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Sam & Tony Holness
87 Plays1 year ago
We are delighted to have returning for the second time on the UKRunChat podcast Sam and Tony Holness. Regular listeners will remember Sam and Tony being on previously and they have both been busy since we last spoke including Sam competing at Kona, achieving a Guinness world record and running a sub 3 at London marathon!
Sam has Autism and has become the world's first openly autistic athlete to conquer the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.
Enjoy this chat as Michelle hosts once again, you know you can get in touch if you would like to on [email protected]
Sponsors Oladance.
Sam Holness - Instagram
Michelle - Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction and Autism's Role in Sports
00:00:00
Speaker
the upside of autism and sport is not just the repetitive and the mastery, but also Sam is really hyper focused. Welcome to Episode 70 of the UK Run Chat podcast. We're delighted to have returning for the second time in this interview, Sam and Tony Holness.
Sam Holness: Achievements and Background
00:00:17
Speaker
Regular listeners will remember Sam and Tony being on previously and they have both been busy since we last spoke, including Sam competing at Kona and achieving a Guinness World Record.
00:00:27
Speaker
Enjoy this chat as Michelle hosts once again. You know you can get in touch if you would like to on info at ukrunchat.co.uk and before the interview here is a one minute message from our sponsors OlaDance. Today sponsoring the podcast we have OlaDance with their true open ear earbuds, OlaDance wearable stereo. OlaDance feature a completely open ear design that rests gently and securely on top of your ear. There are no tips so they'll never go into your ear. That's how they deliver superior sound in a natural comfortable way.
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Sam's Triathlon Journey and Experiences
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Speaker
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00:01:30
Speaker
Hello, welcome to this episode of the UK Run Chat podcast with your host, Michelle Mortimer, today. I speak with triathlete Sam Holness and his dad, Tony. Now, Sam, we interviewed Sam a couple of years ago for our podcast, and he's a very talented triathlete. Back then, Sam was targeting Kona. Sam has autism, and he's just become the world's first openly autistic athlete to compete at the Ironman World Championships, for which he was awarded a Guinness World Record.
00:02:00
Speaker
We're really excited to catch up with Sam today and his dad, Tony. So hello, Sam. How are you? I'm cool. And we're both very good. Thank you. Yeah, brilliant. So what have you been up to today, Sam? Today, we're doing a school presentation in Capella, Capella Junction.
00:02:26
Speaker
I mean, every moment of all this was all around, yeah, we had friends. I think they were all around teenagers. Okay. Yeah, so what were you talking to them about? Oh, it was about my eye man. It was my eye man. My sup, we had the marathon. I've had sup three. Brilliant. The Guinness World Record.
00:02:57
Speaker
The next races. I'm a future race. I'm a future race. Yeah. I'm a future races. Okay. Yeah. So you, you have been very busy since we last chatted, haven't you? So let's recap. You've won a Guinness world record for taking part in Ironman world championships in Hawaii. You've run a sub three London marathon. So what was, what was the Ironman world championships like?
00:03:23
Speaker
It was insane in Kona, Dr. Humid. The worst thing is that I had jet issues and lost a lot of time on the bike and run. I think my run was for about 40 minutes in Kona. I was awarded a World Car Place by Hot Girl and couldn't refuse it.
00:03:47
Speaker
Ah, that's amazing. Yeah, it was, my corner was my second foot on my race. Frankfurt was my first one. So, I mean, you were given a world record for the World Championships,
Training and Autism's Impact on Performance
00:04:00
Speaker
weren't you? Was that a surprise? Yes, it was a surprise. That was very surprised and very excited. I didn't know who, but nobody had done this before. It was like a gold medal. Yeah, sure it was. That's fantastic.
00:04:17
Speaker
I mean, what was your training like to get to the World Championships then? I do lots of training. I train between 25 and 30 hours per week. I swim around 30 kilometer, around 80 kilometer and like 300 kilometer. I also do a certificate decision two times per week and yoga every evening. Wow, yes, keep yourself flexible.
00:04:46
Speaker
So just talk to us a little bit about your autism, Sam. So how does that affect how you train? Yeah, when I started basically poke phones, 10K, hot microphones, all night when I was affected by the crowds, they made me anxious. Now I just focus on the race. I don't even see the other people. I just try to do my best. Yeah.
00:05:15
Speaker
You know, I do most of my training on my own so I don't have to talk to anyone. Yes, I see. So how does that affect you on race days then? Because there's obviously lots of people about, isn't there? I guess it can get quite busy. Oh, the marathon. Oh, the marathon. Wasn't only my second competitive marathon. Oh, was it? Yes, it was. We got to see a race in Manchester in a time of 3 hours, 17 minutes.
00:05:45
Speaker
and I had GI issues during the race. I needed two faces too, for Portugal. Yeah. But around there was faster because I had a lot more experience. Yes. Okay. After running two full Ironman races, my fitness efforts were higher and it was better at pacing my races. My dad told me I could go
00:06:14
Speaker
I felt GI issues, so we worked on my diet and training my gut. Yes. And that taught me to run behind the three hours barber, but they were going to zero, so I ran on my own. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it was my best race and I finished in some three hours. I called Dad as soon as I crossed the finish line.
00:06:41
Speaker
We might target Berlin or Boston now, but I have a qualifying tie.
Autism, Education, and Early Sports Involvement
00:06:47
Speaker
And I would like to run two hours, 40 minutes in the future to become the fastest man of the runner with autism. I got another guest for the record. Yeah. Oh, wow. Well, yeah, that would be fantastic. Yeah. Well, good luck with that, Sam.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, shall we, shall we have a bit of a chat with your dad then? And he can go into a little bit more detail about your training with you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hi, Tony. I'm good. Very good. Uh, after this morning's presentation, it's, um, it was really good. The kids were so motivated by what Sam was doing. Now he's achieved some fantastic things, hasn't he? Um,
00:07:35
Speaker
I mean, can we just go kind of back to the beginning then of Sam's journey and do you just want to describe a little bit about Sam's autism and a little bit about the challenges that he faces? Yeah, I think, you know, just chronologically Sam was diagnosed at three years old, three or four years old. It seems a while now that he's 30 and he was non-verbal until he was six. Wow. So he wasn't speaking, but I think
00:08:04
Speaker
what we noticed, he had the ability to remember patterns and structures. So although he wasn't speaking, I mean, you know, sort of speak like we are now, he could count and he could add and he could do mental arithmetic. Yeah. And I think what we've learned in hindsight is because the shapes of numbers don't change and they have rules. Yeah, structure.
00:08:28
Speaker
And by the time he was about six, he taught himself to read. So not necessarily understanding the words, but he knew words. He was like a dictionary or a thesaurus. There you put a word in front of him. And what he had was communication skills, of course, with the speech, bit of anxiety, bad eating habits. These are all signs of autism. Anybody who's on the spectrum in the universe will recognize a lot of these things. And I think as parents,
00:08:56
Speaker
It's always a bit scary for us. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know where it's going. And, you know, we didn't struggle as a family. It just became something we had to deal with. And he got on with it. And I think he, there's one school he went to and he didn't cope. And then we found this wonderful little school
00:09:19
Speaker
just down the road from us. And I'll name the school, it's called the Mount, wonderful little school. And it's right on a council estate, but the teachers and the students were absolutely wonderful. And that's where he started to gain confidence and a bit of self-esteem and learn about himself and gave us to learn a bit about autism. Yeah, so you've just, he's found that place where he fits in really, and yeah, that's great. Exactly, exactly. Yeah.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, so I was just going to ask how, you know, how we first got into sports, really. Well, I think, like everything in life, you don't know what your child's going to do, what life holds. And I think mum, his mum took him to trampolining locally. I think she's always wanted to do a double back flip or something.
00:10:14
Speaker
She still hasn't done it, but it's one of her goals in life. Trampolining, and she wants to do a pole vault. She doesn't matter if it's four feet pole vault, she wants to do a pole vault. So that's one of the bucket list things she wants to do. And he started trampolining. And it's funny enough, that's when we learned about Sam's motor skills.
Mastering Sports Skills: From Judo to Running
00:10:35
Speaker
Because another thing that goes being autistic is that you have weak motor skills. Very strong, but not coordinated.
00:10:42
Speaker
So we did trampolining and then we, as you got older, we took Sam to archery. So we did archery every Saturday morning or one or two days a week and there's some evenings in the week. And the reason we did archery is because we thought we'd help with this concentration and breathing pattern. And he did ice hockey, believe it or not. Sam plays ice hockey and skates really well.
00:11:12
Speaker
And, you know, we're not famous for ice hockey in the UK, but there is a autistic ice hockey club in Streatham in South London. Oh, wow. That runs every Thursday morning. And we took Sam there to learn
00:11:27
Speaker
skate to learn to be around other people who are in the universe and to play ice hockey and you know after about four weeks he was on skates up and down full kit with his stick but I always say to anybody go and watch an autistic ice hockey game.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. It's like being on Hackney Marsh is chasing around a football. That's how they chase the puck. So there were no rules, but it's fun. Yeah. It's giving them fine motor skills and so on. And then, um, no, the drawback of Sam had no call and drawbacks, maybe just where he was in his development, which he didn't like anyone touching him. Yes. Along with loud noises. So as parents, we sent him to do judo, which is full contact sport.
00:12:16
Speaker
And what colour belt do you know, Sam? It's a brown belt in judo. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So quite, quite high up there then. So he was due to go for his grading for black belt, but COVID hit. I'm not allowed to say colour down.
00:12:36
Speaker
could be a forbidden to me. Doesn't like anybody's income. It's like a forbidden word. Yeah. So we have to save a lot now. Yeah. And he was going to go for his grading. And so we did. So we're probably going to go back and do that. And so that was the introduction. We found that when he did sport, he was always more relaxed, got rid of all of the energy and, you know, the frustration I think he had with being autistic. Yeah. So yeah. So that's really good that you found that club as well. Yeah.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, so, you know, sports helped his autism. Has his autism helped with sport, you know, in terms of being structured in training and things, you know, has that helped you think? You know, Michelle, it definitely has helped the structure. And if we go back to the beginning, I talked about Sam like to doing repetitive things. Yes, yeah.
00:13:31
Speaker
and doing structures with numbers, structure with words. I've taken that same philosophy because I coach him now. I did that same philosophy with coaching him that he likes repetitive tasks and he likes repetitive tasks because in the end you get mastery. So judo, you get graded, so you do a task, you get a reward.
00:13:53
Speaker
Enter in a race, you get a medal, you get a reward. It's structured. The good thing about swimming, it's again, if you take all the sports and break them down, swimming is about technique, technique, practice, practice, practice to get perfect. And I'm of the belief that is it perfect, practice makes perfect, not practice makes perfect. Yeah. You got to practice the right thing. Running, funnily enough, so I went to a running club and I started looking at the biomechanics for running and
00:14:22
Speaker
not many people know you have to learn to run properly. Yeah. You can't just put a pair of shoes on and go out there, hit the road, and you can do it. And if you look at any professional athlete, you can see that they mid strike, heel strike, toe strike, whatever it is, that's best for them. So I'm still working on a lot of the biomechanics are running, so you have to learn to run. Didn't ride a bicycle until he was 14. Yeah.
00:14:46
Speaker
And then we threw him into his first duathlon. When year was that? 2015. 2015 or 16? 2015. 2015. He's got better memories than me. So 2016 he did London duathlon in the Richmond Park. And that was the first introduction to sort of the duathlon short triathlon world. But prior to that, he was doing park runs, 10ks,
00:15:12
Speaker
you know, half marathons, not many marathons, just as a way to get them out there to meet with people and to get healthier.
00:15:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you've really challenged yourself, Sam, and that you've, you know, you as parents have helped, have helped him do that. I mean, how was it kind of that first park run, for example, that you took into, you know, were you prepared for it? Your first park run. I mean, I had to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So first park run was new situation, new people. Yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker
And when Sam does this, and we've learned is that he always stands on the outside first and watches. And was a little reluctant to run. So we walked with him and rounded him a little bit until he did his first one. And then in three weeks time, he was running around, which is one of the hardest park runs around because it's fairly lumpy. And then we used to
00:16:13
Speaker
drive from home, we used to drop him off, pick him up afterwards, and then he'd run there on his own and run back. So it was that whole graduate process over a couple of years that he got full independence and would just go there and do it on his own. Yeah.
Advanced Techniques and Professional Pursuits
00:16:29
Speaker
And today, most of his training takes place in Richmond Park. He runs around the park and he cycles around the park. But I think you asked the question which I missed is, how does autism help him? Yes, that's right. That's right. And you know,
00:16:44
Speaker
The upside of autism and sport is not just the repetitive and the mastery, but also Sam is really hyper-focused. Yeah. And, you know, he talks about, I'm never going to DNF, I'm not going to DQ. I think he'd be one of those athletes that you see crawling over the finish line to get his medal. Absolutely. Yeah. And from a coach's perspective, I would say, I'm not an expert coach, but I am now an autistic.
00:17:14
Speaker
coaching. I got my first athlete in sub three hour marathon, which I don't think many coaches have achieved. I give myself a pat on the back for that. And he's never late for a session.
00:17:28
Speaker
He always finishes every session that we set him and we increasingly work together on any training plans. The same has a lot of knowledge which we need to draw and he did a sports science and coaching degree at St Mary's University. Yeah. Oh, did you Sam? I never knew that. Yeah. He's got two on. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. So there are all of these things that
00:17:50
Speaker
You know, I suppose they're called open Pandora's box. We just need to find the key to prize open his gift. And I think that's what sports been for him, you know.
00:18:03
Speaker
How do you feel after you finish running, Sam? I don't feel any aches and pains. No aches and pains, yeah? I don't have a path. Yeah? Do you like doing Ironman races? Definitely, yeah. What? How do you feel? It just feels like this, yeah. So if I get to face it, I'm going to do it again. I want to run another Ironman. Oh, really? I think on the other side, our biggest challenge is pacing for Sam.
00:18:32
Speaker
Yeah, okay. In what way, in what respect? Yeah, because, you know, when you're doing endurance sport, you have negative or positive splits, for example, and you're supposed to be running so far out of this pace, there's a hill here, slow down. Yeah. It's really challenging to break the race down like that with Sam. Okay. Because it means, you know, we started writing things down on his palm or on the back of his hand, sorry, to just say what you're going to do at what distance. So London Mountain was quite interesting.
00:19:01
Speaker
We got over to Greenwich and they kindly let me go to the holding pen with him. They allowed me in because of his autism just to settle him down. And then I put him behind the guy with a three hour banner. And I said, just run in this group all the time.
00:19:22
Speaker
And you get there. And that's when he finished the race. I was looking for the three hour banner all the time and Sam was gone. He got past because he actually felt good. And we did have a little plan. We said that for the first 5K, he's going to run at 14 and a half kilometers an hour. Yeah. And he's going to then run the rest of it at 15 kilometers an hour. And it was that simple. And that's what he did. Yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker
And he finished the race, he just did it perfectly. And we've probably never had that because of his gut issues. Another symptom of autism as well. So many people on autism, I think, let's say 70% have IBS or something like that. So it's just another hurdle to climb over. Yeah, some mentioned that earlier, didn't he? Yeah. So what do you need to work on with his pacing then?
00:20:13
Speaker
I think we've sort of cracked it in terms of, when he has a big Iron Man race, he probably wears two Garmin watches if one fails the other one still working. Okay. To place his swim, there's a pair of goggles that has his swim pacing information in the glass and the goggle. That's linked to his heart rate monitor. Right. And it pays so he can actually see how fast he's going using GPS in the goggles. Okay.
00:20:43
Speaker
and then on the bike he has a head unit, he got power meters, everything that would tell him how fast he's going and what his normative power should be on the bike.
00:20:54
Speaker
So we broke it down so it's manageable. He knows he needs to swim at this pace. He needs to run at this pace at the marathons or doing a triathlon. And this is the power band he needs to cycle in between doing an Ironman race. And if he follows that and he eats properly, then that's the form. And it's about simplifying the whole race and the way he trains as well.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah yeah and I guess just making it clear at what point Sam needs to eat. Yeah and the good thing about the new watches and all these is that we put an alarm on it and every half an hour it goes off he needs to have some carbs. Yeah yeah. And every time he passes an ed station he has a sip of water and that's manageable. Yeah.
00:21:44
Speaker
And that's what we tend to do. And then it's the same thing when he's on the bike, his watch goes off and he sips and he sips and he sips and he just keeps sipping every 15 minutes on the bike and every half an hour on the run. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about getting into these extreme endurance events and like Ironman, cause you know, there are, there are plenty of triathlon distances out there. So what, you know, why, why Ironman?
00:22:13
Speaker
We always used to joke and say, we used to call Sam Iron Sam. Right, OK. Yeah, I know people have called him Super Sam, haven't they? Yeah, Super Sam, Iron Sam. Trying to find the right logo. I like Super Sam. Yeah. And we used to do sprint and Olympic trattlers, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. At Dorney Lakes. And I think he'd do the races.
00:22:42
Speaker
but his transitions were not fast. That level, you need to have super fast transitions. Although he might have been in the top 10, 20 swimming, by the time he transitioned and got on his bike, he'd lost a lot of time and space. And I'm talking about maybe a minute. And we could work at that.
00:23:05
Speaker
But it's a different type of race. You're cycling close to one another. There's no drafting. So it's a whole different approach. And then I looked at what Sam, how Sam thinks and how he works. And we thought, let's see if you can do a half Ironman. And we went to Qashqai, Portugal. When was that? That's 2019. 2019 was your first half Ironman in Qashqai.
00:23:34
Speaker
And the sort of parents were always saying, say, Sam, go and do Half Iron Man. After training him at the best we knew how. And he finished that in a lot of pain. I think everybody would for their first one. Yeah, I'm sure. And after that race, we sat down. We were just having some post-rage meal and we sat down and we thought, you know, he did it. And Sam had that real sense of pride.
00:24:03
Speaker
yeah an achievement and his medal which i think he just wore for the next two days everywhere he went to and um and we thought what should we do and we thought yeah um let's not just do this for bucket list let's try and
00:24:18
Speaker
make him a professional, make him a champion. That was 2019 when lockdown started. And so we thought, let's go for the champion thing. What else is life about? Let's go for the ultimate. That's the same way we send him to judo when he didn't like touching people. So we just have this thing about us, which even some of our close friends are saying, why are you doing this to Sam? Why are you sending your son into the sea?
00:24:44
Speaker
to swim 3.8 kilometers and then going off on a bike, 180 kilometers in the heat and humidity, and then watch him run a marathon and punish his body. But you know what? After Sam's degree, we started for jobs for Sam.
Family Support and Expanding Horizons
00:25:00
Speaker
And we found out that graduates with autism have the highest rate of unemployment amongst graduates with a disability. Only 7% get full-time jobs.
00:25:11
Speaker
Wow, that is a lot smaller than I would have thought. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's just don't get past interviews and stuff like that. This whole technique thing. And we thought, you know, why not? And we've been on a journey since doing that. We've been to where we travel to. What races you've done? You've done Cash Guy, World, Utah. Yeah.
00:25:37
Speaker
Frankfurt and Hawaii. It's really funny. Stratfordshire. Even Holcomb. Even Holcomb, yeah. You get Holcomb as well. Oh, and Lanzarote. And Lanzarote, so we've done Lanzarote twice. Wow. It's given us an opportunity to travel. Yeah. It's given an opportunity for Sam to get
00:26:06
Speaker
well known. I mean, he's got groupies now. When he goes to races, they wanted to sign autographs and take pictures with him. So we don't know how that happened, but it does happen. And it's a journey. It's actually transformed into
00:26:25
Speaker
a family activity. But as a coach, I've just realised that getting someone to a race and getting them to finish a race is significantly easier than trying to make a champion. And we're making a champion without access to lottery money.
00:26:53
Speaker
without access to Loughborough, where the best coaches, nutritionists, swimming coaches are available, nutritionists, we don't have any of that. We've got to beg, steal and borrow to get that, for example.
00:27:07
Speaker
And even if nutrition is something that I work with a couple of companies, that's not true, because people are really helpful. But even that I've worked on, we've created our own recipe for his cycle when he's on the bike. Okay, wow. Because of the GI issues. And we just have to keep doing that. So every day is a learning day for all of us.
00:27:31
Speaker
So I'm turning myself into a fountain of knowledge for coaching triathletes, but especially athletes who are new and diverse. Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic that you've kind of embarked on a new skill journey as well. It's amazing. Yeah, but you never thought you'd become a coach. You know what, I didn't think I'd become a coach. I used to be
00:27:54
Speaker
in technology and banking. I used to work for a big investment bank and for technology startup companies. And since the lockdown, I'm not allowed to say the other word, I've been coaching Samsung just about three years now. And I tell everyone it's the best job, it's the best thing you can ever do. If I knew how transformative sport could be in anyone's life,
00:28:23
Speaker
I'd have done this years ago. I've done it ages ago. There's nothing like coaching. I sort of understand why people do it. Yeah. Because when they see the athletes perform, when they see themselves transforming other people's lives, it is just so amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and what you've achieved, what you've both achieved in such a short space of those four years is incredible. And there's a lot, there's so much more to come. This guy is, you know,
00:28:53
Speaker
It's hard for me because I haven't got that heavy comparison, but he does have an engine on him. Yeah. And I say it lightly. All I need to do is to convert that into that speedy, you know, you need to be a diesel engine for endurance sports. Yes. And what we're just doing is just making that diesel engine go faster. I mean, we're doing, um, we're going to do more marathons.
00:29:18
Speaker
doing Iron Man triathlons. And now we're starting to talk about potential next year, looking at some trail running, UTMBs. Oh, wow. Okay. So the really long stuff. So the really long. Well, they start from 25k, 50k, and then they go up and they got ultra marathons as well. Yeah. But one of the things that happened recently is Sam has become an ambassador for Iron Man Foundation, which is Iron Man's charity. Yeah.
00:29:46
Speaker
So, you know, they want us to move over to UTMB as well as Hulker issues once or so. We'll probably give it a try next year. Yeah. Because it's a totally different skill. It's not as straightforward because you've got to be used to the heights and the climbing and the curious
00:30:06
Speaker
cliff edges and stuff like that. But I think we're going to give you, Tim, be a quack. Because the only thing is it enhances Ironman aerobic capacity anyway. So why not? It's just another sport with massive wonder representation. People who look like Sam are like Sam. And just have a bit of fun doing it. Send him out there. We're probably starting off with a guide.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I've reached out to a couple of trail runners who've done a mutan bee OCC races and asked if they'd be as good and I've got a real positive feedback from that. So we have a guide for maybe the first two and they will let him go on his own. The difference there is you need to know
00:30:56
Speaker
what happens if bad weather hits you and how you use a torch, how you keep yourself warm, how you read a, you're supposed to carry a compass with you as well. As well as your phone and stuff. So it's a bit more technical from that perspective. But if you choose the right races, then it's okay. And we'd probably go and go to Italy, Spain, or France, and go there and meet,
00:31:25
Speaker
Is it Kylie and Johnnae? Some of the great trail runners, you know, there's just some wonderful names out there. It's just amazing. These people amaze me because when I talk to them, they think, I just say to them, how you guys use this crazy? And they go, you do Iron Man? You're crazy. It's a different kind of crazy. Different kind of crazy. Yeah.
00:31:46
Speaker
I mean, Sam enjoys trail running anyway, doesn't he? I think that's, you do a lot of trail running, don't you, Sam? No, don't worry, yeah. So, which trails do you run? I normally, my speed goats, my efos, and my Tekonix. Tekonix, yeah. And you run around Richmond Park on the trail? Yeah, I normally two routes around Richmond Park.
00:32:10
Speaker
Sometimes I normally start up that big hill and go back there. And you do... We usually do hill reps. Normally, we're in a coma. We're in a coma, yeah. Yeah, we're in a coma. Sometimes the figure eight, they're both football pitches. Football pitches, yeah.
00:32:30
Speaker
For a lot of Sam's running training, we don't do a lot of stuff on asphalt on the hard road. It can be bad on your knees, for example. So he will run around, we've got about a dozen football pitches across the road from us, and we've got Richmond Parks.
Marathon Goals and Kona Experience
00:32:46
Speaker
We put them on the trails, and there's a couple of really nice, I don't know if you've ever run at Wimbledon Common, there's quite a lot of trails there.
00:32:57
Speaker
Not overly difficult trails, but it's all muddy and hilly and all the stuff you need in trails. And we did a trail race, didn't we, out in Wales? Yeah, so we went out to Port Talbot. There's the Arfen, Arfen 10K, which was, oh, it was
00:33:18
Speaker
You know what Wales is like? It's always raining? Yeah, yeah. Honestly, that's what it was like, Michelle. It was, it was, and we were just, you know, we didn't do it. We just did it with umbrellas and keeping warm. And I think even shock Sam by the steepness of that hill and the amount of mud there was. Remember you were running, right? And your foot went into the mud. You got stuck. You got stuck, didn't you? Everybody ran past him. He didn't see the puddle of mud, which all the other experts did.
00:33:46
Speaker
I wish you got stuck in the mud. So yeah, we're going to get to do that. We're trying to have fun while we make a champion. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you hadn't even run a marathon on the road, had you, last time we spoke to you. So to go and do London, I guess that sort of training is good for building strength as well, isn't it, for road running.
00:34:15
Speaker
Exactly, I think. So even that's a story because Sam did Manchester in three hours 17 last year. That was his first competitive road marathon and he's not 20 minutes off for London.
00:34:32
Speaker
which I think is amazing. It's quite phenomenal. It is incredible. That level already, it's a lot, isn't it? It's a lot of that level and only 4% of people I think have run sub 3 in the world. But it is quite amazing. And what we're just going to do is build on that.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, some mentioned, was it a 240 goal you said? 240 goal. And the reason for 240 is if you can run 240 when he does an Ironman, it translates in about 310. Yeah. So his run portion of the Ironman will be 310. Yeah. And that is fast because most people get up to 330 for four hours.
00:35:14
Speaker
And I think that's what we're looking for. We're looking to carry over that improvement into the Iron Man side of the race. I think that is definitely on.
00:35:30
Speaker
It might, it's going to take a couple of years. You know, I'm not going to tell anybody we're going to see another 20 minutes next year. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's very unlikely to happen. If we say five minutes next year or 250 next year, we'll be totally overjoyed. Yes. But we don't know, don't know what the limit is. I'm not setting ourselves any limits. And I suppose for me,
00:35:58
Speaker
is that if we put the right ingredients in we'll get this wonderful cake coming out. Yeah. And because Sam trains 30 hours a week like a professional and wants to do and loves doing it and doesn't complain about doing it, if we get into the right structure it's possible. Yeah. Yeah and that's I mean I'm just simplifying it and
00:36:23
Speaker
I don't think there's a day that Sam doesn't enjoy it. Do you want to stop doing triathlons? No, no, I want to keep doing triathlons. Does that always tease you like that? I do that because sometimes I wonder if he's fulfilling my failed dreams as an athlete. Yeah. But he's not. This is what he does. 24-7. 24-7 as well. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
So can we just chat about what Kona is like? You know, just just tell us a bit about the world championships and how you get there and, you know, just what it's like. Paint us a picture. Oh, wow. So Kona is one of the most beautiful islands in the world. Yeah, Hawaii is. Yeah. And
00:37:16
Speaker
the big island we were on, the southernmost point is the southernmost point in the United States of America. It's further south than Florida. Oh, is it? Yeah. I'm full of rubbish packs. We'll be good on quiz shows.
00:37:38
Speaker
It's lava, it's like Lanzarote, but significantly hotter, it's humid. And it's absolutely wonderful, but it's so expensive. We can buy pineapples cheaper here than we can in Kona, and they grow them there. The people are just absolutely amazing. But I think to train,
00:38:08
Speaker
It's a really lovely training ground. But I don't know if you know that last year was the last year they had both the men and the women running Kona at the same time to split it. Yeah, they've changed it up this year, haven't they? Yeah, so the men's are going to be in these, the women's in Hawaii, and then next year it flips around. Yeah. And that's simply because the locals, when the athletes go there,
00:38:37
Speaker
They go, they race, and they leave. That's it. They don't spend a lot of time on holidays. I think it's highly disruptive and they don't put enough back into the system. I think it's also very, very expensive to go there. So expensive, it's unbelievable. It's about 18 hours flight and an overnight stop in LA.
00:39:05
Speaker
I think Nice is going to be very successful because Europe has all of the top athletes, triathletes in the world. And Kona is really, it's such a great destination. It's iconic to say that you've raced at Kona. I think in the future, I'm not sure if it's going to stay there simply because if the sport grows and the,
00:39:32
Speaker
The athletes are good at the sport and it becomes too costly to go there. Having it in, you know, Nice or Italy or anywhere else would work extremely well. I think this weekend they've got the world championships down in Ibiza on weekend.
00:39:50
Speaker
And they opened the doors and say, come and do it. You know, when we went to Utah, everybody in Utah was saying, in St. George, Utah saying, please come back here. We'd love to see you here. And the whole community supported the race. But I think also for the locals of Hawaiians in Kona, was the impact that the athletes had on biodiversity.
00:40:12
Speaker
right oh okay yeah um you know they always ask and when you go into the sea don't touch the coral and people are touching the coral and breaking off the coral and all that sort of stuff and i think they just got a bit fed up fed up with them doing it so yeah i think i would i would be too yeah well we'll see we'll see what happens there let's see what happens um so i mean what was the whole race experience like there
00:40:36
Speaker
So, tell us about the racer, Connor, from the swim. Let's see. Well, that ends up swimming. That's where 3.8K swim, through the beach. It was so straight forward, through the beach, but through the big rough waves. It was so out, straight through that boat. I fell around, I fell back again. A 180 cycle.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, I remember when I did that cycle, virtual, like a home, and finally a marathon through the realm. So I found a little hairy marathon through the lava fields, yeah. And I think the biggest thing about Kona, the two things about Kona, easiest thing is the road is straight up and straight back. Okay.
00:41:30
Speaker
It's not, and this is on a cycle, it's not a complicated course like you might see on one of the tours or the Giro or something like that. Yeah. So you can get into your wrist position straight up, straight back. It's fairly easy. However, it's 100 and over 100 percent humidity. Yeah. It's 40 odd degrees and it's windy. Wow. And that's why it's so difficult. And then the run
00:42:00
Speaker
Sam was a bit behind schedule. I expected him to finish in about 11 hours. He finished in 12 and a half. And as a coach, I started beating myself up and going, oh my God, what have I done? His mom wanted to kill me because I sent her son out. I mean, we both did, but you know, sent him out there. We're thinking, oh my God, is he okay? And also because it was now dark,
00:42:25
Speaker
in the evening. Yeah. We didn't know how Sam would react to sensory change from running at night. Yeah. And how was that? And he was OK. He had some of those light rings around his neck and he seemed happy. Yeah. And the good thing is it's so well organized in terms of the stewardship and so on that there was always somebody to guide and someone with water. And then we asked somebody to find out if he's OK. And I think the difference with Sam is that
00:42:55
Speaker
there were some other athletes there who had all the disabilities, you know, they were either partially sighted or Chris Nicky had Down Syndrome, they had guides. So Sam didn't have a guide. So he had to make sure he got his own nutrition for 12 hours, that he was eating for 12 hours, that he didn't over drink, which called slushy stomach, which all runners get, for example. And then,
00:43:23
Speaker
somebody said oh Sam's just up the road he's two kilometers out and we could feel the anxiety just drain away from us and then we saw him at the one kilometer mark and we said to 1k to go and then somebody said come on Sam I'll show you the finishing line one of the runners
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah. And someone who ran with him to the finishing line and then he got to the straight and we saw him at the finishing line and it was the most amazing, amazing feeling when he crossed the line. Yeah, sure. And then the next morning he went to the swimming pool and did a big swim. Amazing. And he was like, what? So he didn't have a lot of doms. No.
00:44:08
Speaker
after that race, but the first time I saw him, I didn't realize he had doms because he doesn't normally get doms. So he had a bit of doms after the London Marathon. And that was an indication that he ran faster. Yes. Yeah. That he pushed himself. Yeah. And that for me is probably the best sign we've had in terms of his improvement that he's getting to that. I want to win stage and you can't make a champion unless he wants to win. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:37
Speaker
No, you're absolutely right. So I mean, how do you train for that humidity and the heat that you described earlier? I mean, how do you do that in London? So do you remember we went, so we were privileged. We went to the Porsche.
00:44:59
Speaker
We did with the Porsche, Silverstone. Silverstone, yeah. Yeah, we were four and one. And he went to the heat chamber. He did with heat chamber. So we went, we got an opportunity to go to the heat chamber. Oh, fantastic. The Porsche sent in Silverstone. And they did the whole lactate. Yeah, lactate testing on him as well. And we got a full test. And then
00:45:27
Speaker
You used to have hot baths at home, hot showers. And then we got to Kona two weeks before the race. Yeah, so you could acclimatize a bit. Which, as I say, is enough acclimatization. And we found a really quiet place. And he did hill reps at midday for an hour, hour and a half, every day. While we were in the shade, of course, we did hill reps every day, up and down. And you just see the sweat pouring off him as he acclimatized.
00:45:54
Speaker
bit of cycling and the heat as well on the quieter roads. And, um, I think it would have been much harder if you didn't get those two weeks in before. But I think the worst thing is that we, I mean, sorry, we didn't go there to train. He was fit when he got there. Yes. But there were people out there training four hours a day still. Okay. Wow. They arrived. They thought they had to keep, I mean, it's still a classic taper thing, isn't it? You've got to remember it. And they were training, they weren't tapering.
00:46:23
Speaker
Okay. And, you know, I think our objective was to finish Kona. Yeah. Not to race Kona. So that was the first objective. Okay.
Future Plans and Inspirational Advice
00:46:34
Speaker
Because it's a learning phrase. I mean, the next time he does an Iron Man, full Iron Man later this year, we're going to go to potentially go to Florida. Okay. Panama City, it's pan flat.
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah. But again, very humid. Yeah. Very humid, but flat. So that is one that we expect him to just put his head down, get the watts up and go as fast as he can. And let's see what you can really do. Yeah. So what are you hoping for there? What's the goal? Coach goal. Yeah. Look, I'm going to be
00:47:13
Speaker
I didn't want to predict any more time predict, I get it. Even when I thought he did around, what I did for a lot of hours, and I said, he's going to do around three hours. And he goes and cracks three hours and I was so happy. But I think he can do just based on the time means he'll do sub 10. Yeah. Wow. In in Palomar. Yeah. As long as he's healthy. And if he does close to 930, then I know
00:47:41
Speaker
Well, you know, we're well, well, well on the way. That's a fast race. Yeah. Um, nine 30 will get him into the top 10 of his age group. So if he's in the top 20 of his age group, top 30, I'm happy. Yeah. Very, very happy. Wow.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, you'll have to let us know how he gets on there and all the best with that. Definitely. And I'll just let you know, so we're going to the Ironman 7.2 World Championships. Yeah. In Finland. Okay. End of August. Yeah. So that's his A race for this year. He's going to go there and do the best we can. It's been nice, sort of cooler weather in Finland, but it's a hard course. Yes.
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah, so two very different races there and then of course you've got these trail races coming up. Will that be next year now or is that next year? Yeah, the trail races, we're going to try and do more stuff off season. We're just going to go to the muddiest race. What's that tough mudder type stuff, isn't it? We're going to have some fun. We're going to send it to the top mudder.
00:48:43
Speaker
go down to Box Hill and get to run at Box Hill, for example, and feel the pain and the heat. And he will just get stronger and faster. And he's going to do well. As long as he's healthy, touch wood, he's going to do extremely well. It's not just the dad and the coach and me talking. I just know he works so hard, he will be rewarded. Yeah, yeah, you've got a good work ethic there, Sam. That's what you need in sport, isn't it?
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, so you've got some really ambitious goals for next year. Do keep us posted about those. Yeah, I mean, just just tell us briefly about this Guinness World Record that we mentioned earlier as well. Was that a was that a total surprise or a surprise? Yeah, was it a surprise? It was huge. We didn't know that they were following Sam.
00:49:41
Speaker
Yeah, because I thought you had to apply for a Guinness World Record in a time. Yeah, so we had to apply. Yeah. But by the time we applied, they knew what Sam had done. OK. And I think Iron Man and Oko, they already know the Guinness World Record people. Yeah. And they probably contacted them before, because by the time
00:50:08
Speaker
I got an email saying, can you, you know, Sam heard, Sam does this. Can you, we'd like to see what's in his real record. So he filled the forms in and the key thing they needed is that he had a diagnosis of autism. Yeah. So we had to get some of those medical records and share with them, but everything else, the good thing about doing an Ironman is all the records are real and certified. Yes.
00:50:29
Speaker
It's not like, you know, we did a nine man in my backyard. No. That sort of stuff. And it's it's absolutely wonderful. We we've done an internal talk with them just talking about the process and what it's like and how we feel. We're hopeful that they're going to put his picture in the September edition of the Guinness World Record Book. It'd be nice to see Sam in there as well. Oh, it will. Yeah. And I hope it's in there. And then that is just going to be absolutely what it's
00:50:58
Speaker
I think it's really hard to find them. I think it's difficult because when schools and ed psychs and doctors say to us that, you know, don't have no expectations for Sam, and then he goes and gets a Guinness World Record and there's a something marathon, it just lets you know that having autism or intellectual impairment, as they call it, doesn't have to stop you. No, it doesn't, does it? You've just got to find what, you know, what ignites your fire and some
00:51:28
Speaker
has clearly found that in triathlon. You've just got to find it. And I tell everybody at the school I told the kids today that, you know, just find that gift. I tell parents, most of all, actually, just find that gift in your child because we're not doing anything that any parent shouldn't be doing for the child. And if you can nurture it, you know, it's just unbelievably rewarding. Yeah, well, I think you've inspired a lot of people listening today.
00:51:57
Speaker
So Sam, what advice would you give to somebody with autism who's looking to participate and even compete like you are in sports? What would you say to them? I tell them, don't get your disability to stop me from doing sports. Yes, that's fantastic. Yeah, well, you've certainly inspired me today, Sam. So thank you very much. I think what you've achieved so far is incredible. Thanks.
00:52:27
Speaker
Thank you very much. Yeah. So thank you both for joining us. We wish you all the very best with the rest of this year's races and do keep us posted with how you get on. Yep. There'll be lots of posts and lots of videos and we make sure that we tag you guys as well as we do. Thanks for joining us. Wonderful. Thank you very much.