we felt that was important as a parent. Like, I just don't necessarily think parenting is your own identity and is necessarily the best model for your child to see. Like, if you're 24-7 just hovering around them and worrying about everything around them, um They're not getting modeled of any like other life behavior. Yeah. And maybe that's the justification internally, like to justify why I go out for a run and there's just secret selfish behavior. I don't know. But ah yeah, running was ah the one thing we kind of said, well, if I can have one thing, I'll go ah be able to do some training.
00:10:48
Speaker
And we agreed on that. And then sort of Vicky Versa for the wife. I appreciate you saying that so I don't think, I think that's a ah feeling or a place that a lot of parents find themselves, especially like I know through through coaching a lot of parents that it's hard to allow yourself to have that time and to put yourself first for that hour and then just to not feel guilty the entire time that you're not prioritizing your family or or whatever role that you need to do. But if we never prioritize ourselves, like you're never going to be able to show up in the best way for people around you. And then, like you said, what, what example are you setting that you is, is being an an adult, always putting yourself behind other people and, or like always hovering and and never giving people the the freedom to kind of make mistakes or learn and and
Army Career and Mentoring New Recruits
00:11:35
Speaker
range. So yeah, it's good to hear. It's is's how my parents were definitely with, with me and don't think it backfired too badly. Yeah.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, you're all right, think. Yeah, ah appreciate that. Thank you. um Cool. All right. So ah we only really focused on, ah well, really GSCR, well, sorry, four peaks through when you came onto the main show to kind of let us talk a bit more about background. we We've skirted around a bit of what you do for work and your intro into running. When Sim was talking about being a steeplechaser growing up, you kind of said you have no track background whatsoever. so I'd like to start there because i think it is interesting. So from what I understand, you kind of came into running definitely in in your early to mid 20s, a bit more properly.
00:12:19
Speaker
What was growing up like for you? like Were there any sports in in your in your background? Yeah. so like a lot of sports, let's call me like one of the multi-sport children, and like soccer, football, baseball, rugby. I was actually a really good born vialer. Well, outside of the competitiveness that I i developed, probably doesn't quite translate. um Yeah, I was like a multi sport child. And I think the easiest way for me to kind of describe like a long history is like the the catalyst moment, so to speak. So sort of in the twenty early 2010s. So in 2010, I actually had bilateral shoulder surgery. so
00:13:05
Speaker
um I had to have my left one, which I just dislocated being an idiot. And then in the process of looking at that, we realized, oh, actually the right one's are not good either. That was from being a baseball pitcher. um So I had that both done.
00:13:21
Speaker
ah And interesting, the podcast this week, you were sort of talking about when people have lower body injuries and what their identity becomes. The upper body injury meant um my identity and my fitness sort of shifted to running.
00:13:33
Speaker
ah I had actually, I had to have a shoulder surgery again. I had a couple of other upper body surgeries over the next sort of few years. So yeah, running became my identity, but I wouldn't necessarily call me.
00:13:45
Speaker
good in any sense. Um, and it stayed that way for quite a while. Uh, so my first cat, um, catalyst moment was really, yeah, breaking myself in my upper body and realizing the value of my lower body. than in Then in 2018, finally signed up to do UTA in 2019.
00:14:04
Speaker
um So UTA 100, which I'd been aware of for ages. Like I had a mate who'd done it two years and was ah twice and was going to do it again. i'd heard a guy all the way back in like 2011 sort of talk romantically about it. or He was talking about the North Face 100 at the time.
00:14:21
Speaker
ah And one that stuck with me, I was actually on a course in the Blue Mountains on a climbing course. And I remember the park rangers coming out and making a comment that was basically about who uses the national park. ah And they just made this offhand comment of like, oh, and there's also these people called trail runners who run a 24 hour trail in a couple of hours. They're crazy.
00:14:41
Speaker
um So, yeah, there's all these seeds planted and I finally signed up to UTA. trained myself for it. And then It was almost literally 24 hours before the race, my knee seized up and just stopped bending altogether. yeah In hindsight, that was like the result of overtraining and in a taper it was revealed.
00:15:05
Speaker
um But that was kind of like catalyst number two, where I realized you don't know what you're doing or you don't know everything. And i decided I was 30. I was going to give 10 years of like trying to get better at a sport because I
Balancing Family and Running Goals
00:15:20
Speaker
didn't really think I was going to be a power lifter or my footballing and baseballing careers were along in the the past.
00:15:26
Speaker
So I said, hey, I'll go all in on this. The first place to start was get a coach. ah which I eventually did. Then that got me into ultras and there's sort of five or six years or there's about five years of ultras.
00:15:41
Speaker
And during that process, I started to basically what I realized was I do all right at ultras and I would overtake people going uphill and I would get absolutely left behind going downhill. So quickly worked out like my strength was going uphill and eventually The last catalyst moment before now was kind of at the end of 2023 between my coach and another person who Steve Brennan, who I'll just maybe describe as a mentor, um finally got pushed to do uphill races, which I did, and they went really well. And that just redefined me altogether as what I am as a runner.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's they're probably like the catalyst moment. So what are we talking about, 12 to 15 years health of being a runner in some form? It's interesting because I think that anybody that is somewhat newer to trail running will only know you as the VK mountain guy and will completely miss the fact that 50K, 100K, even lining up for 100 mile is all been in your past. And it's a really, it's an unusual way to go about things. it's That's definitely something i want to come back to. and I do want to really come back to actually
00:16:55
Speaker
ah your relationship with Ben Duffers, your coach, because you have been working with him for but six, seven years now. So it's, it's ah which, which, yeah, it's something that i want to explore. So don't let me forget on that one, but coming back to, you said you were 30 and you wanted to give yourself 10 years to try and really get good at a sport and trail running was the sport that that you chose.
00:17:18
Speaker
Where did that thought come from? It was based on, and I i hope this is right, it was really an offhand comment that someone made in like loose lessons about physiology, but essentially the the concept that your aerobic system improves all the way up until you're 40, you know, your your speed and power and things like that peak. sort of within your 20s, I just looked at it biologically and I said, okay, what can get better? I can get better aerobically. I've got a bit of an interest in this ultramarathon thing, like that kind of appeals. um
00:17:53
Speaker
And then you look, especially in 2019, you jump on ITRA. And you look at the results and they the people that are top 10 are 40 year olds and they're old people. And it just kind of gave me a little bit of hope of like, oh, cool. i can I can still be really good at something.
00:18:10
Speaker
There's a mini midlife crisis, so let's be honest. Like, um ah like what's ah the kind of analogy? You all turn 30 and someone sits you down and you have this flip book and you get to choose a hobby. There's like,
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah. Homebrew lawn care, triathlon, cycling, trail running is definitely one of them. Like all all men get sat down and they pick one and they come out and they go all in on this hobby. Yeah. now They have a perfect lawn or they're obsessed with triathlons or something like that. And yeah, for me, it was tri, it was ultras.
00:18:40
Speaker
Have you always had this drive to try and – because for a lot of people, they want to take part. They want to push themselves to a degree. But it's a different mindset to have the drive to see how truly good can I become at something if I fully commit to it. Is that is that a mindset you've had growing up?
00:18:58
Speaker
ah i e I think I've realized later in life I'm very like narrow but deep in terms of my obsession. Yeah. So like if you look at my personality right now, there's probably only two or three things, um but I'm really deep and into
Injuries and Training Preferences
00:19:13
Speaker
them.
00:19:13
Speaker
ah It maybe wasn't necessarily like I think as a young person finding my way in the world and and doing all that kind of stuff, but that was no different to any other teenager. um But probably the main thing with me is I like to be good at something. Like I do hang my hat on being a decent runner. That gives me a bit of self-worth. I'm probably at risk of if I got a lower body injury, I would struggle for a period to to redefine what my worth is. I'll come straight to you and ask ask how you got through that process. But ah yeah, um like i sort of joked about like being ah quite a competitive lawn bowler as ah a
00:19:55
Speaker
a young person. Um, but like I got to a fairly high level in that and I liked being good at something, even though i was super, super niche, like, uh, it was nice to be really good at something. Um, so yeah, that is definitely a driver for me.
00:20:12
Speaker
I'm going to have to ask about this. So how does the lawn bowling world work? ah So i got into it Obviously, this will be absolutely not a shock. My grandmother introduced me to it. And I don't know what it's like now. i haven't really i haven't ah I haven't seen it or done anything since I was probably about 17. But when I was growing up, there was like a junior, there was quite a large junior network across the country.
00:20:40
Speaker
New South Wales was one of the strongest states. yeah um And it was driven by just a couple of old guys that were really passionate about it. And then it it it grew. And funnily enough, the journey that it went on, maybe not too dissimilar to like,
00:20:53
Speaker
the journey trail running is going on where it started to get bigger and organizations got involved and it got taken away from volunteers to more like actual professional organizations and with the pros and cons that come with that um but yeah this introduced by my grandmother uh i was i picked it up pretty quickly uh i got i got into the new south alice team for whatever that's worth that's that's a don't know. Is that brag? Yeah, we'll call it brag. Yeah, call it brag. um Definitely.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of big yeah a real big deal in the um very small lawn bowling world. ah Yeah, and yeah, I was good at it and I liked being good at it. So yes I stuck with it until I was yeah about 17.
00:21:35
Speaker
Of all the other sports that I thought you were going to mention on this podcast, Lawn Bowls was not up there, but I i find that really cool. I like it. it's And trail running small sport and we get really excited about representing on a national level. If there was a state level to represent about, we would get very excited. So representing anything on a state level is...
00:21:53
Speaker
I don't know. Pretty, pretty cool in my books. Yeah. Yeah. It was actually, it popped on TV. I didn't realize KO has a lawn bowls on it now. Like most sports have gone for like, uh, the digestible, you can show it on TV and it's marketable. And I know exactly what would have happened. And it's like everything else, uh, all these other sports that are going to a short format, um, more intense things like you can imagine the the old guard of lawn bottles, which is basically their entire clientele. It would have been a bit of a journey to get them to come across to that and make it more attractive and appealing for young people. but
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, there's a, it sort of mirrors a lot of other sports, including our own as to the modernization journey that they're all going on. Definitely. It's definitely going to be interesting few years for, for trail running. I'm sure there'll be, there'll be looking at sports that have managed to do that transition well and others that haven't hopefully taking what they can from that. And I've i have i've i've had my right arm and left shoulder broken at the same time before, so I understand the the upper body
Military Support for Athletic Endeavors
00:22:57
Speaker
injuries. Does any of that plague you anymore in life?
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, 2023 was a bad year for it. So I did Wandi, Wandi Cross that year, and coming down off –
00:23:12
Speaker
I can't remember there the sort of um the Harrietville side. It was really muddy and I slipped over and my right shoulder came out. oh And it does that every now and then. Like it's ah yeah the the graphic detail is I've got because I just I have kept doing it since I had surgery. I've got bone loss. So it's just an unstable shoulder.
00:23:33
Speaker
ah Yeah, I came down and it came out. um And i ter I was terrified of that exact point on the course. I knew it was going to be muddy and slippery. So I probably like manifested falling over um and out it came.
00:23:46
Speaker
It fortunately came back in and I looked up the hill and James Barnett was hammering down and that gave me the motivation to kind of forget about it and keep going. And then later that year,
00:23:57
Speaker
So did Dragon's Back Race during that year and i was absolutely terrified if anyone's seen Dragon's Back Race. On day one, you do this thing called Kribgok, which is this knife edge 400 meter traverse in the Snowdonia mountain range. And it is quite literally, you've got your hands on the top of the traverse and your feet are on the side of this rocky cliff and you are shuffling along.
00:24:20
Speaker
and was what happens if my shoulder goes out there like i'll fall yeah 300 meters i was terrified i was really nervous for dragon's back actually did a lot of upper body training to make sure i could get through that and then fast forward to that i did the 50k at cosi that year and there was a section just before garrigo campground and it's like the most flat basic section you could possibly imagine i remember overtaking this woman sort of saying hello got 50 meters down the track and just caught an edge fell on my face and my shoulder came out again she kind of came up behind me and i was lying on my stomach with my shoulder out um and it's one of those don't know whether you've sort of experienced it like someone's trying to help you but
00:25:04
Speaker
Like if your shoulder's out, that's not what you want. yeah And eventually I went back in and I got up and ran off. It must have been a really weird experience for her because she probably didn't even know my shoulder had come out. um But yeah, it gave me, 2023 was a really bad year for that shoulder. um But since then, again, I'm looking for wood.
00:25:24
Speaker
It hasn't been terrible. okay It's been, yeah, pretty good. I get... I don't know how exciting this is, but like ah the compensation of having bad shoulders means I get like a lot of upper body pain just from like posture and things like that. And but yeah, sort of kind of having you like not terribly hunched shoulders, but hunched shoulders is tight neck and things like that. So every now and then it all locks up on me. I used to have to run with like tape,
00:25:54
Speaker
from some sort of my shoulders back in like an x over my back to hold my back sort of up just to compensate for my shoulders feeling the way they did i used to really kind of lock myself over and get really tight um but yeah right lately been fine yeah there was there's ah there was a window there where i was like oh this is really affecting my running right what kind of run i can't get through a race because of the shoulder the you're on record multiple times saying sort of downhill isn't really your your best trait in trail running.
00:26:29
Speaker
Do you feel like that, whether whether it is consciously or subconsciously, just holds you back from really going for it? Yeah, definitely. Like that time at 1D, like I was scared of falling
Mentoring Through Running Experience
00:26:42
Speaker
over.
00:26:42
Speaker
um and then I hit the muddy part that I knew was there. and by being scared, I went slower, uh, going slow on slippery terrain results in you for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Um, so yeah, I have kind of developed whether it's consciously or subconsciously or like directly or indirectly linked, um, having a ah bad shoulder. I don't know, but um,
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think I saw you after Wandi last year. and we discussed the fear levels that I have versus James Barnett. and yeah, that guy's unreal.
00:27:16
Speaker
But yeah, he reminds me like, you know how Alex Honnold does his sort of his massive climbs and they look at him and wonder whether he has the same the same concept of fear as the rest of us. And the answer is absolutely not. Like he's very unique. I look at people like James and Hayden Barnett and I'm like, yeah, I'll never be able to match it with you because you just have like an unreal ability to close off and fly down a hill.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, I would have been a few years ago and doing a run with both of them coming down middle track. And I thought I was a decent downhill runner. And then I watched those two just go. And and actually, but back then that was,
00:27:55
Speaker
really knew for James to get into trail running Hayden and been in it for a while then and James just went flying past Hayden and he was gone so it's yeah and like he said if you don't have that fear then you run faster and you practice the skill then you get faster and faster and faster and you literally run away from the rest of us that are kind of worried about breaking our bodies because Yeah, I had a good one with Toby. So Toby, Lang and I, when we're doing the day four of um four peaks, I knew like he was going to be better going down. It was a wet day, so it was going to be slippery. and i was like, oh, here we go. um So I tried to put a gap into him on the climb and I nearly got to the bottom of the climb and I hadn't seen him. and I thought, ah sorry, at the bottom of the descent, i was like, oh, I must have got a good enough lead. And I heard this like just faint screaming behind me.
00:28:39
Speaker
got closer and closer and he went past me and he was like like absolutely unchained. But at the same time, like kind of it sounded like he was screaming. um so he was just falling down this hill, and terrified. But he was, yeah, within 30 seconds, he was out of sight. It was crazy. Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
yeah The thing is, I can move quickly after that because that was the technical part and then we hit like a flyer road descent and I was able to then sort of keep up with him and eventually overtake him just at the end. So I can move quickly. like It is purely a mental thing that I can't go downhill quickly. I'm aware of that ah and I just cheated and I just stopped doing races downhill as opposed to maybe maybe sorting my headspace out.
00:29:25
Speaker
I think it's much easier to just avoid your problems than to to try and work through them. Yeah, it absolutely works. I recommend it to everyone.
Uphill Racing Focus and Coaching Influence
00:29:33
Speaker
yeah All right. So you mentioned it well work-wise. And before we jumped onto this, you said that ah essentially through your work, you're a sponsored athlete, which I'm very intrigued to work out how. you Going in into it,
00:29:51
Speaker
This is my naivety with how the forces work. Are you in the army or is it even a different? Yeah. So I'm an infantry officer in the army. Okay. Did you go straight into the army from school?
00:30:02
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So um yeah, straight out of school, straight to the Australian Defence Force Academy, which is like a university, but it was a university entry pathway for all three services, army, navy and air force.
00:30:16
Speaker
What was the draw card to go into Army? It's funny, like if I can self bash, I probably wouldn't have done it if I got good enough marks to be an engineer at one of the senior universities, which is what a lot of my mates did.
00:30:30
Speaker
um I didn't quite get good enough marks for that. um Which I'm not unthankful for. when they like When I spoke about like all the cata catalyst moments in my life, a lot of them were quite negative, like getting injured and stuff. And if I could go back in time and change that, I absolutely wouldn't. Because, yeah um for example, getting injured before UTA, if I had just done UTA, I wouldn't have reached out to a coach. It means I wouldn't have found Ben and I wouldn't.
00:31:00
Speaker
be at the point that i amm I'm at now. and I know you said we'll come back to Ben. um But yeah, I'm actually thankful I probably didn't get into like the University of Technology in Sydney to do engineering because I'm far happier.
00:31:15
Speaker
I don't know what the other path would have been like, and i if I'd done that, I wouldn't be able to compare it to this, but like I'm pretty happy with the way it worked out. But shamelessly, Adfor, the Show and Defense Force Academy, me like you go there, you get a university degree, you get paid while you do it, and then at the end, you get a job.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's that is the recruit. it's It's like the organization exists because of how powerful that is as a recruiting tool. Like it's ah it's amazing. And I'd be lying if I said they weren't the draw cards.
00:31:47
Speaker
um It's a hard one, though, because like signing up for such a massive commitment based off me getting all these things, me getting money and me getting a job, eventually a reckoning has to come and you have to actually realize you want to do that line of work and everything. Unfortunately, are i i I did um and my motivation changed from the selfish reasons why I might have gone to somewhere like that. to the actual like wanting to to do that as ah a career. um But yeah yeah, the Australian Defence Force Academy, it is really a, it doesn't have a lot of cons in terms of like life choices for an 18-year-old that's not 100% sure what they want to do.
00:32:27
Speaker
They're not necessarily wanting to inherit a massive HECS debt. yeah Yeah. it's Yeah. That was the drawcard, at least for that specific moment. Did you still end up doing engineering?
00:32:40
Speaker
No, I studied i studied business. Okay. Yeah, which ah I have a degree. I've never done anything with business. It sounds better than it is, but... um Yeah, they do they do engineering there. I didn't get the marks to be an engineer. I actually, I got approved, like I went through the selection process and I got approved to be an engineer there.
00:33:00
Speaker
um Didn't get the mark, so they took me as a business student instead. um I ended up studying postgraduate, a master's in arts in military history. That was...
00:33:12
Speaker
Again, super useless in my life unless I'm going to go work at the Wall Memorial. Well, actually, it's not useless, that's a lie, but it doesn't feel like a really tangible degree, yeah like maybe business sounds, but ah it definitely was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing that more so than studying project management and looking at spreadsheets.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah. Do you remember the moment or what kind of the catalyst was for you going from that more selfish focus of why I'm in here to more of that? Actually, this is what I want to do. ah Yeah, it was so I had a really low point um kind of in my second year. Like it was really low. It was like, why am I here?
00:33:56
Speaker
And I sort of, I kind of just worked through that. um And it continued, it was in my third year that I had the shoulder problems. And that was a low point as well. But it was really, i think it was actually the point I kind of got over to. So once you go through the Defense Force Academy, you go to the Royal Military College, which is like the army officer training establishment at Dundrum.
00:34:19
Speaker
And it was there actually doing that as a job. You can start to, you start to like see your purpose and you can identify with the job because while you might be wearing uniform and studying a degree, you just don't quite have that tangible connection to what you're meant to be doing. And it's really hard to derive yourself a sense of purpose when you're effectively a uni student um yeah but for the most part ah to be a bit sort of ah callous about it.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, it was once I was actually sort of doing army stuff. And again, i so i went over to Duntroon, I got injured almost immediately. i went into what was a rehab platoon, did a lot of rehabilitation. um And you can tell me whether you think this connects to who I am today, but within that rehabilitation platoon, Monday to Friday, we did 13 PT sessions.
00:35:13
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, so you do three a day, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, two a day, Tuesday, Thursday, you do a whole bunch of theory, a whole bunch of recovery, like a lot of, a lot of PT, physical training.
00:35:26
Speaker
So I did that, but through the process of kind of like being there, trying to get through my military training, getting injured and stuff like that. uh that's where like i started to want to be good at the military side of things and i i was all right and that's where i really found ah a sense of motivation there in a number of areas i suppose what does the journey look like for someone that goes like i want to be good at the military ah I suppose it really depends. um life The Royal Military College is like most middle ah as go say like most places it's like most places in the sense that you're studying something and you can be good at what you're studying. yeah Some people are better, some people are worse. The thing that you're mainly studying at Duntroon is tactics.
00:36:14
Speaker
um and tactics in terms of the theory, but then like the art and science of the practical application when you go out on exercises and do it. um And it's like anything, it's just something you can be better or not as good at. um That's just one element of what it's like to be in the military, don't get me wrong. there There's plenty of other things that I'm absolutely not good uh but yeah being re a reasonably fit person um and having a couple of bites because of injury and going in and out of my training having a couple of bites at doing all the sort of tactics courses was i picked it up and yeah i was able to sort of do it reasonably well and what before you had the year off now what what was your role work well involving
00:37:06
Speaker
ah So I was actually back at the Australian Defence Sports Academy. So the last two years, 24 and 25, I was there as one of the staff. So I kind of came full circle and like I'm still in the military, but like almost bookended that period.
00:37:20
Speaker
So they have military staff to look after the the thousand trainee officers that are there. And I came back as one of them. So got to see it from the other side. yeah And i was I was like every single old person that's ever existed that – was once one of the children and then you stand on the other side of the fence and you're like, no, it's the children who are wrong.
00:37:42
Speaker
yeah thats Yeah, it was a good experience, actually. I really enjoyed it. And it was hyper-motivating. I think if there's any teachers listening, it'd be interesting to know whether they would agree with that. But being surrounded by...
00:37:56
Speaker
really, really high performing 18 to 20 year olds was quite motivating. Like your job as staff is to lead, motivate all that kind of stuff. But I found it was it was very two way because Yeah, some of them were, you get a lot of like elite people, people that maybe were just short of say the Victorian NFL draft. Okay. ah And people that have like a really good track background. Like one of the guys I used to kind of go toe to toe in our fitness test with, um he was a junior national runner.
00:38:33
Speaker
And yeah, like really, really good. So really, really good people. And yeah, it's it's really great environment to be around just being surrounded by high performers. Yeah. I feel like potentially teachers 18 and younger may not quite grasp that. i could I could be wrong, but I definitely get that from from my work. Like you're you're inspired by people every day, by like the dedication and the hard work and then even just like things people say, you're like, oh, wow, that's a really...
00:39:01
Speaker
interesting way to like and it helps you like reframe things so i can imagine that's very much when you've got that enthusiasm and that youthfulness but still that drive working with people that age yeah absolutely um it's frustrating um it's frustrating because they are who i was for example yeah um and yeah they're still in the period of their lives where they don't know who they want to be They're just to the brim full of talent, absolutely amazingly talented people. And some of them you want to like grab and just be like, if you just went all in on this one thing that you are clearly really good at, you would be absolutely amazing. um
00:39:38
Speaker
but they're 18 to 20 and they're not home central. What they want to do with their lives, the social element of their lives is really important. Getting out and experience, it's all really important things. Um, and you, you don't get to choose what they do with their lives, but, um, yeah, there was a couple of, there couple actually like really, really good runners. Um, I would, there's a guy who, um,
00:39:59
Speaker
I can't remember, he did Nail Can in 2024, and he did really well. oh yeah I knew he was going to do it, he just going to do it for funsies, and then I saw it as a result against people that I knew from the trail running world, and I was like, oh man, you're really good.
00:40:17
Speaker
yeah Yeah. we We have one of the guys from here who's who's at ADFA. um He brought him down as far as I know. And ah yeah, Prav said that this guy was pretty quick. And then I think he ran 40 or 41 minutes, which on on the nail can, off of course, I don't think he broke 40, but it was very impressive. um And yeah,
00:40:38
Speaker
yeah i think proud kind of undersold him a little bit and we were like wow okay that was that was a solid effort did do you know if he's done any trail stuff since uh no so he i know he's still a good runner i saw there's a um there's a race in brisbane called king of the hill on the barracks up there which he he went absolutely blitzed i saw that on strava um i think he's very much like trying to get after his military career which is absolutely understandable and the right choice i um I spent a bit of 20, 24 trying to convince him to do the Skyrunning Juniors oh yeah and go over there. But um yeah, just had other plans, which was absolutely his prerogative. But yeah, one of those guys that I hope maybe
00:41:19
Speaker
maybe in five to 10 years finds his way into the trail running world because he probably got still 15 to 20 years of being an amazing runner ahead of him. Yeah. And he's just one of them. Like, I mean, perhaps another one. Yeah.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah. how How do you find moving into that kind of mentorship role? I'm i'm sure that's been a part of your work to some degree as you go through but i was looking at the uh the ultra interview you did before worlds and it was very much a lot a lot of time spent running with the kids quote that that you're working with and yes it starts to chat about running but then it goes into life and i'm sure it gives you a lot of time to really connect with them and sort of help steer them i'm sure they would come to you for questions how did you find that position
00:42:07
Speaker
ah Yeah, running was definitely like an icebreaker for me. um And they all knew like that was my thing. I was maybe a bit of a cliche like the the boss that likes running.
00:42:19
Speaker
But yeah, it was a massive icebreaker to be able to get out and be involved. And even in 2026, like I know we fully understand that people are like really diverse and what makes people really exceptional is more than just the old school metrics.
00:42:37
Speaker
But I hope this doesn't sound too on the nose. People still or respond to fitness, and particularly in the military environment. um ah Without sort of naming names, like I know some people that are massively talented and more talented than me in that space in say things like logistics, like I couldn't even, I wouldn't even be able to tell you where to start in space like logistics, but it's the type of thing that wins wars, right?
00:43:05
Speaker
But I'm the guy that can run a really fit really quick fitness test. and people People like me for that. And it's super unfair. like i've i've I've benefited from a very one dimensional talent, um which is maybe an element of privilege. uh particularly in a in a workplace that responds more positively to like fitness than a lot of others um there's kind of a really long way of yeah saying like i'm just lucky like what i'm good at people kind of respond to it may created a nice breaker um it is a metric that they're measured by being fit um it's something that they have to aspire to So it wasn't just the people that were fit that I could sort of connect with, it's people that wanted to be fit as well.
00:43:52
Speaker
ah Maybe one of the challenges with that is not being intimidating just by being alright at something, by being good at something and trying to make myself more two-dimensional and more approachable when If someone was just to look at and say like in 2024 and be like, oh, that's a guy that's a really good runner and is going to run for Australia and Spain. um and But I'm a terrible runner. Like what would I have in common with him?
00:44:22
Speaker
There were people that would actively avoid me for that reason. Not because they didn't like me, but because like they didn't have that connection with me. So breaking down that barrier and being able to connect with those people, um that was probably the more challenging side of it.
00:44:35
Speaker
um Yeah, because you have to sort of, you have to be a leader and mentor for everyone, not just the people that can run NowCan in an absolutely insane amount of time. No, for sure. it's I'm sure though, if we you held a mirror up or if you put yourself in the position of them and you do have that thing to relate to and that the the boss that's great at logistics, it might be a really highly valuable skill to have, but they probably can't feel like attach themselves to that. And I know that for me for myself growing up, the people that had the biggest impact on me, they had those relatable elements and that...
00:45:14
Speaker
stopped them being seen as a boss figure quite as much or a senior figure, but just somebody that I could see like relate to and have that compatibility with to then have the conversations that actually make a difference in a 16 to 25-year-old's life or I guess even ongoing as well.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah. And this is when we sort of circle back to my comments about having a life outside of being a dad. I remember really fondly when I was a kid, my dad used to go and run – in Karinga Chase National Park up in Sydney, down in place called Bobbin Head. And he used to park the car and he would run three k's out and three k's back on like the entry road.
00:45:52
Speaker
Uh, and when I was old enough, I'd come, and I'd run two K's turn around and two K's back. Uh, and in that time we'd finished basically at the same time, but like, I really enjoyed that. Like that's so a memory that stuck with me and I was doing that in single digit age.
00:46:08
Speaker
Um, it was like an experience that I shared with him as opposed to, um, he was my dad packing my lunch and all that kind of stuff. Um, and that I hope for my future, um like i i sort of tongue in cheek mentioned the Bartholomews, but you do look at them and you see like they have a shared experience in life and they do things together. um And that I think is the future, like that's the future relationship you want to have with your kids. And in the the role where I'm twice the age of the the trainees that I was working with, like, yeah, being able to have a shared experience was useful.
00:46:43
Speaker
And I think there's something about exercise as well. Like we're, I've never been a gamer or anything like that, but I feel like the connections that you could build with the people that you're doing it with just don't go quite as deep because exercise and I think running and probably any endurance sport, it strips you back so much. it's Like you ah become really vulnerable and whether it's you're running with somebody and you have a conversation that you wouldn't typically have at the pub or at the park or online whatever it might be just because you don't you are in that different state and it could be the emotions it could be the energy that you've you've expended but there is yeah i think there's a more powerful connection at least that's that's been my experience yeah yeah i was listening to a there's a podcast i comet remember what it's called it was talking about like where people connect and it was it was talking about like the history of fire um and it went through like the impact fire had on life
00:47:31
Speaker
but it kind of delved into like the old fireside chat. um And like he was talking about the connection between like, if two guys are sitting in a car facing the same direction and going for a drive, they tend to actually talk a lot more than if you put them in a coffee shop and have them face to face. And you can see kind of a direct link to like the fireside chat where everyone's just kind of sitting, looking at a fire and like talking and communicating. And that was the real social element of us as,
00:47:59
Speaker
as a species, going back into the past. I just wonder you sort of saying that whether running is also the same thing, like we're quite physical people, we're hunting together and stuff like that. is Yeah, running together maybe triggers and an old sort of historical social connection that we have.
00:48:17
Speaker
It's been thousands and thousands of years in development. I've definitely heard a similar thing about being side to side instead of front to front, like looking at each other. And I didn' don't remember, i didn't hear the the real why behind it. But i yeah, I know that if i'm if I'm just walking next to somebody,
00:48:36
Speaker
You seem to have a, and and I think this is actually more of a guy thing, but you have this sort of different ability to open up or different comfort or yeah. And if that would make complete sense to me.
00:48:47
Speaker
So I had said while back as well about the kind of how your role is almost like having a sponsorship is kind of how you put it to me. What, what did that, that mean?
00:48:59
Speaker
So ah within like the military, and it varies by service, but they're actually going to standardize it just across defense. um They have a ah assist ah program ah program called like the elite sports person program, um and you can apply and essentially get recognized as an elite sports person.
00:49:19
Speaker
was originally designed like it's a recruiting like most things like and it's like any sort of sponsorship right like sponsorship isn't you're really good so like hoker will give you some shoes like hoker wants something in return um just like the army wants something in return out of like recognizing and supporting people that are really good at the various sports um but It was a system historically that was probably more the mainstream sports and ways you could support people that were like, say, playing rugby for a really high level or soccer, really high level and things like that.
00:49:51
Speaker
They've had to go through a a redefinition in sort of the 2020s because like the things that people are really good at an now are triathlons, like trail running, CrossFit, but the definition wasn't sort of built around them. But essentially, like if you're at a high level competing for sort of a national or in a national competition or an international team or things like that,
00:50:15
Speaker
ah you can apply and get recognition. And it varies by person to person. Like it's almost a negotiated contract, but it means you can claim time to leave, ah sorry, time to train and get time to go and train and go and compete.
00:50:30
Speaker
um So i was I was technically on duty, say, when I was over competing at Worlds oh wow because I was sort of recognized by the Army for doing that. and You can get financial support, which I have had in the past as well. um Yeah, sort of and the other component of it is ah is when I say it's negotiable, like I didn't use it for this, but some people could use it for let's say they're really good rugby player. They were in the army, but they were really, really good at rugby and wanted to play for the Brumbies.
00:51:02
Speaker
Through that system, you could technically get yourself posted to Canberra, get a job that gives you the time and flexibility to go play rugby and you can theoretically compete at that high level while also being in service.
00:51:17
Speaker
I don't have any great examples in the Australian military of that. The British military are someone that do it really well. like I worked with some people over there and they were telling me about a guy that was in their unit who played for the Welsh rugby team.
00:51:30
Speaker
um and it was supported uh and that's like the concept of what it is yeah um yeah it's sir and that's like in that specific example that's a great recruiting tool right because you have guy on the welsh rugby team and those that country lives and breathes rugby um you can guarantee like there's a lot of young people that are like oh he's in the He's in the army and doing that.
00:51:55
Speaker
um So yeah, that's what I mean by like, it's a two-way street like any sort of sponsorship, but it's more linked to work and more like work is sponsoring me, so to speak. It would definitely be like if I was 18 and hearing that and not really sure of my path, the fact that you're paid to go for university with ADFA and then you have opportunities like that that exist, it's a pretty inviting process.
00:52:20
Speaker
option yes one of those ones like when you're in it um and there's so many things like this uh i don't want to go down too many rabbit holes i can think of plenty of funny examples um there's so many things like you're in it and you don't appreciate and then you look at the rest of the world and you look at the real world and you're like oh no one else is getting these opportunities that i am the ah one of the funny examples i have was uh I remember sort of this story about these um these guys that were at a unit and they were playing, though like went to rugby practice on a Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock or something.
00:52:58
Speaker
that was sort of griping to some people that were on the team about the fact that they had um they had to do what's called sportos like sport on tuesday and thursday afternoons and one of the people in this team was just feeling he sort turned to them and was like hang on minute like twice a week in the afternoon you have to go and play sport instead of being at work like what is your problem right now yeah what is your actual complaint And it's just one of those things you you lose track of it because you can't see the forest from the trees. But yeah, it's really good. And they have been really supportive. And I've been very lucky, particularly the last two years, because where you look at what my running journey has been. I've worked for a couple of bosses that were massively supportive because they also just could have be as easily said, no, like, yeah, you're taking a piss with the amount of time you want to be in Europe or something like that. yeah
00:53:47
Speaker
But they didn't. And I've been able to achieve some great things because of it. So is there a set amount of time you're allowed to spend doing that elite program? It's a negotiation. so um while like there's the recognition that comes from sort of the Army, what's called, the Army Sports Council actually, um it's also a negotiation because essentially the best way I could be explaining is my boss sponsors me.
00:54:13
Speaker
So I go to my boss and say, hey I want to apply for this recognition. do up like the proposal and they are the one that send it up. And that's a way of the decision makers basically saying, OK, so I'm not signing off on this guy to go and run 300 out of 365 days a year, but his boss hasn't agreed to him doing that. So what you're presenting is an agreement between you and your your supervisor to the decision makers to get recognized.
00:54:43
Speaker
um Yeah. And but like, and so as a negotiation, like I'm obviously being like, Hey, I want to do this, but here is where I'll give, I'll give back and I'll make sure I can. And I was lucky that I was at, um, like I was at the Australian defense force Academy because one of the cells is like, Hey, one of the staff members is going to go run for the australian team that might be a good thing for some 18 to 20 year olds to see um and i don't mean that to come across braggie or anything like that but that was that was genuinely one of the selling points is like hey maybe this is a good role model thing definitely yeah
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it's when you have somebody that you're in close quarters with every day, basically, and that person is going to represent their country. Like it's a, it's a good example of a what hard work and consistency and persistence can do, but also what like,
00:55:38
Speaker
um we can still have dreams and ambitions that aren't solely attached to your job. I can imagine it would be very easy if you were in the army for that just to become your sole identity. Whereas you're showing somebody that's incredibly successful at their work, but also incredibly successful at their essentially hobby.
00:55:53
Speaker
But it's something that probably empowers you to be much better at work and also at home. yeah yeah yeah definitely um and i'm twice the age i'm 36. uh some of them were 18. um and it was it was really handy like how do i put this i loved rubbing in the fact sometimes that i was twice the age but faster than them but at the same time like i like making the point like imagine if you devoted another 18 years of your life to something and where you could be yeah um because like
00:56:26
Speaker
turning 30 isn't the end um unfortunately yeah I've fortunately maybe proven the point that I really wanted to in um like turning 30 and wanting to get good at something um is that yeah you can you can still keep improving like the the top of that peak isn't uh necessarily where you think it is when you're looking at it from the perspective of being 18 to 20.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's really hard when you're that age as well to, like you said, actually see where the summit might be and to take that step back and go, okay, well, I've got 15 years to maybe reach this point. Whereas, especially at that age, if you're looking a month ahead, you're doing well. And so it's it probably is what it definitely would be for them, something that something they might be able to help frame the reality that if they commit so to something for 15, 18 years where they could get, because they, one could theoretically or but would theoretically well surpass your equivalent level in whatever they chose to do if they had that much time to commit to it.
00:57:28
Speaker
Yeah. It was one of the, like I described them as like exceptionally talented people, which I stand by. but it's funny when like, when a curse is actually a blessing and a blessing is actually a curse to people. and in this case, like the blessing of being incredibly talented, you can see it manifest in some people that like everything they pick up, they're good at.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yeah. Never had to, never had to work. They're, they're really good and they're really talented and they'll go a really long way. um But when you compare, say, the guy that is terrible at football, can barely catch a ball, like but just absolutely worked really hard on their running and got really good at it compared to the guy that is just he's got the genes and can do everything.
00:58:10
Speaker
um In terms of like their future potential, one of them has the building blocks to be amazing at something and the other one doesn't. And it's something they still need to learn and they absolutely can learn it. But yeah, when you sort of talk about like, hey, you're 18 and you can be good at something by 36, for some of them, their solution for that is you need to learn the building blocks of working hard at something and not just picking up a trumpet and banging out a bad tune. like um yeah that's that's a way maybe the one curse of the talented is yeah um and the the untalented like i can't think of who it is like there's a runner who's really really good but it's like the only thing they're good at so they just kind of went all in yeah and like learned how to become good at something and as a result was amazing
00:59:00
Speaker
Yeah. If you've got, say, two 18 year olds that have, that you're in charge of ADVA and one of them has incredible work ethic, but a relatively average level of of innate ability and talent. You had another one that has an exceptional level of innate ability, but a really poor work ethic.
00:59:20
Speaker
Which one do you think suits the army world more? Which one do you think is going to end up getting further in it? ah They both do, I think. Okay. um Because you're basically describ describing kind of a, I'm blanking on the opposite term, but so one of them is obviously smart, lazy. Yeah. um And then then the opposite, and I don't want to say I'm dumb but motivated, but yeah that's a really mean way of describing the second person.
00:59:49
Speaker
Smart, lazy people are really useful to the organization. Okay. They're particularly useful at finding like efficiencies and making quick decisions and stuff like that. ah there There's a couple of streams you can go down within the military where you just need people that are really good at making decisions, really like just they can go and see a problem make a decision and off they they go and acting that um and smart lazy people tend to be maybe a little bit better at doing that um it's like the older analogy of like where those are saying like plan early plan twice um sometimes the people that leave it to the last minute like only have to do it but one of the things i've noticed is people that leave it to the last minute
01:00:32
Speaker
also develop an ability to do it in a minute. um That sounds really silly. yeah that's true i'm I'm justifying people being lazy, um but there's value in that. But there's also absolutely the value in the people that can do the hard work as well.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah. I think they they all they may not necessarily thrive in the exact same job, but they will thrive somewhere. And that's that's the beauty of like being in leadership and managerial positions is being like,
01:01:01
Speaker
Well, you are absolutely awesome at like rapid decision making. I'm going to put you in a a a role where you have to make rapid decisions. You're amazing at like long term planning. i'm going to put you in like a logistics, and a strategic logistics job where you have to think about deploying a massive amount of people overseas. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Value. Value in everyone, really.
01:01:22
Speaker
i say it's I wasn't expecting that answer and it makes a very good point and there's like longevity in either one of their careers it's just making sure they've been put in right place which also puts the onerous on making sure they have a good leader as well a boss to to recognize where they are best placed yeah yeah yeah um and I was a massively like like as a university student I was terrible um That was really terrible. i did most things last minute. um
01:01:54
Speaker
It was only when i started like the actual military side of training that i I probably put in the just amount of effort. And that was also the point I started to enjoy. it And like fast forward to now where I'm doing a sport where you have to put in, like if you want to be at a high level, you have to put in a lot of hours of work.
01:02:12
Speaker
And so I have had to learn the opposite, um, investing time and everything like that. So I'll probably transition from being a massive procrastinator to really proactive. But when I said before, like, If you constrain me to one hour and I'll find the time to run.
01:02:28
Speaker
I think that is a symptom of my procrastination. um And you've given me one minute to do something. So I take a minute to do it kind of thing. like You see how all this is like, yeah, threaded together and ah manifesting into the 36 year old Ian.
01:02:44
Speaker
Definitely. It's what I love about these interviews and talking to people is as people talk and kind of knowing the version of them now, you just start to see everything connecting up and where it's come from and their interests and how they go about things. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a privilege, but it's, it's fascinating just to see the, guess the behavioral psychology behind all of it.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things that I was, I got a message from the Billy Curtis this morning yeah with a couple of, of, of topic ideas and and questions, but Within that conversation, he made a really good point. And oh I guess I'll describe this by when I came on the podcast and started doing the interviews with the last year, the two people that reached out first was Ben Burgess and yourself.
01:03:25
Speaker
And never heard from either of you in the past. And for both of you have continuously kept messaging. You've been my feeder for everything, mountain and short trail. And Ben, we just keep bouncing stuff around that. But something that Billy said was that you really care a lot about how other people are going and approving.
01:03:42
Speaker
And I've got to imagine that, well, my guess would be that has come from your work. Although, but would you say that's something that have you always found yourself kind of being more likely to care more towards others put others first in it?
01:03:57
Speaker
Uh, so i like people, uh, and that, what a, what a silly comment to make without context. Um, so what I've found, I mean, if we relate this to the military, like I'm in the infantry, um, and like the military is a people centric organization, um, and every, every corner of the military will say people first and everything like that but in the infantry your your asset for want of a better term is people like that's the person that's the thing that you have to generate capability out of um it's not a machine or anything like that ultimately it is a grain and you need to generate the capability out of that and starts and finishes with that um so i've always found that as a problem enjoyable i've been successful and i've been unsuccessful in my time like i think most people are like the points where i'm like like
01:04:47
Speaker
Like with my parenting, there's points where I'm like, I'm getting this right. And then then I leave my daughter behind instead of taking it for a run. I realize i should have shouldve done this the other way. um So yeah, i like I like people and I like the problem of people and I find it quite interesting. um And I've sort of taken, I do actually do a bit of coaching within the running community within the military for that reason.
01:05:11
Speaker
ah And I also just like the sport. I mean, Billy maybe gets, Billy's probably the most extreme version of my interest. Like I'm massively interested in what he's doing. He's a very interesting person. Yeah. And yeah.
01:05:24
Speaker
and Yeah, it's fun. And one of the reasons I like this podcast is because like we now know names. We now know like people in the community. You brought up before this podcast that we'd raced each other.
01:05:38
Speaker
And if like you hadn't started this podcast, I probably would not have known that if And there's plenty of other people in that category that get mentioned in the results or in like previews and stuff like that. Like we're building a sport of, or you're helping to build a sport of people as opposed to just a series of races and stuff like that.
01:05:57
Speaker
um I actually, was talking him to someone a little while back that I've, I'll name drop. I bumped in into Charlie Hamilton. I'd never met him before. And ah I was out on one of the trails in the mountains and kind of ran past him and sort said hello and i was like i think that was charlie hamilton and then i turned around and was running back up the hill and he was coming back down and he stopped and was like oh you invest which is nice that was uh yeah like um charlie knows me yeah it was cool and then we ran for a bit um I sort of made a comment to him, which was genuinely how I felt like it's intimidating coming into the sport and you see you see like the big boys, for want better term, standing at the the under the banner ready to start. And it feels quite clicky almost because all the really good runners know who the really good runners are. um
01:06:45
Speaker
And I was able to maybe maybe at least break into that circle by becoming good and being known by people and everything like that. But yeah, I think where maybe right now further down the road than we were when I started out about people knowing who other people are in this sport and slowly becoming a bit more of like just a running community where you can rock up.
01:07:06
Speaker
um i'm I'm going down a few tangents with this answer, but like go for why I like to race like four peaks, like the number of people I've had random conversations with at four peaks who've just started one because they're on a shared journey of four days of running up big old hills.
01:07:21
Speaker
ah The first time I did it, I walked off. It was when I met Sam Burridge and never met him before. And we're now good mates. But we were walking down, blanking on her name, um but walking down the hill with this nice woman. She spent half an hour talking about how she and her daughter climbed Mount Everest.
01:07:39
Speaker
And yeah, it was like a cool. Yeah. So her daughter was the youngest Australian to climb Mount Everest, which mum was both super proud of and a touch dirty because she also climbed Mount Everest and got none of there none of the um the credit for it.
01:07:53
Speaker
ah But yeah, but that that was really nice and being able to meet people like that at Four Peaks has been really good. So I've found you getting more and more into this sport and getting to know people. And like, as I said, some of this podcast is making that a lot more accessible because we get to hear about what people are doing and where they are and things like that.
01:08:14
Speaker
um Yeah, I sound like I'm sucking up to you right now, which is terrible, but that's why I've liked the deep dives in into people to find out. we Ben Burgess is a great example.
01:08:25
Speaker
We know nothing about it. And even in our runnings, I used to run ultras. I don't anymore. So we never would have been on the same start line together. I would know nothing about the guy. Maybe we would have met and we inevitably would have met because of something we did last year. But yeah, I know a lot more about that guy because of things like this, which is great. Yeah, and it does, it makes people more approachable. Like you said, it's from the outside in the top of the sport, can feel quite clicky because you talk to who you know and who you are around in races and you then talk to finish lines and who you train with. But I think the thing that doing a lot of these interviews with, again, to know people is that our sport is full of really
01:09:09
Speaker
nice and very interesting people. Like there's such a varied background, even people that are performing at the top of the sport. Like Sophie Broom is a really good example of someone that's a PhD. And then you have like the polar opposite spectrum of somebody who's still, like who's young, 16 year olds like patrick clark who are also then racing in a very similar race and and it's it's what i've loved about it is kind of breaking down a bit of those barriers and hopefully helping share people's stories so that somebody who might be able to relate and would actually really value from either hearing it or just having conversation on a finish line with with somebody they wouldn't normally felt comfortable approaching because they feel like to a degree they know them now so yeah it's a it's a it's a very cool medium the podcast world to do that i think
01:09:57
Speaker
very rare you get to spend this much time, especially in my position where I get to just pepper people with questions and ask them about their entire life and kind of force them to be maybe more open than we would. Maybe if we were sat by a campfire together, we would have the same conversation. But outside of that, it's probably a pretty rare rarity. But yeah, that's...
01:10:15
Speaker
Very different tangent, which in a way brings us back towards the running. I've realized we're sort of quite long way through this and haven't really spoken about you as a runner yet. so thats and Yeah. And you promised to talk about Ben. You asked me to remind you. so Yes, no, I think that's going to work out quite nicely because when you were introducing yourself and kind of your journey into running, you said that UTA 100 was going to be your first start line? Yeah, that it ended up being my second. I signed up for that and then I did – there's the australian alpine ascent um the old version of it of course has changed um i did that there's like a build-up race yeah so it was technically um kind of got my first ultra in the process got absolutely smoked like the rest of us did by steph austin um there's a name name that stuck in my head as someone who was amazing like i don't think anyone that day saw her because she just disappeared and distance. She won overall. yeah wow It was comfortable. It was well and truly comfortable. It was 11 minutes comfortable.
01:11:15
Speaker
um yeah yeah It burned into my brain. I think raced her at um She was in UTA 50 when I did UTA 50 and I beat her, but not by that much.
01:11:27
Speaker
So, Steph doesn't know it, but in my head, we're one all. And there's there's a decider somewhere down the road. I'm sure she got that marked somewhere.
01:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt. She's like, yeah yeah, he might think he's good after UTA, but I smoked him at Alpine Ascent. yeah um Yeah, sorry. So, I did that one and then yeah UTA was really what was meant to be the the main event and the first one.
01:11:52
Speaker
So you said that you had a mate who had done a couple of times and you've been in that area with the park rangers, but what was the drawcard to go to do the 100? Because there are other distances at UTA that you could have chosen. Yeah. So, I mean, it started as a guy. He was actually like a physical training instructor who used to tell stories about doing the North Face 100. He did it sort of, want to say around 2013.
01:12:17
Speaker
um and that kind of stuck in yeah my mate did it a couple of times um the park rangers thing it was just something that like it was just constantly being planted in my head and eventually like that was just the one uh yeah I hadn't put any thought into any other race like that was the one that I knew which I think people would probably understand like if you were coming into the ultra world like UCI 100 or the North Face 100 back in a little while ago. That's kind of ah the big one that people yeah people know. um
01:12:47
Speaker
So yeah, I just absolutely latched onto that as ah the go-to. And when you didn't make the start line, but you did get in touch with Ben, what was those first conversations like? What like what what were you coming to him and saying, obviously, A, I want to stop being injured. That would be great.
01:13:06
Speaker
But B, this is what I want to achieve with the sport. What was that conversation? So i I actually looked the other day at the um the performer that I filled out. But interestingly, he wasn't the first person to ask. or I didn't actually even ask Ben to be my coach. I asked i sent like...
01:13:23
Speaker
about seven emails out I think to a bunch of different people and a a couple of like really still well-known coaches and all of them came back and was like not while you're injured.
01:13:35
Speaker
like Let us know when you're good to go and we'll take you on board, which was disappointing, but um I get it as an answer. The only person to get back to me was Andy Dubois at mile 27. And he came back and was like, look, I can't take you, but I've got this guy called Ben who can. I'm not sure how early in that his coaching career it was, but maybe he was still building his portfolio, which was why he was willing to take me on when other people weren't. um I immediately was like, okay, Ben quickly looked up his profile and was like, I don't know if can swear, but like, holy, holy hell. Yeah, you can swear it's fine. Yeah, holy shit, like this guy's unreal. And this is 2019, so...
01:14:15
Speaker
um I don't know what maybe Ben considered his peak year, but like Ben in 2017 was winning everything that he yeah he did. So I remember going through his resume and showing it to my um my other half.
01:14:29
Speaker
mean, like this guy's going to coach me. How cool is that? Which is absolutely not the metric the metric you should select your coaches on. it's Yeah, it's definitely not. But yeah, it was cool. ah He was very hands off for the first couple of months. Like we sort of,
01:14:45
Speaker
I did the performer and my goal was like, I wanted to be competitive. Uh, and the way I think I defined that was I wanted to have more, I wanted to do more than just finish an ultra.
01:14:55
Speaker
Like yeah I wanted to be able to, you know, push and run at time. I didn't, I don't think I was talking about podiums or yeah so kind more competitive with yourself than competitive with the field.
01:15:06
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yeah. Like to have more than just one gear, like to be able to race an ultra as opposed to a survivor. Um, And that was really my goal and and obviously to be sort of better over that decade with my little mini midlife crisis.
01:15:20
Speaker
um And yeah, he just sort of monitored me while I was doing like physio. it took about two months before I could run again. and then once I kind of got back in, he took me from like the,
01:15:34
Speaker
as As you well know, like one minute running, five minutes walking, or um and then we proceeded from there kind of thing. yeah Yeah, it was he still gave me the full time of day like we weekly check ins, but it was sort of like nothing.
01:15:49
Speaker
Nothing to add, I'm still on my rehab program and I haven't been cleared to run, so I'm still just doing strength and stuff like that. So he patiently waited until I was i was cleared hot to do some stuff.
01:16:00
Speaker
Yeah. And then as we look through, i guess it's probably 2023, which i think that was was the year of Dragon's Back, Skyrunning, but it was also your first VKO, the first time you did fully from what I could tell. i was crawl crawling back through your Strava.
01:16:17
Speaker
It was ah yeah yeah yeah August 2023. your comment was first attempt a VK. yeah So kind of up to that point, you've you as we said, you attempted DNFed at Tauera 100 mile, but you did get UTA 100 2022. also did
01:16:36
Speaker
as was also you also did in that year Brisbane 60, Alpine Challenge 100, Buffalo, where we met, um and then a bunch of other stuff and later on in that year. How did that relationship with Ben grow whilst you were still kind of focusing on those ultra events?
01:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I think when you when you look at the whole thing, the thing that Ben did, which There was a point in time, I can't remember exactly when it was. And i I think it must have been a Christmas time. And I did like the not social media dump, but actually have a spreadsheet buried away where I look at the volume that I had and compared it to previous years. um And now again, to to swear, I was kind of like, holy shit, like my volume is massive compared to what I was doing 2018 earlier.
01:17:20
Speaker
um And this was is probably more like 2021, 22 that I really had that watershed moment where i' had just seen I could look back and see what he did, which was just slowly doing more and more volume. um And I was obviously handling more and more until I had like just this huge training base, this relatively speaking, at least compared to what I was before I met Ben, like this really big ability to...
01:17:49
Speaker
to get some large long K's out of my um training. um So yeah. And ah it was one of those things I didn't really notice it. Like, you know, it was a little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit until, yeah, I was like, wow, my training volume is actually really high.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That I think was, but I think he'd just normally coach me, but I don't know he was being subtle or conniving or anything with it, but like, yeah, that's what he did without me really noticing. Like at no point did I say I want to run, you know, an average of 400 Ks a month for a year kind of thing. It was just yeah one day I woke up and i was like, well, I actually did a lot of volume this year. Yeah.
01:18:32
Speaker
the the the reason is I like this so much is obviously with my coaching habit even as an athlete the longer you work with somebody as long as they grow with you the better they get to know you and then the better they've seen the cycles of what works and what haven't and they know your physiology and your psychology and how your life works with your family and work and It means that typically they're going to be help get the most out of you just because they know how you work the best.
Strategic Training and Coaching Decisions
01:18:58
Speaker
Even if even if there was a coach out there who could get a bit more inventive with the program and give you something that might be slightly different and cause a better response in a certain way,
01:19:07
Speaker
it's probably not gonna have the same long-term impact. And there's even just how comfortable you feel talking to Ben and asking questions and just knowing that he has that context of you. So it's like, and and then and then that kind of brings us to the point where he said, along with with Steve Brennan, you guys have the conversation of like, hey,
01:19:26
Speaker
I know you might enjoy this stuff, but we can see that there's there's another level to Ian if you were just to focus on the uphills. And to have that conversation is not one that a lot of coaches or maybe coaches have, but the athletes might not be fully responsive to because you might go, well, but I like doing my...
01:19:44
Speaker
400K months and I like doing my 35, 40K long runs. I don't want to start doing a very different structure of training. So like when that conversation did come about, how how did you find like being told that and then making that switch?
01:19:57
Speaker
ah Yeah. So I mean, the context of it was Ben and I always knew Like i was better at uphills than I was downhills. We'd planned races based off of that. Like you wouldn't plan very much, but we always knew like take it easy on the downhill, you you push on this uphill yeah and things like that.
01:20:14
Speaker
Um, and then Steve Brennan is a, is a funny
Social Media's Role in Athletic Discovery
01:20:18
Speaker
character. i was living in Victoria at the time and the way he got onto to me was via Strava, um, because he'd seen that I'd take him in a segment somewhere. Um, and then he like did his own little stalking, uh, Strava stalking thing, uh, which he's amazingly good at. The guy's really, really good at finding people and like, he's very invested in the sport and like, yeah, he has his fingers in so many pies and can really draw out a lot of people. Um,
01:20:43
Speaker
And yeah, he he literally just messaged me in Australia. And funnily enough, I'd actually applied for an Australian team, maybe
Competitive Team Selections and Race Reflections
01:20:51
Speaker
2022. I didn't get selected, ah which is, yeah, there's no reason why I should have been selected. i just put my name in, but I remember on the, ah yeah thank you, but sorry, no, email, it had the selection panel.
01:21:05
Speaker
And I was like, Steve Brennan, I've heard that name before. And I pulled that email up and I saw it and I was like, okay so i've got an australian selector jumping on my strada like slipping into my dms making making some comments about like me as an uphill runner um and i think i mentioned it to ben at the time as well um who obviously knew who steve was and yeah this was before doing dragons back but it's yeah it was just conversations and i was the one that drove it like i i wanted to give it a go Um, ironically at the start of 2024, I did a coaching course and Declan McKenzie was on that coaching course.
01:21:42
Speaker
Uh, it was first time I'd met him and he was talking about training for Kinyanyu VK. I remember sitting there, i was training for Tara Weara, which i ah i ultimately DNF'd. And I remember I had like the, i'll be I'll be blunt and beat up on myself, like maybe the ultra marathoner arrogance. And I was like, oh, well, I'm training for a hundred mile. You're training for what? Like an uphill, like weird sort of niche range. Like I just, ah to me, it just didn't make Not didn't make sense, but like I didn't really give him the time of day.
01:22:13
Speaker
So no, that sounds terrible because there's a nice guy. I was nice to him, but you know what I mean? Like I didn't really give that race and what he was doing a lot of respect. And literally 12 months later I was racing it and then redefining my identity based around that type of racing.
01:22:26
Speaker
um So yeah, it was I thought about that the other day actually, like within 12 months I'd gone
Focus on Future Race Planning
01:22:33
Speaker
from there. A guy training for 100 mile ultra who didn't understand why you would want to run up Kinyani to being a guy who wants do that all the time. um But yeah, I drove the conversation and Ben's...
01:22:47
Speaker
Ben is very patient because i'm I'm the type of person that will, i I haven't actually spoken to him about this, but like I've thought about what I want to do in 2027. And I love, like I really enjoy the process of speculating about future races and stuff like that. um And when i think when I think it's okay to unload that noise onto him, I'll throw the ideas and he'll patiently listen and in certain areas, tell me, okay, we'll worry about that in the future. And in other areas, he he won't. um But yeah, I think I was the one that was keen to try and it fit nicely that I was training for Dragon's back. I'd do that and then I would tip it after that. um
01:23:27
Speaker
And I was also lucky. so Ben holds the vertical kilometer record for Australia. He's the fastest Australian to run a VK. So I think he was quite energized when I said, hey, i want to do this. Yeah. And he decided of he was like, oh, okay, we can we can do this because I know a little bit about this.
01:23:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I forgot the original question. I don't know where I i got there on that ramble. Yeah.
Identity Shift to Short-Distance Races
01:23:53
Speaker
You've answered it. No, but it's it's just it feels like a very pivotal moment when somebody – It's super common for people to start short and go up.
01:24:00
Speaker
um And maybe they dabble in some, as as they're going longer, they still dabble in some shorter stuff. Not so much VKs, mostly because we don't have access to them here. But to go the other way, especially going from Dragon's Back, which is like one of the hardest stage races, especially from a terrain perspective that you can do. And um imagine I've got to imagine the training for that, the the little bits that you allow us to see on your Strava, I could see kind of was yeah very specific.
01:24:27
Speaker
would be quite a different switch to go back down. And even, as you said, you um my guess is you're going to say that all of that, those what... four years worth of work in the ultra space kind of created this strength and this endurance foundation that you've then applied to the VK stuff and just layered the speed back onto it. And, but it's just, it's, it's, it's uncommon. And for you to actually kind of accept the just step back and go, no this is like, I'm not going to attach myself and my identity as being an ultra runner or a hundred miler.
01:25:02
Speaker
I'm going to go and try this thing that makes absolutely no sense. and I don't really understand why anybody would do it, but let's see what happens. I just don't think I don't think everyone would do that. Yeah, I mean, the the interesting counterfactual is what may be interesting for me is I made the decision to dragons back did Cosby 50 at the end of that year. Then next race I did was VK one after that was VK and did shot over in New Zealand came third and then Q90, which I want to auto qualified me for the Australian Sky Rating 10.
01:25:32
Speaker
If I hadn't come third and first, like let's say I came fifth and fifth, would, yeah, like that's, good doing yeah, would I have kept doing it? Like when I sort of alluded, well, I didn't allude, I said straight out before, like I like being good at something.
01:25:47
Speaker
If I wasn't good immediately, I'd have like, would I have gone down this road? I don't know. But then i'd I'd argue the sense that you look back at your results and you go Australian Alpine Ascent, 46th, Surf Coast, 33rd, Thames Trot, 17th, 19th, 15th. I'm going to ignore the first because that breaks my point.
01:26:04
Speaker
Then Buffalo, you were 8th. You weren't, not meaning from way, there's not nothing special about this. you you're not You were not the level of athlete you are now in the short distance that you were in the longer distance, yet you still persisted and you still kept grinding and actually you just kept going like you went longer to a degree.
01:26:21
Speaker
So, yeah, i I know it feels more like you you sort of just just embrace this next chapter and this next challenge. And I guess like you say, you you and then an inch, an inch, what was it saying? An inch wide, but a mile deep.
01:26:36
Speaker
Yeah. That this was like that next step for you, but that that next thing to go deep on, which has clearly paid off. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you talk about like the those short distance races and um I, since the end of 2023, have been all in on
Training Adaptations for Performance Improvement
01:26:52
Speaker
uphill racing. Like there's no cheating and lying about what I've been trying to train for. I've trained specifically to run a VK, but every now and then I pivoted and run like Mount Poula or GRCR and things like that.
01:27:04
Speaker
And back it goes the other way where I do feel like the ultra training um had built the strength and endurance, as you said, that translated really nicely into the way that I run uphill.
01:27:17
Speaker
But same, same, like the the training that I've now done for uphill has like had massive paybacks. I'll pay dividends for like the 20 kilometer distance and stuff like that. yeah um Yeah, it it's interesting because my best results on ITRA, and know there's algorithm reasons I think are in part for this, but my best results are in that 20 to 30K distance yeah since I've been training to run vertical kilometers.
01:27:42
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily line up, but it does at the same time. But it it's pretty commonly accepted that the shorter the race, the harder it is to score a better index.
01:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, the upper ones. I mean, and the upper ones, ah So I was running calculations when I was doing some races overseas, just like speculating on what a good score would be.
01:28:04
Speaker
But a minute in Utah 100 means like two points maybe or points on ITRA. A minute over a vertical kilometer will mean 10 points.
01:28:16
Speaker
So you get it slightly wrong. which is absolutely completely easy to do. Yeah. It's going to cost you. yeah Yeah. Yeah. The margin for error is just not really there. But it's also been, I've i've had good ones, but I feel more comfortable if you ask me to run a really good score, I wouldn't pick a VK to do it.
01:28:36
Speaker
I think i'll I would hand pick a certain sort of 20 to 30k race. Yeah. Just be back at GSEO. Yeah. do that yeah did do that Do that one again. Maybe yeah not not all the way that this year was, but...
01:28:48
Speaker
Yeah. all right. And then one of the things that I guess we we didn't touch this actually when you came on last time was, so you have represented Australia before this year Wales.
International Competitions and Race Experiences
01:28:59
Speaker
You were at the World Masters Mountain and then also the Skyrunning Champs. Are those the two times that you've represented Australia? Yeah, yeah, correct. that right Everything seems to be in Spain. I don't know what Spain did to pay off the power brokers in the running world, but yeah, Spain for Skyrunning and then Spain for World Masters in 24.
01:29:19
Speaker
And the World Masters was in Canfrank. From what I can tell, was it the exact same course? Yeah, yeah, it was identical. They were using it as like, I think they deliberately and cleverly trialed the event for 2025.
01:29:31
Speaker
So getting onto the mountain and trail team as it was this year, did it feel any different getting on? Cause I feel, I feel like there is a momentum that's building with the the world trail champs.
01:29:43
Speaker
yeah ah Yeah. I mean, the events were different. The world masters is cool. And I'm just gonna make a tiny, tiny plug right now. If I can go for it, ah they've just announced 2027 in clusters in Switzerland is the masters. So if you're over 35, like, I would highly recommend it, please reach out because i'm trying to build a little bit of a community.
01:30:05
Speaker
I've got Matt Crayon, Timmy G, um I think Jess Short's also interested. so yeah we have a lot of good over 35 runners and it's a really fun thing to do. It's actually really fun.
01:30:16
Speaker
Have you got a yeah hit list of names you want in in that group? So one of my little projects when I'm sitting up at 1 in the morning sort of looking after the little one is to basically go through ITRA and work out who's over 35. And then I just want to spam them and say, come to Switzerland in 2027. And i've I've had a quick look at the list and there are some awesome runners.
01:30:41
Speaker
ah Yeah. There's some actually really good runners. Like, yeah, Matt Crean. Dave Bailey is going to be 35 in 2027. He'd be a weapon over there. Yeah. Imagine if Mike Carroll went over to run. Yeah.
01:30:55
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be really cool. And this kind of comes full circle back to what were saying about when you were 13, had 10 years because of 40 being this development curve kind of tipping point, which I would i think it would be, well especially for for women, it's argued that it's later as well.
01:31:12
Speaker
but it points out to the strength of our over 35 like runners the fact that just won the vertical no last year like it it's yeah it would be great to see and like i think everyone wants to see our our national teams to be as competitive as possible and filled out and it to become an occasion that we all get really excited about yeah yeah my my motto for the world masters in 2027 is like great people in a great place doing a great vet yeah um and even if it even if the beers at the end of the best part of it like yeah sounds pretty great yeah very cool crew so yeah if you're over 35 let me know um but yeah the events are slightly different the world masters is really competitive um same with sky running masters if you have a look at the results uh some of them are insane uh
01:32:02
Speaker
um in so In the uphill, for example, I raced this um guy that I've become friends with. He's an Irish guy called Ian as well. He came 14th or 15th in the Skyrunning Worlds and then came fourth in the uphill at World Masters.
01:32:17
Speaker
wow So still, like he he didn't walk away from being top 15 in like vertical kilometers for 2024 and just like blitz his way through the Masters. He was still fourth and had a pretty good run to to do that. He was beaten by...
01:32:34
Speaker
ah He's beaten by names. Like, you know the names and I'm blanking on who they are. um And particularly the British guy that beat him. I see you're looking them up. You know who I mean. It's got the same name. It's more, it's it's, they don't often, they don't all come up on ITRA or UTM. Oh, here we go. well Well, no, that was Mountain. Yeah, the World Mass...
01:32:56
Speaker
ah Here we go. You keep talking and I'll get results. um Yeah, I mean, there's good names. If you look at the Skyrunning, the VK, for example, like it was a 45 to 50-year-old that won the VK in an unreal time.
01:33:08
Speaker
Which just like breaks everything that we're meant to know yeah about. Yeah. Like, especially because we we do know that as you age, your VO2 starts depressing. And so, yes, you need like one of the, you can do a lot more work at that, that intensity to to try and help sustain it. But inevitably people do tend to become better endurance athletes, i.e. 50K, 100K, 100 miles, and they do become a VK athlete.
01:33:30
Speaker
yeah But then to be winning it at 55 when it's Skyrunning Masters down to 35 as well. Down to 40. 40. 15 years of losing, i don't know the exact rate, rate but A sizable amount of one's VO2 max is yeah it's impressive. ended so The i be uphill at World Masters was Edward Hernandez from Spain, Thomas Roach, whose name i definitely know that was one yeah yeah another Brit, Andrew Douglas, and like Thomas Roach is the 45 to 49 category. yeah Andy Douglas is an amazing runner as well. yeah um The Spanish guy was in the Spanish category.
01:34:08
Speaker
He's here's a good one over there, but yeah. Yeah, and then Ian Conroy, the Irish guy that you mentioned. Yeah. um And then, yeah, and the results for the Skyrunning.
01:34:19
Speaker
ah Well, that can't be right. It has one got as two guys in the 75 to 79 category. ah Yeah, I not. I have only been by a 75-year-old. That would be, well, there's actually this three or four of them. Yeah, that's got to be a mistake. I've got to imagine maybe that's 45 to 49. Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:35
Speaker
yeah um But yeah, it's, and I think it's, if someone's listening to this and they're, they're considering that they they think they're too old to step down and distance and start exploring some of the more mountain
Age, Performance, and Competitive Nature of VK Races
01:34:46
Speaker
style events. And as as we'll we'll come to shortly about the kind of the history of where where that's once been and where it is now in Australia.
01:34:54
Speaker
and worldwide like they're just because you are in your 30s 40s 50s 70s it's it's not ruled out and actually it could be it could be the thing you get the most fulfillment and fun out of and they're not i have to park my own biases here having never done one the idea to me of a vk sounds horrible but i can definitely see the attraction especially once you do one and you kind of go oh i know i know where i could do better and you start to become more comfortable and tolerant to the discomfort of it And it's it a very, as you said when you were on last time, you did four VKs in, was it four days or five days? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah just like training runs, but like were hard. I did them hard. I wouldn't say I i copped out. Yeah. Yeah, but if if we went and did a moderately hard session for 45 minutes, four days in a row,
01:35:44
Speaker
I'm injured is yeah like there's but or or I'm incredibly burnt out. Whereas it's replicable for somebody of your training experience, caveat that very strongly. um But yeah, I think the the the nature of them is is very interesting. i mean, your language describing it is interesting as well because...
01:36:04
Speaker
It is a really silly phrase, but it's like a mini ultra. um But in the sense of the like, why do so many people sign up for ultras? Because it's hard and you don't know whether you can do it. Like it's a really big challenge. um And like you look at it, i mean, when those New South Wales parks rangers were saying that trail runners were crazy, that was the type of thing that made me think I want to be one of those people. um and so many people that do ultras um across the spectrum of like abilities do it because it's hard like they're nervous it's easy um they don't just can't it's one of the best things about our sport um it's like that primal drive that uh
01:36:39
Speaker
we actually have as humans, I don't want to get philosophical, or but like in our cushy world, where do people go to find something that is that challenging? But yeah, do ultras because they are hard. People look at VKs the same way. They look and go, wow, that's crazy. Like that sounds really hard and really really miserable. um And then you sort of mentioned like, okay, getting incremental and incrementally better. It's the same thing, like doing an ultra, how did I get better at being an ultra? It wasn't by getting faster. It was by becoming more efficient because when I did Australian Alpine Ascent,
01:37:13
Speaker
the first half I probably dropped half an hour in the second half yeah and those first few 50k's I started to get right the first half didn't change the second half did and it's the same with VK's like I'm not necessarily faster and speed doesn't solve the problem for me getting up a hill is is getting the pacing right and running a really consistent, maybe not negative split, and terrain doesn't necessarily allow that. But like if you can hold like a really even effort for the entire VK and sit just on that kind of threshold or just below, yeah you have an awesome time. So i think the same mentality for both disciplines exists.
01:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, one one is just... 20 hours, 30 hours of your life and once 30, I would say 30 minutes. That's definitely not for me, but you know what i mean? It's for some. Yeah.
01:38:04
Speaker
I guess when I think about it, I go, I know I can get up a hill that has a thousand meters and is at long at at the most five k But I also know that the price I'll pay for so for overdoing it early is going to hurt in a very different way to what 100 miles is. And also in in ah even in a fifty k if you if you've gone out too too hot, you have the opportunity to bring it back. You're probably still going to have a great day. But I feel like the repercussions of a VK, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that if you are that first 200 meters of gain, if you have gone 10% too hard, it's all over. And you're in for a very hard rest to just eat some even get to the top.
01:38:41
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been doing, I've introduced stair stepper into my training since I got back from Europe um or after that kind of racing block um specifically because so at least on the ones that I have at my gym, um the stair steppers, think around about 60%. You'll cover a vertical kilometer in 1.4 Ks or something like that. Thereabouts fully is 1.9.
01:39:05
Speaker
So not too dissimilar when you consider that a stair versus trail, maybe it's yeah much easier. The two correlate neatly, I suppose. um But what I started to realize and what i've Ben and I have been really sort of bouncing back and forth between is my recovery speed is a lot slower than I think it is.
01:39:25
Speaker
And this is what I experienced it fully when I raced it. Like I overcooked it and I had to slow down. But an experiment like anyone can do is go and sit on a stair stepper and try and keep your heart rate under 135 or like at least in your aerobic zone. It's actually really hard to do. And by virtue, like you translate to that, to what your experience on fully is going to be like.
01:39:49
Speaker
If you blow up, you would need to drop to that speed or slower to get your heart rate back down. um And I think for most, I think for the average person going up a 60% gradient to get your heart rate down is coming to a dead stop.
01:40:03
Speaker
yeah And I don't mean that to sound main as 60% gradient. It's a nuts gradient. ah Whereas yeah running on a flat running, even a hundred mile ultra, like slowing down to a walk is generally enough to get your heart rate to drop back down into the aerobic zone and then you can pick it up again. yeah So you're you're right. And yeah, as I said, you can actually see it for anyone that's got a stair stepper in their gym. You can literally see where your zones are um and the implications of going too hard um and whether you even have the ability to drop your heart rate.
01:40:38
Speaker
to low point while moving. um And yeah, but for context, for me, i have to go really slow to be able to drop my heart rate back down to like an aerobic speed. Yeah.
01:40:51
Speaker
quite slow. It's it's disappointing. and that's but Sorry, it's not disappointing, but it was like an area identified, well, okay, I need to work on that. Yeah, which is a very trainable skill as well from a physiology perspective. Once you're talking then, I feel like I would would be remiss if I hadn't actually asked how your training did change from what you were doing for the ultras and then coming across into training for
Training Changes from Ultras to VKs
01:41:15
Speaker
the uphill races. And then more recently, like you said, I know that when you...
01:41:18
Speaker
Again, we're on, you were talking about including the stair stepper into your training. And so there's obviously, as one would expect constant evolutions of the training over the last 18 months or so. So i how, how different is it and how has it then evolved in that more recent period?
01:41:35
Speaker
Yeah. So the change from ultras to VKs wasn't significant. Like I, I have a very simple structure of like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, easy Tuesday, speed, Thursday Hills, Saturday, Sunday long was my ultra training. Um, I think for dragons back, I, I did Hills on Friday. So I did Hills long, long, it used to back-to- back to back big days.
01:41:57
Speaker
Um, the one check, what two of the main changes was I, um, Ben had me doing a sort of like a neuromuscular, like 10, 20 second high intensity going uphill kind of things. Yeah. um Which became one of my weekend runs, but I still kept the other long run in there. I was keeping endurance. And I also introduced a lot of uphill running on the treadmill. um So usually one of the things that I really loved doing it, I do strength on Tuesday and Thursday Armos and finish by running uphill on the treadmill. Yeah. um
01:42:31
Speaker
which sounds like a lot of running when you've done speed or heels in the morning, but it's like uphill running is, has a lot in common with strength. Yes. um And uphill running on a treadmill is really low impact. So it, it was just a a second stage of my strength session, so to speak. But it wasn't a radical change. We then, after Buller,
01:42:53
Speaker
did look to do radical changes and introduce, um, some cross training. So the interesting experience that I had in 2025 was, uh, I rocked up to the start line of Buffalo 10 and was, um, racing Blake hose and we'd been messaging beforehand.
01:43:08
Speaker
Um, and, uh, I knew he was doing this to me. He was like, ah, haven't been training. I've cycling. Don't worry about me. It'll be fine. Um, you're gonna smash this. i was like,
01:43:20
Speaker
No, that's not like, I know what you're doing right now. Like, you're still going to be amazing. You're Blake hose. Um, lo and behold, like I beat him to the top of the hill and I could hear him coming as soon as we started the descent and like, he went quicker than the mountain biker down those hills, um, got to the finish and it was like, you, you asshole. Like, but he, he generated that performance off a lot of cross training and specifically cycling. Um, I mean, we're looking at James Barnett, especially I'm not sure where Hayden's doing. He's doing a massive amount of cycling.
01:43:50
Speaker
um Declan McKenzie in Four Peaks 2024 did days, He definitely did day four. I can't remember whether he did any other days. And he did day four after riding Hotham on day three. So it wasn't like he was completely fresh. He was the second fastest person to climb Mystic and had been specifically and almost exclusively cycling due to injury, yet was quicker than everyone on bar one to the top of that hill.
01:44:19
Speaker
ah And then look at Worlds. You've got Remy who's been injured and been doing a whole bunch of cycling. So I looked at all of that and I was like, well, I must be missing. Well, I feel like I'm missing something. So ben and I had a ah really long chat about introducing different stimulus and cycling was
Cross-Training and Strength Building
01:44:35
Speaker
one of them. The stair stepper was another, doing some weighted stuff and like doing stuff with weight it was another.
01:44:41
Speaker
um yeah Weight's are always something I've been like intrigued by, like the concept of introducing weight into training. um And when you asked me earlier whether having ah a child has impacted my training, so we came up with a brand new construct.
01:44:58
Speaker
And then a week into having my second daughter, I reached out to Ben and I was like, can't do this. like yeah And we reverted back to my old structure because I've been able to do that for the last few years, rain, hail or shine. But we still kept different stimulus. So like I'm doing a weighted one. um of I'm doing stair-stepper as part of like my strength stuff.
01:45:20
Speaker
ah And I'm doing a couple of other little tweaks, but the structure is generally the same. Yeah, those ah without going day by day, don't know.
01:45:32
Speaker
um When I was going back through, ah noticed that you had at least one day that was visible where you'd done a flat workout. I think it might be something like 10 by three. And then the in the evening, i think i it was a VK on the treadmill in about 45 minutes or so, which I'm assuming is not easy pace for a time perspective for you to run. So at at least it's a steady to moderate sort of threshold style effort.
01:45:59
Speaker
Is that something that you you do in almost like a double workout using the treadmill in the afternoon? was that lost Was that from last year? Do you remember? i don't think I wrote down the date. I just noticed. I just i just wrote down the fact that you were doing that.
01:46:13
Speaker
Yeah. so um normally it would be what you're probably looking at was a Tuesday. It would have been a speed session in the morning. Yeah. um And then normally it's kind of a bit of strength work and then finish with 30 minutes of – it's not tempo. It's like increasing speed. Yeah.
01:46:28
Speaker
So I would generally like do four, four increases, so like seven and a half minutes, go up a little bit, seven and a half, go up a little bit. um And probably the last, the last quarter would be quite hard. I think the one you were actually looking at was me um doing a race with a bunch of my trainees. So yeah I dragged them in. If it's that one, I dragged them into the gym because I wanted I wanted to do a VK on the treadmill, but I wanted competition for it.
01:46:56
Speaker
So yeah I got, there were five of them and the rule was they could each run ah twice and they could rotate through and I would run once and first person to a thousand meters wins.
01:47:08
Speaker
um Did you win? Yeah. how um Yeah, it's a very niche skill like in terms of running. And I think it's funny watching like some people realize it's a 15% treadmill, but like after a minute, they're like, oh my God, this is really hard.
01:47:25
Speaker
yeah um And they're they're fit dudes in many way in many like respects. They were far fitter than me, maybe more holistically fitter than me, but yeah on a 15% treadmill. um and not But this also speaks to my beliefs on like the fitness that you need for a treadmill.
01:47:41
Speaker
um They have fast guys. They're probably faster than me. Well, and truly have 400 meters, but engine wise, the impact of an engine for a vertical kilometer is massive, is significant. Yeah.
01:47:54
Speaker
yeah If you had someone there coming to you and they're 16, 18, and they're asking, okay, how by 25, how can I become the best uphill runner I possibly can be?
01:48:06
Speaker
we you've got seven years to sort of say I would do this for you that for year or however however you want to structure it like what do you put the real emphasis on build that uphill ability yeah so the if you look at the triangle right of speed endurance and strength um and that's really dumbing down what fitness is um but also not um like endurance and strength is a huge component um And again, if we want to like interconnect my history, my 20s to 30s, like, I'm in the infantry. What did I do? Put a really heavy weight on my back and walk around with it. um
01:48:44
Speaker
I used when I was in the yeah UK training twice a week, two of my sessions were just putting on a big pack and walking up a hill, um, which was, I considered my strength training. Um, so like in terms of tendons and ligaments and things like that, going uphill, um, they're quite strong. Um, that's one of the things I've maybe got going for me.
01:49:06
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, the, the strength and endurance is massive. Um, And I think particularly in that age bracket, we're seeing it a lot now where like, where you see it with the sedentary children that this is before the age bracket that you described that aren't active and they can't recover it in their 20s because like their bone density and everything fails to develop between 12 and 18 and yeah that's them for life um like not being active in that age period is almost catastrophic to their future field physical abilities um but yeah doing that kind of stuff and the investment in
01:49:43
Speaker
that component like the strength and endurance i think is a big one um i think like yeah looking at as a long ah longevity yeah because a lot of people think speed is the answer to vertical kilometers and fast people are good at going uphill but yeah it's fast people with a big engine right like yeah um i don't i'm i don't want to claim like i'm i'm great and amazing and the best at this in ah in a country that really doesn't have enough races to answer that question but one of the reasons i like
01:50:15
Speaker
vks especially is i can race a guy that can do 15 minutes over 5ks which i can't do but on that terrain like i can keep up or i can beat that person yeah because speed doesn't necessarily translate like you know i knew vk there was um dave bailey is really good at knowing the field that he's racing against the guy's a mad stalker um in a good way he'll he'll he'll research and understand everyone he's racing against um he's very thorough um he was giving me a rundown before kinyania like who was there one of the guys was like um from sydney and was an awesome fast runner and we were like he's gonna be the one to watch and he took off from the start and he was out in front
01:50:55
Speaker
um but it was often what me sort of faded after that um which was yeah like a really in my mind burned the impression of it doesn't necessarily translate that a 15 minute 5k means you can do a 30 minute uh vk yeah maybe 10k maybe a bit more uh comparable um but yeah like I think if I had an 18 to 25 year old, I would still put them in the investment stage of like, I would want them to build strength and endurance.
01:51:27
Speaker
planning on having a really successful uphill running career between 25 and 35. Um, and if they were like, well, I want it now, um that's fine. But like, look, Killian is doing lots of random stuff, but he's still like in peak form for vertical kilometers. Remy, Remy's been around forever, and he's running PBs now, um, and he's going to run PBs for the next,
01:51:51
Speaker
however long he's coming into his peak now so yeah that that's 18 to 25 that's still an investment period i think the investment is in endurance uh and strength yeah and i'm glad you said that because one of the reasons, the reason I chose that age bracket is to kind of drill home that it's not, I was checking Remy's age, he's 30.
01:52:14
Speaker
And so it's not that you have to get it good at this young age before you start to lose that top end capacity. It's like ah the endurance cycle. We're still talking about a 30 minute race for the the best in the world. It's it's not an 800 meter. and We're not talking about ah a one, two minute event here. And the, yeah, the 10K half marathon runner is probably the one that's going to if If I had a 59 minute half marathon runner on on the start line, I'm probably watching them a lot more than I'm watching a even a, it was a pretty bad example, but like ah a 13 minute 5k guy, just because they have to have that bigger engine, even if they're equally as fast, if you would put them in the calculators, they'd be pretty similar people. um Yeah, it is.
01:52:53
Speaker
and And that engine, as we call it, takes the longest to develop. So if you start that early, it puts you in a pretty good stead. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned then what we kind of got in the country. i think one of the things that you've opened my eyes to is how we really don't have, like, do we actually have a VK event left in Australia?
01:53:15
Speaker
No, no. um So like Kinyani was the one. And then the last one was 2024. then it's gone. and then it's gone and They've gone to like a downhill race and I thought it was going to come back this year, but it's it's still a downhill race for whatever reason they want to do that.
01:53:33
Speaker
um And i'm I'm sure they have more reasons than just Ian Best really wants it to be an uphill race. Can you please do it? But no, we don't. we If I was to name off the top of my head like true uphill races, i there's four peaks. That's really the obvious one.
01:53:49
Speaker
um There's a small race that no one would have ever heard of called Krakenbach Challenge, which is Which you just won. Yeah, it's not it's not even a race. ah I'd never heard of it until Sam Burrage was like, hey, you need to go do this. It's a half VK, so it's like 560 meters over 1.9 kilometers.
01:54:06
Speaker
um Choose your own path going up the the main Kosciuszko chairlift at Threadbow. um It's a really cool event, but it's buried within this thing called the Threadbow Fun and Fitness Week, which is like just this family of family week long school holidays kind of thing where they just do a whole bunch of random stuff.
01:54:26
Speaker
Outside of that, like unless you go to longer distances and I still would consider a race like GSAR 28 or the 35 at Bogong to Hotham, which I was ignorant about until SJ won it the other day. and Now I'm kicking myself from not doing it. Like they are uphill in like the long form CES and all kinds of uphill races, but like VK mountain mountain uphill.
01:54:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's just not there. And mean, if anyone's listening to this and going in, you're an idiot, like there's this race and this race and this race, like, please, please message me and let me know. You're desperate to know.
01:55:01
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's not there. And the product of that, I think is um we don't know like for example how can you pick an uphill team for world mountain um without uphill races in your country like how can you start to work out who's the best how can you then invest in who's the best um we knew say patrick clark was a really good uphill runner because of what he did to Charlie and the rest of them up Emily's spur in Buffalo. I mean, he's a bit of a butthole as well because I got the segment the day before on the 10K and then he took it off me running the 20K the next day. Wow. And by by a significant margin. So I think everyone realized...
01:55:44
Speaker
maybe because his race was so distinctly amazing uphill and still strong, but it wasn't an amazing downhill. um because sort of He ended up dropping back and getting overtaken and no offense intended to Patrick.
01:56:01
Speaker
We were fortunate to realize he was a good uphill runner and then fast forward to Youth Worlds and he's getting medals over there. yeah And everyone's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. But how many other people out there that have just never done an uphill race and never tried an uphill race, but are actually really, really good at it and have a lot of potential, a lot of future are there without these
History and Commercialization of Uphill Running
01:56:21
Speaker
events. and that's um It's one of the disappointing things. And as I've started, I'm doing like a project trying to learn the history of uphill running, specifically uphill running in Australia.
01:56:33
Speaker
And with my time off, I really want to write a book about it. There was kind of a golden age, so to speak. Maybe it's only a golden age because of how light on it is nowadays. and Sort of in the like AMRA, Australian Mountain Running Association.
01:56:48
Speaker
I never met the guy, but I hope it doesn't mind me saying like when John Harding, for example, was running A lot of that stuff, like there was some really cool stuff going on. Like we had national championships that ran and we were we were finding out who our good uphill runners were. And as good as we think we are as trail runners in 2026, our best uphill runners were in our past, that's for sure.
01:57:10
Speaker
um Yeah, they're not they're not on, some of them are on Strava segments, but a lot aren't. Paul Craig, like yeah you can't find his segments, but his times are always unbeatable on some of them.
01:57:21
Speaker
mark born he's still around like the stair runner but but he's the i'm pretty sure he's the quickest guy up um buller i'm not sorry um buffalo on strava um i think john winsbury has a quicker time based on the four peach records these are all like 2000s year of uphill running and i think we have the talent that exists now but we just don't have the races to draw it and yeah it's it's a shame and here i am posing a problem and not not taking action on the solution because the solution is to invest in events and get these things up and running. Yeah. um And unfortunately, like,
01:58:00
Speaker
In the past, you had people like John Harding who not for profit would run an uphill race. He'd run the national championships and like generate these outcomes through like his love and investment in the sport. We don't have a lot of people like that anymore, unfortunately. Trail running has gone the way of money. We've got UTMB. I like them, so this isn't a slander of them, like single track. They're a business. They're going to Hoth and Trails Plus, they're business. They're really nice people. i was speaking to Brett from Trails Plus the other day, like a really nice person that's invested in the sport. But um it it feels like in many senses, like we might be losing the volunteers, ah which were generating a lot of these in the past. And how we get that back, I don't know.
01:58:48
Speaker
uh for what it's worth i am taking action because almost monthly i'm messaging joe dorf begging him to put a vk in one of one of his races uh the poor guy's sick of me asking you i'm sure um but yeah it's i think just from like selfishly i like uphill running and when you look at the state of uphill running in australia like there's no doubt we're no undoubtedly littered with talent that we just don't know exists. And I um i have capitalized on that well and truly because of the void that exists here. 2024, went over and raced in um Europe. So I have an uphill resume that
01:59:26
Speaker
other people that aren't as privileged as me have i got to do the vk open championships um i did all right in it so now i have an uphill yeah fourth overall um yeah now i have a resume but who's to say the what are we up to like 28 million in australia uh who's to say there's not a lot of people better than me that just haven't had the chance to race yeah um yeah Someone listening to this that is either interested or potentially they they they want to help put it on. like what What do you think is the the real draw card to just the everyday runner to do a VK?
02:00:06
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean the draw card... As I said, it's like it's the same mentality for ultras and it's hard. It's something that's hard and you have a sense of achievement. But you look at Four Peaks, for example, such an awesome event and it has the full spectrum. You have people that are racing and you have people that are walking in it. It specifically defines them as two different categories and it it fills up. And so I know I had this year, I think 24 had like 600 people doing it. It massively popular.
02:00:36
Speaker
But like the sense of achievement of like that conquering a mountain, like that's also something that we take our primal love of like the sense of achievement of looking up at Mount Feathertop. And I say Mount Feathertop because that's probably the best one. Or Buffalo is a really really good example. Like you're driving to the start line and you look up and you're like, cool, in 90 minutes, two hours, i'm to be standing at the top of that bad boy.
02:00:58
Speaker
Yeah. And then you do it and like, what a high, like what a sense of achievement. Um, you can do a lot. Like, uh, I think you said you were going to ask about my future, but like, uh, for the second half of this year, I'm going to go live in Europe.
02:01:12
Speaker
Um, and we're just gonna have an extended family holiday over there, but I'm doing a a lot of the time, not a lot, not all the time, but like I'm doing VKs every weekend, one to experience it. And two, because I i know that I can do it and then recover and go again.
02:01:28
Speaker
Um, because it is low impact without the descending. So, you know, you look at ultras where you can try and do two a year. If you wanted to really be really competitive, like if you want to do a hundred mile races, like people are really putting what two into their calendar, uh, maybe a couple more.
02:01:46
Speaker
You do VKs all the time. can do so much more racing. like If you look at how many races I've done, like at the start, i was doing now four to five races a year.
Popularity and Potential of VK Races
02:01:55
Speaker
I'm not sure how many I did last year, but it was a lot. like You can do so much more and you can have a lot of fun as a result.
02:02:02
Speaker
um yeah it's i mean i love it and i could kind of go all day about it um well honestly honestly i kind of or a someone has to listen to two hours of this podcast but i kind of want you to because through through you talking to me like it, what it's done is it's exposed to me that I was like, for and a reason I do not know, ruling out this entire segment of trail running that it doesn't matter if I want to, but if I, I don't think i don't, I'm six, one and 90 kilos. I don't have the build to be the best VK runner in the world.
02:02:37
Speaker
But that can build an element of my running that will really help me at the 100, 50 mile, 100 mile, et cetera. Even if it's just understanding when to push, when to hold back, how to race, where my mind goes when it gets hard, like all those things.
02:02:52
Speaker
which you can't replicate because of what you just said in ultras, because you can only do a handful of them a year, especially if you want peak for them. Whereas, as you just said, VKs, should we have the access, you can do one every weekend, like your workout and put yourself into that vulnerable position and then work out how the hell you get yourself out of it as well.
02:03:10
Speaker
And I think that's really... powerful and it's something that you're gonna have to hold me hold me to this because i'm probably going to run away for the second i can actually do it but the concept of actually like doing them it's it started to click and like you say for me the thing i love most about events and trail running is getting to the points that you can't drive to that you feel real really feel like you have to to to accomplish something hard to make it like a mountaintop And that's exactly what a VK is. And so like there there is a lot of draw cards. And and then whilst you're just saying that, and aside from the access point of Europe, where if you're in the mountains, you look left, you look right, there's a VK, often double VK right out the back door.
02:03:51
Speaker
But why why do you think the VK world is so popular over there and has stayed so popular to the point where you can do a race every weekend if you wanted to?
02:04:03
Speaker
Um, I mean, i would be speculating yet the convenience of its massive, uh, I know you said that's an obvious one, but anecdotally, uh, there's a finite number of places you can actually do like a legitimate VK, like a thousand meters in five kilometers or less in Australia. Um, I have a list that I'm fairly certain it's, uh, almost a hundred percent correct. the only places that are near a capital city is like, can you? Yeah, they're there just isn't another um VK that's within, let's say, half an hour of a main hub of people. okay There's a bunch in bright. That's great. But like the European model of going on a Friday is not going to happen. So the convenience one is massive.
02:04:46
Speaker
um They also, like their model of racing of like VK Friday, Saturday is often the ultra and Sunday is the main like Sky Race is great draw card because people rock up for the Sky Race, but they do the VK on the Friday because it's fun and it's good to hit out. And once you've done a couple of them and you know how to handle and your body can handle it, you you will recover in four to eight hours.
02:05:08
Speaker
mean, the culture, it's just the general culture when it comes to uh, outdoor fitness is different in Europe and there's probably multiple reasons. i actually nearly did a postgraduate, um, uh, body of work studying, um, geography, like human geography and why, what, what's the difference between an Australian runner and a European runner.
02:05:31
Speaker
And there's, there's fairly obvious ones like an Italian is surrounded or not all, but you know what I mean? Like Italians are surrounded. There's the access point that you've mentioned that built up the history and the culture and everything like that.
02:05:43
Speaker
Um, Yeah, but it's it's interesting because we do have the mountains. Like when people say you can't train for some of these things in Australia, yeah, like if you live in Darwin.
02:05:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, obviously I get that. But it's the same as if you live in Milan. ah I choose my arm as a bad example. If you lived in London, you have the same problem. You have the same problem as someone that lives in Sydney. They're relatively flat places.
02:06:12
Speaker
The UK especially is actually in many parts of it, a terrible place to train for big mountain ultras. I've been there for two years. I found it really hard to train for big vert.
02:06:24
Speaker
But yeah, ah ah we we have the same problems that I have over there in terms of access. Some people do have access and some don't. So you're invariably going to have your ultra runners be produced in those areas or by people like the binats that move to those areas to train and turn themselves into weapons as they have.
02:06:44
Speaker
um yeah the The history over there is really cool as well. like um And they just get so many people. they then ne But the the other part of it is they do have the same problem. So like there was a race I did in 2024 called the Grindelwald mountain run, which is in Grindelwald in Switzerland.
02:07:04
Speaker
It was I don't know whether it was massively historic, but it's still got like nearly 300 people do it. And they've had to stop um going into 2026, which is a match of shame because they're like they're not immune from the problems that we have, which is uphill races are logistically hard to put on. They're invariably point to point.
02:07:23
Speaker
um Yeah, invariably point to point, the like safety architecture of them is challenging, particularly in like national parks or remote mountains and things like that.
02:07:35
Speaker
um I think we may be, if I was to speculate, having a harder problem because I think the bureaucracy surrounding our state and national parks is a little bit higher than Europeans when you go around those mountains. But it is a hard event to put on. You would probably understand that better than me yeah as a race director.
02:07:54
Speaker
um But yeah, I think this is why partly i I kind of want to write the book about it because I also do think there's there is and has been a hell of a lot of interest that's existed. And we have a really long, proud history.
02:08:09
Speaker
i mean, like look at Fall Peaks. It's going to be really soon a 50-year-old event, yeah which is awesome. Go going to Hotham. It's really the reason why I reached out to Brett at Trails Plus was to try and get the the archives and understand the history of it, which has kind been lost with different event organizers and clipboards things like that.
02:08:31
Speaker
um But again, like, you know, it's coming up on 40 years of an uphill race. um So we've been interested in this stuff and the history is there. And yeah, I'd really like to highlight that because ah yeah I think it does exist and they could there could be a bit of interest maybe. i don't know. Otherwise, I've got a book I can read. Yeah.
02:08:52
Speaker
There'll be a few of us that are really interested in the in the sport and dive into it. No, I think, and this is something that I've only understood as I've got older, but to understand where we are now and to know where we're going to go, you have to look back.
02:09:04
Speaker
And so I think understanding the history of of VKs, mountain running, uphill running, it will inform from a coaching perspective how how one coaches, from a running perspective how you look at it, but it gets...
02:09:16
Speaker
interest in buying and it's i know it sets a scene that will would otherwise just get lost into the annals of history so yeah i think it's i i'm excited for it 100 so you go we have we have one reader at least yeah no thank you i think um i mean this is a world according to me but i think there is a gap that exists between old and new in our sport where you've got like the new names and i'm not specifically name checking these people i'm just saying like you're like Mikey, Charlie, all these people that are like really good and really elite and going places in the 2020s and hopefully into the 2030s.
02:09:56
Speaker
And then you have all these people in the past that have done really amazing things. um And not to not to be mean, but Brodie, for example, um read out kind of the history of Four Peaks, which I um helped get you guys when you did the preview for Four Peaks.
02:10:14
Speaker
And of like some of the best runners that have ever done it or like most successful runners, like you could sort of tell like Brody didn't know some of the names. yeah That's not dig at him. That's just the state of running where I don't think our our history is as well connected to our presence as it could be.
02:10:31
Speaker
No, I definitely, and and and you can, well, firstly, you can dig up Brody as much as you like, but I would be in the exact same boat. i I read the message and I'd, it's hard, it's it's is's hard now to recall because I've had this for months, but I feel like I knew of Paul's name, but I hadn't heard of John's or the other way around. And then that put put me we kind were chatting and went on a deep dive of all these, all these like incredible performances But I think for me, because they're not on Strava and some of the records are really hard to find, they just get lost.
02:11:03
Speaker
and And I think like I could tell you who the top five on the Bogon climb up the staircase is and who up Buffalo is and up Hoffman, up like Bungalow and Bon Accord, but only by what's on Strava.
02:11:18
Speaker
and And I think that's a real, I feel like that's something, and Strava's been around since 2009, 10 or so and really picked up and it's 13, 14. So I think that's really a, a big point but you're right like we're going to lose lose context lose access and like potentially just lose all the the knowledge that these like both men and women have from this sport and i said we're not in a we're not in a glory era of up running in australia we we kind of have four peaks yeah and that's it yeah so you you mentioned before that you have a list of vks if someone's listening and they're interested to find one where where can people do a vk in australia yeah okay so there's three in tasmania that i know you got kenyani uh like the the vk course that kenyani mountain run uh do um
02:12:06
Speaker
There's probably another way or two you could get up that mountain, but I mean, that's the most obvious and yeah segment there. There's a place in Tassie called Dryers Bluff up near Launceston, which Brody's done, Stalk Brody on Strava. I've been, nagged him for,
02:12:22
Speaker
It's nearly two years to turn that into a segment. And he only did it the other month. He finally he finally did it. Yeah, we got there. And then he's returned the favor. He's run up a um ah mountain called Mount Eliza, which is over towards the West Coast. Middle of nowhere. But again, if you jump on Brody Strava, have a look. He went up Mount Eliza. We might named it Mount Anne, but there's one over there.
02:12:46
Speaker
Uh, the one that I've been nagging Joe Dorff about, um, really well, sorry, I've been nagging multiple people about, um, I want, I did nag Joe way back in the day. uh, and I've also been working on someone else as well, um, is, uh, is the Northwest spur. Um, Northwest spur goes all the way from kind of the, um, the river, river, uh, that, uh, what is it? Uh, Owens river.
02:13:12
Speaker
yeah from the trout farm yeah all the way up so just outside of harrow all the way up to um the top of mount feather top but part way up is the melbourne university mountaineering club hut which is if you've been up that way you know exactly what it is it's this is weird kind of dome in the middle of nowhere from river to the heart is like 960 meters of vertical gain in just on four kilometers which you like you could argue is within is maybe a touch short, but still it's close enough that I reckon could be a great course and is probably the fastest place you could put a VK on in Australia.
02:13:49
Speaker
um You can do a few others down in in the Victorian Alps. Interestingly, like Staircase Spur, it's six and a half k's to get up Bogong, but the first five k's is a VK. You do almost exactly 1,000 metres in five k's. It's just it's just not that sexy. like You'd probably rather run to the top. so yeah but If you did a race, you'd do it as a mountain run to the top and not a VK where you just stop halfway up a track.
02:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. There's another couple down there that are probably tracks that are overgrown. There's a ah track called Champion Spur, but last I checked, it was overgrown. It's pretty much gone now, isn't Yeah.
02:14:27
Speaker
Heading north. So New South Wales is is very light on. Unfortunately, I've been able to find one there. Uh, Billy Curtis is the king of Mount Barney, uh, just outside of Brisbane. Um, and he's got one there, which he mapped out, which is like three K's and a thousand meters. So super scram, super scrammily, um, like really, really technical, really exposed, uh, but really cool.
02:14:50
Speaker
And then you keep going north up to like North Queensland bottle for air. Um, so the highest mountain in North Queensland, you can do a VK on, uh, and then even further North, uh, think it's called the devil's thumb north of Cairns. Uh, they've recently redone the track up there and you can get a vertical kilometer on that.
02:15:10
Speaker
And there's a couple of others around, like if you actually look at the mountains around Cairns, you can do a couple of others. Mount Halifax is one, um which Billy has done. um Yeah, there's there's a few up that way, whether they're quality because it's North Queensland and a bit more jungly.
02:15:31
Speaker
It's harder to say. But like I'd be comfortable if someone sponsored me to run a VK series. like You'd be able to put one on in Queensland, Victoria, and Tasmania. That's pretty good. it So that they exist. Yeah. sure Definitely.
02:15:44
Speaker
Yeah. Are there any brands that are big in the VK space? So I think Las Fatibas tried to put one on and they... they they If you look it up, there's a website and they had three events, but only one, I think, ran, which was at Mount Bulla. It wasn't a true VK. It was over 7Ks, but then the other two never ended up happening. One of them was at Bogong by Esthouspair, which is yeah the down track of Conquestathon, if anyone's done that. You can actually, it's a VK from bottom to top of that.
02:16:17
Speaker
Oh, really? it's Yeah. It's almost it's almost exactly a VK, depending on where you stop. yeah The best version of that is you do, so from the start point at the bottom, you can get to the very summit of Mount Bongong in like 5.2 kilometers and you'll get a little over 1,000 meters. So if you did a race there, you'd extend it a little bit for the glory of finishing that big can. But yes, last Mativa, think tried back in, want to say that was 2015 or 2017. Oh, okay, well.
02:16:54
Speaker
uh but yeah it didn't seem to take off uh for whatever reason mean i'm not the first person to be interested in this and i'm not the last person uh hopefully that'll be interested which is why like i'm more approaching it from a history perspective so we can understand what's happened over the last 50 years in this sport um because even like i've come into it and been like oh love like vk is like what can we do in this space and then you're like oh we once tried to hold a vk series oh we once had like mountain running championships all over the place yeah and you realize uh like i probably need to actually understand what we did before i start making decisions about the future you just mentioned in the mountain running championships all over the place we mountain running again has also pretty much disappeared from from sight in australia like we still have the mountain running champs but
02:17:46
Speaker
The ones this year were in a South Australia, last year, sorry. And I would say very loose definition of mountain mountains mountain running. what What do you think has gone wrong there or as as has been missed? And and how how would you like to see it go forward in the next few years?
Challenges and Future of Uphill Race Organization
02:18:08
Speaker
So I don't know this for a fact. I'm just speaking out of turn. um If I was so i i i to put it down to one name, what we're missing is John Harding. He used to run the Australian Mountain Running Association. and And maybe it's not necessarily him as a person, although what he did for the sport would have been what appears to be great from my perspective looking back. But we're missing that person because that was a person that put like just gave up their time not for profit and ran these events. um
02:18:40
Speaker
And the thing that I think a lot of us are screaming when we look at like the national champs this year for the short trail in thread bow. I fully understand the problem that Ortra faced and not getting nominations, but like you're picking a team for, well, this also isn't Ortra's fault because they don't know what the short trail is going to be in China because they haven't announced that. But, you know, you're picking a team on a course that's not the course that's going to run. So you just can't say that people that you've picked are the best. It might work out that way and hopefully it does.
02:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. But like all of us are screaming run If you're going to run a national champs or you're going to run a trial race, make it replicate what the actual international competition is going to be.
02:19:24
Speaker
And unfortunately for mountain running, it's easier because you can, if you had someone hyper motivated that was willing to put that on, they would be able to to do that because they're quite relatively short races.
02:19:35
Speaker
The short trail and the longer trail, that's harder for someone to just do pro bono. So you're, you probably don't have to look at events and everything. um But,
02:19:47
Speaker
If mountain running hypothetically was to shift across to ORTRA, which I think it needs to because the motivation sits with ORTRA, doesn't sit with AA, yeah ORTRA are more likely to be able to generate an event like that off the cuff. to Talk about the ways they can give back to the sport.
02:20:05
Speaker
Maybe that's one of the ways where they they find someone hyper motivated and they say, want you to put on the national champs. needs to be replicating what 2027 world champs course look like here's the profiles that release them nice and early which was great thank you for that like we'll support you to do that and know i don't know whether it's actually that easy and again you can um you can tell me because i get the impression unfortunately not unfortunately it's very fortunate our mountains all exist in national parks yeah and getting onto trails in national parks has a fair bit of bureaucracy like i really i have a pipe dream of running an uphill race up mount tenant um which had been done before used to be the national champs course at least on the back side of mount tenant yeah which is the highest mountain in the act for those that aren't familiar with it
02:20:53
Speaker
um I would love to put a race up there, but back yeah anecdotally, someone has told me like it's quite difficult to get permissions nowadays. Maybe one of the problems is in 2026, the permission system is different to what it was, say, in 2000.
02:21:10
Speaker
I don't know, but yeah if I was to guess, I would imagine it's gone that way. I can't imagine it becoming easier to rent out a trail to put a few hundred people on it. if It would be an interesting one.
02:21:21
Speaker
um my My experience is that parks, as long as the trail is being respected and well looked after and you're not putting, like I think if we ah adopted a bit of the American approach where you can only put 400 people, 500 people on that trail on one day like i i you look at something like uta and that would and i don't think if we if they try to create uta now it would never happen in the blue mountains they just would never get the permission to put that many people on on that trail but i think if it was a smaller scale low-key event parks to a degree need people to use the areas to be able to have the funding i think to maintain it um and so yeah i think there's
02:22:00
Speaker
It's always worth the question. You just need somebody motivated enough to do it and then have the resources behind them to put it on once it's potentially approved. And it's a significant time investment and it's not a negligible cost investment either.
02:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, and this is the hypocrisy of everything I've said, right? Because I want this, but um am I willing in this moment in time to go and organize event? Probably not, mainly because I want to run them. Yeah, um but know it's it's entirely on jorf like yeah that's Joe Joe will be the new John.
02:22:29
Speaker
Yeah, Joe's holding, you are holding Mountain Running Back in Australia, Joe, please. Yeah. Yeah, it's entirely a joke. if you you you I'm sure you are listening to this. um This is entirely entirely on you. So please, please. And you're probably the only person who's still listening to this. So you really, really need need to pull your finger out and get this working for us. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry. we're yeah now This is taking the record as my longest, but it's been it's been good. And it's it's something that...
02:22:54
Speaker
a I knew that we would i knew that you i would I would and I'm sure everyone else has found your life really interesting and what you've done and how you've come to it and then even just your journey through running to go from the long trail back to the short. Do you have any interest in going back to the longer stuff?
02:23:08
Speaker
I think I'm in the category of like when I'm sort of no longer competitive and a bit old and broken, I might go back to the longer stuff. Yeah. um It does seem appealing. Every now and then I just have this wave of motivation where I'm like, oh, I could probably bang out 100 miles, even though I've never finished a 100-mile race in my running career, but um not while I'm still being reasonably successful at Yeah.
02:23:33
Speaker
Yeah. But to finish that, that's trying thought for an intro to myself. the The history behind this sport is really interesting. And I think that's something that as ah as a podcast, we can definitely share. And we want to see all corners of trail running as a sport from sub ultra to ultra sky running, mountain running, and then pure uphill, which I guess you could classify as mountain, but like the VK style of stuff. like We want to see all of those because they have a different draw card for a different type of person. And as we've spoken about,
02:24:02
Speaker
100 mile I can do a VK and a VK specialist could train for a maybe 50k but there's there's definitely relevance to it and and it would just create a more robust community and create pathways because you you're unlikely to get a youth athlete in to start doing even trail races but 100% you could create a pathway for youth to come into the uphill element.
02:24:27
Speaker
And so that with which would, anything we can do to encourage participation so that people are not having long-term kind of rep repercussions from not being active. Because who knows, there might be that one part, those kids that would love to be in the mountains, um but have never, this has never crossed their radar.
02:24:44
Speaker
So maybe it does. Yeah. Can I, if I can do the plug. So, Obviously, number one, if you're over 35 and you want to go run in Switzerland, let me know. And number two is if you do have any understanding or like knowledge or anything when it comes to uphill running in Australia, please like um I'm assuming you might just check my Strava on the bottom of this, this podcast or something, please just flick me a message. I'm desperate to know anything and everything. There's a good chance if you've been heavily involved in
02:25:16
Speaker
uphill running in Australia, I've already got your name on a list and I might be reaching out to you in the future, but, um, yeah, I just genuinely want to put it all in one place.
Documenting Uphill Running History and Future Goals
02:25:27
Speaker
Uh, and also not that I imagine a book on uphill running history in Australia is going to be profitable, but I absolutely don't want to do anything like that for profit. Um, Billy's Billy's helping me. I should probably stop saying I, we, um,
02:25:42
Speaker
we want to do it for the benefit of the sport. So any money that we actually did make, we would probably invest back into, or we intend to invest back into mountain sporting and particularly uphill running so that we can maybe put on an event in Mount Tennant or something that's a nice clipboard, really cheap for someone to come and do, get people further interested. But yeah, if you have if you have knowledge that you think I'd be interested in and there is a lot I'm interested in, please reach out. Perfect. All right, well, I reckon that's where we end it, Ian. Thank you for your time. It's been it's been good fun. I really enjoyed this one. um ah What is, actually, you mentioned going into to Europe, but is there anything on the cards for the first half of the year before you guys go over?
02:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, the first half of the year a bit of fun, really. um So the main event will be I'm going to race in Transvolkania and do the VK and then the half marathon, which is an uphill half marathon. awesome um I signed up for them and then they turned into the mountain running World Cup races. So it's worked out really well for me.
02:26:44
Speaker
up until then i'm just gonna have a lot of fun and do some cool races uh around the place i just i'm more for experience like going down to oscars or conquestathon or razorback um or maybe mount bulbo all the all the fun stuff and like yeah february and march in australia is a really fun period yes um so i'll do a lot of that and then yeah mid-june we're gonna jump and go and live in France and uh I won't list the races I'm doing because i think I've I've got over 20 on my calendar uh just for the second half of the year um so yeah that's that's the loose uh loose plan perfect when it comes to the segment when we read out what's coming up this week through our winter it's just going to be Ian's racing here Ian's racing here
02:27:30
Speaker
my My aim is to be mentioned more times than Billy in 2026, considering how much that guy raced and how many times he gets mentioned in 2025. We'll keep a tally.
02:27:41
Speaker
Yeah, please. Yeah. Me versus Billy in terms of mentions. Perfect. Well, I'm sure we'll see you around sometime this year, but good luck with everything. Good luck with baby number two as well. And we'll ah we'll catch you soon. Awesome.
02:27:54
Speaker
Thanks, James.
02:27:57
Speaker
just want to say a massive thanks to Ian again for giving up two and a half hours of his day to come back on and talk really openly about everything from the complexities of managing life as a parent, especially with a newborn, and also going a bit deeper into the work side, which I personally found really interesting. And knowing Ian a bit, seeing how that has shaped his the person who I was talking to and also how he shows up for the sport. Ian is an ambassador, a role model that a lot of people can look up to regardless of whether you're 18 or you're 80 in the sport. He demonstrates that regardless of how good you are, you can be a friendly face that is just showing up for the love of the community, a love for working hard and a love for the trails that we run on.
02:28:44
Speaker
If you enjoyed this one, we would love for you to share it with a mate. It really helps to show if you can just share this with one more person. And make sure you're so subscribed, rate, review. If you've got any questions you'd like us to tackle in a future episode, please do send it through. And if you have any questions for Ian as well, as he said, you can reach out on Strava.
02:29:01
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you on the next episode of the PeopleSuits podcast.