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Vlad Ixel | From Master of Giving Up to Professional Runner and Entrepreneur
52 Plays3 hours ago
You hear Vlad Ixel every week on Peak Pursuits, but this episode is the deeper story behind the mic.
Vlad takes us back to the early days: the lifestyle he was living, the moment he decided to make a clean break, and how signing up for a marathon became the switch that changed everything. We get into the family thread too: his dad’s ultra background in the Soviet Union, and why that planted the seed for Vlad to chase the marathon and bigger challenges later on.
From there, Vlad explains what hooked him: the simple power of finishing something, and how that turned into an obsession that’s now led to hundreds of races. Then we go behind Bix Nutrition. We also touch on his North Face sponsorship chapter: how it started, how it ended, and what he learned from that period.
If you’ve ever wondered what shaped Vlad into the runner, coach, and founder he is now, this is the episode.
And if it hits, share it with a mate, especially someone who’s in that “new chapter” phase and needs a nudge to back themselves.
***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
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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/mood-maze/trendsetter
License code: K08PMQ3RATCE215R
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Transcript
Introduction of Vlad and Episode Focus
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Peepsweets podcast. My name is James Sieber and today we're to hit you with a slightly different one because we've got Vlad in to do a long form episode with me. Obviously, if you've been around for a while listening to us Vlad has been on the show since episode four. He's been one of the main voices that we've all got to know really well. And so this one is not so much about what's going on right now because obviously you've got a pretty good idea. of what's going on in our lives over the last couple of years. But this one goes much deeper into the backstory so you can understand a bit more about who Vlad is and how that has shaped him today.
Vlad's Early Life and Tennis Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
Going into his early years, moving to Australia, getting into how tennis became a really big part of his identity, how the pressure to perform and to succeed ultimately led to him walking away and then how the next years of his life really went off track, ultimately meaning that running was the thing that pulled him out of it, which I'm sure can resonate with a lot of us.
00:01:09
Speaker
We talk a lot about mindset behind it all, his addictive personality, and how all of these experiences have shaped the way that he not only approaches his own training, but his health from a more broad aspect, especially as he nears 40, his business with Bix, and then also his life more broadly. Within this as well, you get to hear a bit more about the time when he was living in Hong Kong as a professional runner, how he created that path for himself and the things that he was happy to do and happy not to do in order to make that all happen.
00:01:39
Speaker
I really hope you enjoy this one. It's been great for me to get to know Vlad a lot more since joining in the podcast and he is really truly somebody that I look up to a lot, both professionally as a coach, but also as a person. So with that, let's get straight into the show.
00:01:55
Speaker
Vlad, we've been talking about doing this for a while now, and I've been peppering you with questions since we sort of have connected about Bix and your history, and we've had chats about coaching. So I'm excited for for the audience to kind of get a bit of a deeper history and a bit of ah a longer opportunity to get to know you. But yeah, I think this is going to be a fun one.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm really excited as well. I think going deeper in some some of my past years will be a bit um a bit different than what we usually do in the show. I think that's what's really stood out to me, kind of especially doing the prep for this, is realizing that For everyone, actually, like we're very good at talking about what's on the cards right now or the last couple of years, but there's not a lot of time to really get into the
Challenges and Transitions After Tennis
00:02:38
Speaker
history. Otherwise, every episode would be hours and hours long. And even the intro ones, I listened to it was episode four that when you kind of started up on the pod. But it was still like it's half an hour and it gave you a really good insight. But it' again, there's just not not enough time. So hopefully we'll ah we'll be able to take that time today.
00:02:53
Speaker
I want to get going with a quote I've heard you say a few times, which was that you're the world champion of starting things and not finishing them. And this is going back a few few years ago. But what's what's created that thought? program What had created that thought process back then? um I think like pretty much my whole teenage years and early teens. um I was just very good at like picking up things and doing it for a bit, but then not sticking with it. um And now, I mean, I'm just scared to try new things, to be honest, because I have this very addictive personality, but
00:03:31
Speaker
It's limited as well. So for example, i I guess the best example of this and probably the first one was tennis. So when I moved to Australia when I was 13 and a half, um literally just walking by like we used live in Apple Cross, which is a nice area and in Perth, but we had like this tiny little unit. um So I'd spend most like after school days just walking on the river and they had like the most beautiful tennis club, like few tennis courts, like right on the river. Um, and asked my parents to sign me up to some tennis lessons. So like, you know, that once a week tennis lessons, we got a tennis racket in Kmart. Um, I did a few lessons and really loved it.
00:04:13
Speaker
I was a bit older than the other kids because usually like, you know, it's kind of like the 10, 11 year old group and I was 13, almost 14 at that time. Um, but yeah, stole like a few tennis balls from the, from the lesson and I was just like hitting tennis balls in the back. Um,
00:04:29
Speaker
of our little unit like it was tiny little space like ah is there's a backyard where you can hang some clothes and i would just like in the dark like pretty much spend time just hitting tennis balls against the wall by myself um and yeah did that for a little bit then for my birthday got four private lessons um those private lessons were really expensive this is you know this is back in 2002 to 2003 private lesson back then for an hour was like $50 an hour. so it was a lot for my parents, but, um, yeah, got a lot from those four lessons. The coaches said like, oh, your son is improving a lot. Maybe try and get him into a couple more lessons. So yeah, I was getting a bit more serious into tennis. Um, and yeah, without going too deep, um, stopped playing tennis when I was,
00:05:18
Speaker
17, you know, kind of started different things, never finished them, did this for a bit, did some marketing type, did some um drafting.
00:05:28
Speaker
um Yeah, I just feel like I've started a lot of things and never really... finish them. um And then when I started running, just that ability of like getting to the start line, running a race and then making it to the finish line, it was just refreshing that I achieved something and actually finished something. um So that was the feeling, especially like after my first few races and yeah probably why I got really addicted um to running and why I've done 400 races since since then. Sticking with the tennis for a bit, and if you don't mind, and he says going a bit a bit deep, but coming into a sport at that age,
00:06:09
Speaker
there's have you have you read the book range by david epstein no heard of it no so the whole concept being that you start as a generalist when you're younger and then you only become focused on that sport or that skill or whatever it is as you get older and that's what creates like lifelong performance and quality and level and there are they They use the examples of the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods as exceptions to that, but the majority of people thrive from coming into stuff a bit later. Given that you picked up tennis so quickly, and like we'll talk about the fact that you was yeah you did stop quite young as well, but did you feel like the fact that you did start a bit late was in a way beneficial to your development?
00:06:48
Speaker
Um, no, I don't think so. To be honest, like I think that, so I stopped when I was about 16 and a half, 17. Um, and I felt like I stopped because mentally I wasn't strong enough to win matches and I wasn't doing as well in tournaments as I was in training. So I think like my development was pretty quick from, you know,
00:07:12
Speaker
first time I hit a ball over the net to like two years later being ranked in the top 64 in the under 16 in under 16 in Australia playing like national tournaments um so like my game developed very very quickly like you know in the space of of a year and a half or two years my game was as good as some of the best junior players in Australia but mentally I wasn't there because I probably missed, you know, 10 years of junior tournaments and pennants and, you know, stuff like that. So mentally I wasn't there. um So I feel like, and that's, that's what I was telling myself. And um maybe I started a bit too late because it was just weird that like a practice match or like a hitting session,
00:08:03
Speaker
my game will be like really, really good, um you know, at a level of like, you know, some pro pro tennis players. But then I'll play a match and I could lose to them, you know, pretty quickly and pretty easily because mentally I just couldn't do it in the match in a tournament setting, um which was, yeah, it was weird. When you say mentally you couldn't do it in the sense of just handling the the pressure and...
00:08:26
Speaker
actually being able to perform on the on the day? i think it was more that I wasn't able to stay focused because tennis is like, you know, you play a point, there's a break, you play a point, there's a break. There's a lot of small breaks and your mind goes everywhere.
00:08:40
Speaker
And I was struggling to stay focused on the moment itself. You know, my mind, like, and this happened so many times where I'll be... I'll be winning, you know, leading the first set. It could be like, you know, 3-1, 5-1. And at that point, my mind just goes to, all right, who am I playing tomorrow for like a second round? Or like, you know, who is who I'm going to face in the quarters? Or like somebody is playing like, you know, there's another match like next to us. I'm like, oh I'll probably be playing this guy next. tomorrow. let's Let me have a look at his forehand. And this is like while I'm in in my match, playing my match. And before you know it, I've lost the first set, seven, five and lost the second set, six, one. um So, yeah, I wasn't. And yeah, I was, I just kept on going and going and started working with a psychiatrist. So, so I'll go back a few steps. um So ah pretty much. At the age of 14, I did one year of en English as second language in a school here in Perth.
00:09:44
Speaker
And then the second year um i was going to go to a normal high school. And one of my friends in that English as a second language school was a really good junior tennis player back from Yugoslavia. um And he was telling me about him traveling as as a junior around all around Italy, all around Spain, um all around Germany for tournaments and stuff like that. so It's kind of like, this is really cool.
00:10:06
Speaker
You know, maybe i want to do a bit more of tennis. um And he told me that he's going to apply to this high school that has a special tennis program. So me and him went for the tryouts and somehow I got in. So I went like year nine, I was in a special tennis program at Apple Cross High School.
00:10:25
Speaker
um And then, yeah, my coach has kind of said like, you know, he's improving really quickly, maybe... Maybe he should move to Melbourne because tennis is a bit bigger in Melbourne. So when I was 15, pretty much moved by myself um to Melbourne, lived with like a host family, um which pretty much they provide the meals and you get a room. But the family that I was with, they had maybe four or five students. um So it wasn't like a host family. It was I've kind of felt like I was renting a room from them.
00:10:59
Speaker
um and at the same time i was playing full-time um tennis at the vita tennis academy in melbourne which was like the best time ever as a 15 year old like i was doing distance education um in victoria and like they would send me like the packages of stuff that i needed to do and i wouldn't even open them and you know they went on for like a year and a half of literally doing zero school work while still getting those packages in the mail every few weeks and just playing tennis all day. So I'll be there from 7 o'clock in the morning um till 7 o'clock at night. Like I literally had nothing outside of tennis.
00:11:37
Speaker
Didn't really have friends outside of the kids that I knew the academy. um And then on the weekends, I would try and find... pennants or a tournament that I could get to and or catch public transport um to tournaments, which was kind of strange. You know, as a 15 year old kid, tennis was a bit of a like a wealthy kid's sport. So you get you see all those kids coming with their parents dropping them off in those expensive cars and here I am like walking from the bus stop which could be sometimes you know few K away and they're walking with my tennis bag um so yeah that was that was like two years of that and yeah I think when I got to about 16 and a half and i wasn't doing too well um that's when I realized that this dream of being a professional tennis player is probably not going to happen um even though you know I was physically there and mentally just not there so i had to kind of accept it and i think that i was blaming it on the fact that i started tennis too late moving
00:12:39
Speaker
moving across the country at that age is huge. I think to be left left alone, especially when you're already you've already immigrated and m m anyway really emmigrated across to Australia. So like you've come into this new country where English is not your first language.
00:12:55
Speaker
You've had what a year and a half here. You've gone into a tennis academy or a tennis school in Perth, and then you've flown across the entire country, which is not exactly close. It's not like it's going next door. to go down and spend the whole time in in Melbourne. Like there's gotta be a really hard cultural experience and then just being left alone. you Do you remember struggling with being, being away and being in that Melbourne culture?
00:13:18
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think I was struggling, but I think with my kind of Soviet parents and Soviet upbringing, like emotions wasn't something that, you know, we would show or talk about. And, you know, it was definitely tough, but i I felt like this was my path of becoming a professional tennis player. And this is what I needed to do. And, you know, at the same time, my parents sacrificed a lot, like,
00:13:42
Speaker
We didn't have too much, um but they paid a lot of money for my tennis lessons. Like back then, they were paying $500 a week for the academy. And $500 week in 2003 was a lot of money. That's a lot of money.
00:13:56
Speaker
i'm so So I knew at the same time they were sacrificing a lot. So it's not like I could call my parents. like This is probably even before mobile phones, but like call them and like start – telling them that I feel lonely or I feel sad or, you know, just lost in a tournament. Like, I just kept on going. And, um yeah, I just felt like it was just normal. Like, you know, I didn't know any other way. And even till today, like, emotionally, I'm not very good. um So I don't really know how to express my emotions and feelings and stuff like that. And yeah, back then it just felt normal to me.
00:14:32
Speaker
so So there's ah a lot of correlations with your with your story and my story. And i'm I'm always very conscious on interviews of not like bringing myself into it. But I had a very similar experience with my skiing and i felt this obligation to train hard and to do like to do what I set out to because my parents were paying so much to make this happen.
00:14:52
Speaker
Even at the point where I hated the act of skiing, like I physically detested getting out onto the slopes, which is ridiculous because you get this, this, this incredible opportunity. And this is the internal debate I had with myself in those last couple of years or that last year, say when you're at the Academy or the tail end of that, did you feel like you, you wanted to stop, but you couldn't because of how much your parents were giving up for you?
00:15:13
Speaker
Um, yes and no. Like, I think like my goal was to be a professional tennis player and like look after my family. Um, you know, I guess that's the story that I've heard, I've seen so many times. Um, so that was kind of my goal, but yeah, I don't, ah I don't think so. Obviously I knew was costing them a lot and they actually like moved from Perth to Melbourne for about three months. So I think they moved, so they pretty much, you know, moved their whole life as well, um, to Melbourne and,
00:15:43
Speaker
they struggled a bit in Melbourne. um So I think that combination of them kind of going. so So the plan was like, oh, yeah, I'll go there for a year, a year and a half by myself, and then they will move as well. But, you know, once they moved, I wasn't doing too great in tennis. And then they just didn't find their fit in Melbourne. um And then they were kind of thinking about maybe we should actually move back after like three months in Melbourne. So once they were planning to move back to Perth, um I think that kind of maybe gave me like a bit of a an excuse to change something or try a different direction. And the first direction was going to go towards college. um So a few kids from the academy and a few other tennis players that I knew, they went to the US as um as like D1 players. And I talked with some of my coaches. They talked with some um colleges in the US and they thought this would be a path for me. um So I think kind of that whole combination of...
00:16:49
Speaker
losing a few tournaments. My parents not really enjoying Melbourne, wanting to move back. The whole cost of tennis, like that kind of came together. And yeah, that's pretty much when um I moved back to Perth as well.
00:17:03
Speaker
The time you spent working with ah the psychiatrist at that age, do you remember the sort of conversations or what you're working through and like how that helped or or or didn't? Yeah, I definitely remember it. like you know um I remember, we were first of all, there were a few cards that I would write and try and read that in between points. And it was a lot about like staying in the moment, focusing on my breath. um And then we would find a spot somewhere in the tennis court that I would...
00:17:32
Speaker
look to every time my mind would go somewhere else so that could be like you know a post or a sign or something like that that i would find before the match and then whenever things were going wrong i will kind of like bring my focus towards that i don't know if it really helped to be honest um and Yeah, like it's not like I did better in tournaments. Like that's the thing. The thing is that like it's exactly the same thing where I would do it really well and then suddenly not do well. So it was like the same thing every time. It wasn't like some matches were good and some were bad. it was like 95% of the time ah would start really well.
00:18:17
Speaker
and then finish really badly. And the few matches that I've won, obviously I had to win some matches to get in the top 64 in Nationals and win a few rounds here and there.
00:18:29
Speaker
um But they were usually against players that just, you know, even even when things didn't go too well, I still would able to beat them. Um, but yeah, it was, it was clear. It was a lot more mental than like, it's not like my forehead wasn't good enough to like compete. Um, it wasn't like my save wasn't good enough. It was literally mentally. And, you know, back then I remember, um, you know, playing like me and the ball machine for,
00:18:58
Speaker
eight hours i'll be on the court eight hours by myself just hit a basket of balls like the ball machine would hit them i'd hit it you know collect the balls and do that like the whole day um so like my game was really good but just yeah i don't know it's hard to explain mentally like losing it so often and i think after it happens like you know i 20, 30 tournaments, you kind of go like, well, I think there's a big problem here. And we we knew there was a bit of a problem. Our coaches saw that problem. um But when that problem wasn't improving and there was that financial pressure, also that pressure of me getting older, like, you know, it's it's not like a sport that you can just pick up when you're 18 and be good.
00:19:43
Speaker
And, you know if you're not doing well when you're 17, 18, the chances of being a professional player are becoming smaller and smaller. So here I am almost like 17 at that point and just not doing well. So, yeah, all that came together and, um yeah yeah, I stopped.
00:20:01
Speaker
have to imagine that leaves the 17-year-old version of you lost is probably the best way I'm guessing to to put that once you've made the decision to stop leave the academy you mentioned before we jumped on this that you had a brief stint of trying coaching that you said that didn't particularly what Yeah, so pretty much I moved back to Perth and my goal was to go to college.
00:20:26
Speaker
I probably like, you know, it was more like a way out of like still staying with my dream a little bit, but um pretty much all I needed to do to go to college at that point was finish year 12.
00:20:39
Speaker
So I kind of skipped year 10 and 11 and then I came to Perth and I had a meeting with a principal in a senior high school here. And she was like, oh where are your reports from like year 11? I was like, oh, I don't really have it. I did distance education. And I was like a full time junior player and so on. So somehow she let me into the school and I did year 12. But like halfway through it, um at that time I was coaching and I was kind of struggling coaching because I was that other kid on the other side of the net. And here I am like, you know, kind of this person that his dreams didn't come through and he just became a tennis coach, which is there's nothing wrong with that. But I think it just it was so close to that time that I just stopped playing and became a tennis coach. It was actually very hard. And even though I was getting paid like probably like 30 or $35 hour.
00:21:38
Speaker
I felt like this was too hard and I got a job in Red Rooster for $6 an hour. um And that was easier than you know being on the other side of the net. And also at that point, I felt like there's probably no point going to college. There's no point going for four or five years now. and you know, being forced to play tennis because you had to to keep the the um scholarship. And then at the same time, probably not getting the most out of your studies.
00:22:04
Speaker
um So yeah, pretty much after like a few months of that in Perth, i stepped away from tennis like completely and stepped away from coaching and yeah, had nothing to do with it. And even till today, like I've only really maybe hit like three or four times since I stopped. So like in the past 20 years, I've only really you know, played three or four times, which is still hard. Like I still have those sad feelings about tennis. And obviously I can, if ah if I didn't run, I'll probably be playing a little bit of tennis now for fun. um But yeah, still have those scars, I guess, from those from quitting tennis.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah. ah It's, well, obviously you're you're older than me, but my experience with skiing is it's lifelong. Like the you have those little flashes and it's, I know, it's, it's, it's it's like the most formative of our years and that is the key experience for you and to be sort of essentially left thinking that you're very good at not completing things and then you are just left lost like you can't pick up a racket the college option's gone it does it it explains why the next what seven years of your life went in the polar opposite direction like you've spoken before um about it but
00:23:19
Speaker
ah Yeah, I think it's interesting for you if you can go go through like what the mindset was at that point that led you to starting smoking and drinking and the two liters of energy drinks and that whole period of your life. Yeah, it was probably like you know from the disappointment. um I just wanted like nothing to do with tennis, first of all, and probably nothing to do with you know that commitment towards something so it went from like 24 7 every single day for I guess two or three years to like suddenly I'm not doing it at all um and then at that point you know being 17 or 17 and a half like
00:23:58
Speaker
making so making probably like my first friends in Australia like you know year 12 I got like um a bit closer like two friends and they weren't tennis players and you know kind of like oh let's have a beer let's go out like you know it was a new world for me and um Yeah, I guess I went pretty deep into it as well. um And yeah, literally, you know, drank every single day from the age 18. At that time, I was also working in restaurants.
00:24:31
Speaker
So that night kind of shifts weren't great um for drinking. Well, they were good for drinking, not good for my health and Yeah, I started smoking and um like I said, like I tried, you know, marketing and few other things in TAFE. I think I did like maybe three, four different courses.
00:24:50
Speaker
um And yeah, I just became addicted to the wrong things. um You know, addicted to nicotine, alcohol and and caffeine, um which wasn't too great.
00:25:03
Speaker
But yeah, it was... yeah i mean like i seriously like i was even hard for me to watch tennis on tv for for the first 15 years that i haven't played tennis like now i can watch it um but in the beginning i did not even want to watch matches and stuff like that so i guess a lot of it came from the disappointment of not becoming a tennis player kind of feeling a bit of like you know failure in many ways um Yeah, because I had nothing else, you know, so yeah, those three years, no, literally like no friends, a hundred percent onto to tennis, the pressure of the amount of, um, money my parents have invested into it, their efforts to it, um, to like, you know, nothing. kind of meant that I was lost in and because the two friends that I made in in year 12 were doing normal teenage teenage things and I got into that maybe if if those two friends would have been mountain bikers For some kind of reason, maybe I would have gotten into mountain biking. um But yeah, that's how kind of yeah the ball rolled for me. And that's what I did for seven years. And then, yeah, pretty much before my 25th birthday, well, actually a few months before, me and my brother did a trip from Adelaide to Cairns with a camper van for three months.
00:26:29
Speaker
And that's when I felt like there was a bit of a change of like simplicity of... going for long walks on the beach and um sleeping at the beach, showering like at the beach, sleeping in the van. So it was like I was getting a little bit healthier then, probably so a bit slower on the amount of cigarettes that I was smoking at that point and the amount of drinking I was doing. And yeah, kind of ah probably feeling the pressure of about to turn 25, which doesn't mean anything. But in my head, I was like, that's a quarter of your life, which...
00:27:02
Speaker
probably more like a third of your life but um yeah I felt like I need to make a change then and um luckily I did because yeah I don't know where I would end up if I did it it's a scary thing to think about like if you maintain that path it's like there's a lot of things you're doing there to numb the feelings and escape from it all and it's would not lead down to a a healthy 30 39 now 38 almost 39 yeah so yeah like 38 version of of yourself what was your relationship like with your parents during those years because well was there ever any pressure from them for you to keep going with tennis because they had invested so much i think they kind of saw it as you know we've tried didn't work let's move on um and their relationship with my parents was really bad um like
00:27:55
Speaker
We pretty much had no relationship for a couple of good years. It got a bit better, I guess, as I matured or as I got a bit older. um But for those seven years, I had no relationship with my parents. I remember going to Thailand with you know with my friends, like literally going out, getting drunk, coming home in the morning.
00:28:15
Speaker
One of them goes, oh, let's go to the Gold Coast. And then I go, oh, why? We should just fly to Thailand. Same same thing, pretty much. Book the flight to Thailand. for like two or three weeks and i think probably like two weeks in um i send my mom an email saying like um i'm actually in thailand for the next week um so like yeah ah no relationship with my parents at that point and probably a bit of guilt like feeling like i let them down as well as much as i let myself and um
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah, again, like I think there's a bit of a Soviet. Well, the thing is that my parents were like trying to survive at that point. So maybe, you know, I turned 18 by then. So they kind of felt so i wasn't living at home, but they kind of felt like, well, you know, he's gonna go on his own path, but. Yeah, there wasn't much support or like even interest from them, um I guess. And that's because they were trying to yeah survive and and kind of you know build their own life, I guess. But yeah, the relationship wasn't good for a couple of good years.
00:29:18
Speaker
is that fixed now? Yeah, it's fixed now that I'm... you know, um back on, I guess, a better path in my life. And yeah, now it's we have a normal relationship. But those seven years, um you know, I would talk to them like once every three or four months, which is insane. Like i I don't even know how we got to that point that we had like pretty much no relationship at all. Like there wasn't like, it's not like we had a fight or anything like that.
00:29:45
Speaker
It was just like they were busy with their thing. um I felt like probably I let them down a bit. So maybe they don't want to like, really hear my new problems or you know being too involved with with kind of my new path in life um or whatever i was doing at that point um so yeah it was it was a bit sad because now like you know i have my own daughter now and imagine like that relationship between me and her in the future would break me but yeah yeah Hopefully that you don't come come to that same ah same point. But it's, yeah, like the the concept of the guilt, I think, side of it, I could understand you thinking that they might want that separation or, or yeah, they said don't want to hear hear the problems. But you you stay close with your brother during that time?
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, fairly close, like not super close, but um yeah, I don't know. I think like, you know, it's just wasn't, I guess it wasn't like in me, my parents didn't maybe teach me how to like really communicate well with the family, with the people around you.
00:30:50
Speaker
um So that was just normal to me. Well, like I know other people are a lot closer to their parents, but maybe that was just the way was brought up, so it wasn't like a big deal. um Yeah, and even till now, like I don't know. like I feel like, i'm yeah, ah it doesn't come natural for me to, like say, just call my mom and say, hey, how are you doing? like you know but Some people do. it like you know A lot of people would just talk with their parents because they want to talk with their parents. um Yeah, so...
00:31:19
Speaker
Not really sure where where something went wrong along the along the way. Yeah, well, the emotional regulation that you learn as ah as a child from your surroundings, I think that's incredible. like Trying to redirect that is very hard. I'm i'm literally i'm reading a book at it on it at the moment, so it's very top of mind. But essentially, it is yeah what you see is how how you live. And then trying to trying to change that is...
00:31:46
Speaker
challenging um and yeah no not impossible but not easy you do the road trip with your brother sort of start to turn things down again then as far as i know you just went cold turkey like yeah especially from the smoking side of things was that like smoking alcohol and caffeine just all gone yeah pretty much um wow yeah i mean sorry i mean like i would have a coffee but i would definitely won't have a few energy drinks a day um i didn't like didn't really need to um But yeah, the smoking was the big thing. I think I was still like drinking a little bit, um but definitely not as much. like I would probably like from the age of 25 till today, I might have got drunk like once or twice. um So definitely the heavy drinking has stopped. ah for For the first few years when I started running, I might have a glass of wine a night or like one beer, but definitely not like six beers. um
00:32:39
Speaker
like Back when I was a bit younger, like if I did not have... five six beers or like struggle to fall asleep um so i think that was the dangerous bit that yeah i remember like yeah even coming home from that thailand trip that i was talking to we're talking about before and like not drinking for a day and sitting on the couch in my friend's house and i just started shaking from probably alcohol withdrawals um yeah that was kind of and not great for for like you know my health in general But yeah, I did drink a little bit. Now I got to the point, like since my wife got pregnant, that I just changed non-alcoholic beers and that's that's been like the best thing. So um very little alcohol now, but a lot of non-alcoholic beers. Yeah. We'll come to it later. Yeah. Well, I do. One of the things I want to touch on later is your kind of commitment to the low inflammation diet and recovery and looking after yourself, because I think that's testament to how you're still doing the training you're doing whilst you're you've got BICs and a family. But we'll well we'll we'll work our way our way there. was there any Do you remember any withdrawal period and come down?
00:33:47
Speaker
Because like going, so my mum smoked for 30 years and she's ended up, she she tried to stop so many times and ended up ended up using one of those spray nicotine things. So she doesn't smoke, but she can't kick the nicotine addiction. I've got to imagine that wasn't as easy as just flipping a switch in your head.
Vlad's Running Journey and Achievements
00:34:03
Speaker
No, was literally one day for me. Like I just said, all right, no no more of this shit. um And yeah, stopped right there.
00:34:10
Speaker
And I think because I was signed up to the marathon at that point um or I just did the marathon kind of a thing. So i was... I just had a new thing in my mind and I knew that smoking wasn't great and it was probably the worst out of the things that I was doing, um especially for running, I guess. It was a very easy correlation between your lungs and running and smoking. um So yeah, that was ah like straight away.
00:34:38
Speaker
i think my mind was too focused on on this new chapter or like a new thing that I was doing that I didn't I don't remember it being hard. like Yeah. um Yeah. That's really fascinating. This is the first time you've now mentioned running.
00:34:53
Speaker
Do you remember why running? So pretty much my dad was a good runner when he was young. So he ran the first 100K race in the Soviet Union in 1973 and 74. So he was a good junior, kind of like under 16s, maybe under eighteen s um And he just missed out on like the national champ. So like he finished maybe fourth or fifth. um ah So that meant that he wasn't going to continue as a runner and he had to go to the army. um So he went to the Red Army for like two years, didn't come home. And obviously back in the Soviet Union, it's not like people...
00:35:30
Speaker
ran as adults like you might run as a kid down the the track but you're not going to be training on the streets you know as an adult so he stopped running um when he went to the army when he was 18 19 um it then he did those 100k races um but there was like no training it was more like oh there's a 100k race you know in odessa in the city that he lived in um in Ukraine and then he did those two and pretty much stopped like I think it was it was so it was pretty pretty sore from those two races and he's like yeah stop running it was too busy with like surviving um and he told me about that so I knew about that story and in the back of my mind I knew that maybe I want to do a marathon one hundred k race
00:36:15
Speaker
at some point in my life just for as a challenge for myself because you know my dad told me that story many times when I was young but yeah I there was the marathon club where you can still sign up um at the club so 2012
00:36:33
Speaker
You can sign up online or maybe even had an option of like posting the entry. You could post the entry probably still or like they were open for that week and you can come in and pay the fee for the marathon. So I did that and yeah, ran that ah first marathon which was definitely a life-changing event for me.
00:36:53
Speaker
and this is kind of where when you came on right at the start if people want to listen to kind of like the intricacies of your marathon journey and kind of stuff i think kind of i'll redirect them there because don't want spend too much time onto that on that side of things um but what i am interested in is that so you run your first marathon you run 318 so you've clearly clearly got some talent you did it off basically no training and clearly not as exactly a uh a fitness fanatic background not an endurance like and like no um outside of tennis, like there was no other endurance sport or activity in your history?
00:37:29
Speaker
No, not at all. But like you know when I was playing tennis, we would do like the beep test and I would do really well. like I would... whatever I got 16, 17 at that time when I was like 15, they would go, oh, that's higher than the base of AFL and soccer players. So I think that they probably should have like pushed me towards running back then some of the coaches. um But yeah, I guess nobody really did. Yeah.
00:37:58
Speaker
There was some talent like you know for running. And when i when i was like you know I was an active kid, so like it's not like you know I played computer games and stuff like that. I was always outside, always playing soccer and being active.
00:38:11
Speaker
um But yeah, never like obviously organized training or anything like that. Yeah, it it's interesting, the beep test. So um my school was a sports school growing up and tennis was like the main thing. I think in in the seven years I was there, they won this world school tennis championship like five times. So they were but very much focused anyway.
00:38:31
Speaker
The tennis players were incredible at the beep test. And I think that like the fitness level and their ability to change direction as well, because it's just back and forth between a line, um they would finish. Like they'd get to, I think it was level 20 or 21. And it was always, it was incredible to watch. And you'd see all of us like rugby players and skiers and just dying at like 12. But then they'd go around the 1500. And even back then they'd run,
00:38:52
Speaker
five minutes or sub fives with zero running training just the tennis fitness so i do think there is something set for the physical capacity you need to be a good tennis player because you also ah like how many hours would a whole game take i mean as a junior i guess they were between an hour to an hour and a half maybe some of the long ones could go to two hours but yeah mostly an hour and a half to to an hour yeah yeah which is a long time I think where I see some of the correlation is like you stay on your toes. Like as a tennis player, you're always like bouncing on your toes.
00:39:24
Speaker
um So that push-off become easy. And then, yeah, I guess the the training and then the matches add up. But I did feel like I was doing better than the other tennis kids in the academy at that point. And there was like a loop or like a 2K loop that sometimes we would do like so as a slow warm-up on like those really cold um Melbourne mornings. and Yeah, like that would feel easier to me than the other kids. And I actually enjoyed it where like everybody like didn't want to do that warm up loop um where I actually yeah liked it. So i've I've always had some kind of natural ability towards running. um
00:40:01
Speaker
But yeah, that marathon was was a painful experience. yeah i i can imagine i don't think many people's first marathons are they're at least feeling good the the few days post it but the the kind of the thinking from from that was that you then immediately search for like the most challenging running event that you can do and you end up doing the atacama crossing which is 250k event why did you go for what is the most competitive hardest thing to do do you yeah i don't really really remember why but i did two marathons at that point so i did that first one and then six or eight weeks later another one the city to surf here in perth and then um i kind of felt like all marathons are going to be the same and i wanted to try something different and and
00:40:50
Speaker
I don't know. i was thinking maybe like an ice marathon or something like that. Or like I wasn't thinking about trail running, but I was thinking about something different than road running. um And yeah, that was one of one of them was Chile, which at that point just felt like an exotic place. You know, the Atacama Desert. Yeah.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, it felt like an adventure as like together with a challenge. So yeah, I was pretty keen to do it. It's not something that I would do again. Like I don't think I would maybe when I'm a bit older. um definitely after doing it you're realizing that this is like less competitive and more like an adventure thing um which is a fun fun adventure like really really fun um but yeah i guess after doing it i was like maybe i want something a little bit more competitive um at the same point at the same time yeah was that all in one go was that a stage race No, it was a stage race. So pretty much a marathon every day for five days and then a double marathon. eight I think it was 89K and then a sprint finish, which was 10K.
00:41:58
Speaker
So I finished second, but I did win that sprint stage day, which... So pretty much all the finish lines were like a tent, like the tent city that there was nobody there except like one or two officials.
00:42:12
Speaker
But that last day finish line was like in um El Padro or something like that. One of the towns there, one of the main towns of the Atacama Desert. So there were heaps of people. And even though I was going to finish second anyway in the ranking, um I sprinted that whole thing and won that. And that was a really fun feeling, actually winning that last day at least.
00:42:33
Speaker
Had you done any specific training to get ready for that? Yeah, yeah, I did a lot like I would literally get a backpack, um put water bottles in it and do laps around the cricket field next to my house. um And I knew was going to be hot. so a lot of those days where I would get out at like 12 o'clock or something like that. So i was working in the restaurant. So I was pretty much working from five till 11, five till midnight every day. So um it's not like I would wake up early, but it worked out well because
00:43:04
Speaker
I would do most of the runs like during summer in the heat to kind of try and get ready for it. At that point, I was pretty um pretty focused on running at that point. Like even though I only did two marathons, um I was yeah pretty keen to do as well as I can in that race. This is something that i find really interesting. And I i share this share this mentality and i know a lot of people do that are on the competitive side or of any sport, but it's this ability. i don't know if it's addictive or obsessive or it's this delusional self-confidence, but you start something and you're like, okay, I'm going to become as good as I physically can at this. Like I want to become great essentially. And I'm going to commit everything to this and sacrifice social stuff and other opportunities as this is my thing.
00:43:51
Speaker
does that resonate with you is that kind of what it felt like getting into running 100 pretty much the same as as when i got into tennis um just 100 all in as much as i can um as much as my body will allow me to and when i wasn't running and i wasn't working i would try and study as much as i can about strength work recovery mobility um how soccer teams are training in in in like Europe, like football player football players, like how American football players are training, how what do they do for strength, what do they do for recovery. So I went all in like pretty much. When I literally clicked pay the deposit, I knew that I was all in. And um yeah, it was a few months of going very deep into into running and trying to learn as much as I can about the sport. Because it wasn't a cheap event to go to, was No, it was really expensive. it was two and a half thousand US dollars for the entry. But then the mandatory gear kit is pretty high. So they don't they only supply you water. So like you got to bring everything and you got to carry everything the whole time. um
00:44:56
Speaker
So probably the kit itself is a few thousand dollars. All the dehydrated foods, sleeping bags, because you don't want to buy like the cheap ones because they'll be a lot heavier and you have to carry it, which means you're going slower.
00:45:08
Speaker
um and then yeah getting to to chile to that that to that to come a desert is not cheap so it's probably like ten thousand dollar trip which you know as somebody that works i guess i guess full-time or part-time as a waiter um it was definitely a big investment yeah and and you're not living at home at that point either so no there's there's not not an easy way just to save on rent or bills or anything like that when you When you come back for that, that's kind of where, if if anyone goes and checks out your UTMB or your ITRA, that's sort of where the trail stuff starts up from is is that Atacama Desert Crossing.
00:45:45
Speaker
And then, yeah, it just gets pretty busy from that point going forward. When you came back and kind of thought, okay, running's a thing, i want to pursue this. What was the drive to then go, okay, I'm going to go and race these races and go across to Asia and and sort of take it through, especially through the more of the ultra focus?
00:46:06
Speaker
So I think like the next goal was definitely running 100K because obviously my dad ran it and yes, um I think I was looking at some um races in the East Coast, like um some of the 100Ks, but It's pretty much the same price as going to Asia or probably more expensive.
00:46:26
Speaker
um So somehow I ended up going to um Malaysia and then Singapore as well. So I'm pretty sure that I booked both of those trips.
00:46:37
Speaker
together. um So I knew I had 200K races coming up. um And yeah, that was fun as well. Like, you know, i was like, I didn't feel like it was that hard, like running 200K weeks or like I would do a lot of like three or four hour runs um ah just as a long run, just like during the week and stuff.
00:46:57
Speaker
So training felt fairly easy. Obviously, at that point, I didn't do any sessions. So was all like slow, easy, long runs. um But yeah, that felt pretty manageable at that point. And I won the Malaysia race. And I remember like the prize was like,
00:47:15
Speaker
1500 us dollars a nice watch and some other things like like a sports watch but also like a nice watch so like i was like wow that's actually like not bad um i think the season four hundred thirteen yeah that was a lot like that was really a lot that's probably like some of the best pride that probably was the best prize that i ever got was my first one um but no it was just kind of you know winning that race was definitely a motivator and i think like a lot of people you get motivated by but what you do well and that just yeah i just started a fire of doing well and then staying more motivated and yeah just kept going and i did laugh a little bit at this the singapore race which you also won had three finishes according to utmb I think ah feel it feels like it would probably would have been a bit more. Yeah. okay Like it was definitely know hundreds of people, but I don't know. I feel like there would have been at least like 50 people on the start line. Okay. Not taking anything away from you. i Yeah. A win is a win. ah Yeah. Like, I just like, wow, I've never seen three written as the the number of of finishes. But, I think i think also back then, like they would only put the results of like top three at some events. um This was like very early on in ITRA.
00:48:34
Speaker
um where like yeah i mean I didn't know about the ranking points for many years past that, but I just felt like there would have been at least 50 or 60 people in that race. That was the North Face 100 in Singapore, yeah but which was a fun experience for sure.
00:48:50
Speaker
Yeah, it is interesting looking at the UTMB in front of me and looking at the indexing. Obviously, there's lots of questions about indexing and stuff like that, but it's not like you came in it was scoring 600 or something. It's sort of into the 700 straight away, a couple of 800s potentially, and then a little bit skewed in in them, but like you would be scoring sort of the same level as some of the top guys now. But it's Like there was clearly an ability and I said the the long slow distance stuff when you don't have an aerobic background that's kind of what you need to develop and become a good 100k or become a good runner full stop but it it clearly took off. You then go over from what I understand you went over for another five weeks to Asia and then that just became five years. Yeah, so pretty much I met a guy, Matt Moroz, in Datakama Crossing. think he finished maybe fourth in that race. But he was an English guy that lived in Hong Kong at that time. And he was like during the whole time, he was telling me about how good Hong Kong is and you should calm down.
00:49:49
Speaker
um so straight after the Singapore race, I went to Hong Kong for for one or two weeks. And I was blown away by the trails. Like it was just so beautiful, so many options. And...
00:50:01
Speaker
That was before the season started. So I think, yeah, kind of said like, oh, yeah, I'll come for a few weeks and do some races. And then, yeah, came with a one-way ticket because I wasn't sure how long I was going to stay. But I think it was it was going to be maybe like, you know, five or six weeks at the most. And then, yeah, somehow stayed for for about four and a half or five years, which, yeah.
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah. Which was a fun time. Did it feel like a reset for you going across, leaving the life that you had in Perth and all the history and this was a new version of you in a new country?
00:50:37
Speaker
I felt like I was motivated by a success. So I think growing up, I never did like organized sports. So going to Hong Kong and being able to race every single week and the level wasn't very high. So I think probably one thing we should mention that ultra running back then and trail running back then, it's not like today. um You know, it wasn't that competitive and I was winning a lot of races, pretty much like a race every single weekend. And, you know, that motivated me to stay there. And then again, like Perth back then in 2013 had two trail races. So going to Hong Kong and having the ability to run a trail race
00:51:19
Speaker
for like six months of the year, like literally every single weekend or sometimes two races in a weekend. I was like a kid in a candy store and yeah, it was just fun and like also beautiful trails. So like before that, i have and all i all I knew was the Perth trails, which are nice. um But then I got to Hong Kong and, you know, the trails there are really, really cool.
00:51:39
Speaker
amazing so yeah it was a good combination of going into just enjoying trail running and then enjoying winning races um i was motivated by winning i wasn't motivated by improving which probably was not the right thing but um yeah i really enjoyed it and then I was able to get a sponsorship with North Face. So that's probably the main reason that I stayed for a bit longer as well.
00:52:06
Speaker
um Maybe without that sponsorship, I don't know if I would have stayed five years. um But yeah. I heard you say somewhere that you had the opportunity to do if you wanted it even three races in a weekend where you a race first thing at 10k did you ever actually do two races in one day yeah yeah a few times um though like a few times i would do like a night race um and then yeah that might finish you know at midnight or 11 o'clock and then in the morning i would do another race and then sometimes that happened probably two or three times where i did three races in in one weekend especially if they were like short races because
00:52:41
Speaker
Back then, like you know I was winning a lot of trail races, but I was also winning like road races. um you know I wasn't quick. I probably run 35 minutes for a 10K, but that was good enough to win a lot of the races in Hong Kong. it wasn't like There were probably like a few guys that were quicker than me you know over the 10K distance on the roads at that point. and but they wouldn't race like every single weekend. So most 10K races, you know, I could win running 35 minutes and um yeah, I would race a lot. Like um I just enjoyed racing and I did that like pretty much the same amount of racing till about like two years ago or like a year and a half ago when I slowed down a bit on racing. um So I was still very excited about racing like, you know, 10 years on as well.
00:53:33
Speaker
At that time, were you still doing the just run for training? Or had you started bringing in any? No, I guess. So the the races were essentially that high intensity day for you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:53:43
Speaker
So like looking back, I guess, obviously you would probably pick holes in what you're doing then, but do you feel like that was developing you quite well in its own way? I mean, it was developing my my base, but like I wasn't getting any faster. um At times, I would be a bit more fitter than other times, but it was very similar like the whole year round.
00:54:04
Speaker
you know i would go to Europe and do a few races. If I try and do like some of the competitive races, A lot of the times I DNF'd back then because mentally I felt like I'm better. I should be at the front of those races because back in Hong Kong or in Asia, I should be in the front. So that's how a race in Europe as well. And then 30K in, would DNF because overpushed it, overcooked it. um So yeah, I think that's probably like the downside of my time in Hong Kong is being the big fish in a small pond, um which probably stopp stopped a lot of my development. And once trail running became more competitive, more professional, that's when you could see that I stopped winning races pretty much. Yeah.
00:54:51
Speaker
I was wondering if the experience you had winning all the races in Asia would have helped you get over the stuff that you from from tennis, like your inability to perform or to stay focused and in that moment. But it sounds like it it almost did the opposite. It sort of reinforced it.
00:55:06
Speaker
I think running, I just realized like running was simple. Like, you know, there's no stops. You pretty much, you start you start and you just keep going till you and make it to the finish line. And you know that, you know, you're a K away from the finish line. You're going to finish in in a few minutes. In tennis, like you can be one point from winning the match and suddenly the match goes for another hour because you lost that point, you lost that game, you lost that set.
00:55:30
Speaker
So I think knowing that there's a set finish line, I could always look at my watch and know, okay, well, I'm this distance away from the finish line. And that made it very, very simple. Like I felt like probably my mental strength was in the ability of just going. um and training and that really paid off in running where tennis is a bit more of a skill sport so obviously there's the technical side of it which you can master if you hit enough serves by yourself so stand with a basket and hit serves go to the other side of the court hit another basket and do that for hours
00:56:05
Speaker
but the mental side probably takes more time for some people to develop. Some people are more gifted in that mental ability and staying present at the moment, being cool under pressure. um i didn't, but running, i I didn't feel that. I still don't think like maybe at times there's some pressure that you can put on yourself, but in the end of the day, what you do in training will show in racing.
00:56:30
Speaker
Yeah. So it was a different yeah it was a different thing. Yeah. The time that before you got the North Face sponsorship and inevitably managed to make a livable income off it, what was life like in Hong Kong outside of running and what were you doing for work at that point? Yeah. So pretty much I lived off my credit card. So maxed out my credit card. And when that was at minus $6,000, that's when things got really tough.
00:56:56
Speaker
um Not that I would spend any money or go out or anything like that. But obviously after a while, not working, you know, paying rents. I was renting a room in Muiwu, which is a small, very like the cheapest area in Lantau, which wasn't expensive. But yeah, over time I was running out of money.
00:57:17
Speaker
And got to the point where i didn't have any more money. And um I remember like putting a post on Facebook, like selling some of the stuff that I've won. So like obviously I would race every weekend and and you know, you would win some prizes like shoes and watches and so on. And I remember like not having money and having to sell some of the prizes that I won.
00:57:40
Speaker
And like somebody commenting, should should you really be selling stuff that you've won? um Which is this banker guy that like, you know, makes a lot of money. Is there judging this kid that has no money um trying to literally sell a pair of shoes that he won at a race so he can buy food? um Definitely felt, yeah, it was pretty pretty, like I was like, you know,
00:58:05
Speaker
ah Obviously, I remember it till today, and that's what I kind of heard at that point. um But yeah, that's just to show like I had nothing. And I wasn't far from going home till I started doing some
Coaching Career in Hong Kong
00:58:18
Speaker
coaching.
00:58:18
Speaker
um So obviously, I knew that I can't keep this up. And it's not like I could get a job in Hong Kong. um I was there on a tourist visa, um so I couldn't work.
00:58:29
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I was, I was definitely like not far from going home and then I started coaching. Um, and that that's literally a lift off. Like if I could get a lesson, I could survive in Hong Kong for another two weeks. Um,
00:58:45
Speaker
And yeah, that's how i kind of went on. I started doing a lot of coaching. And first of all, I started charging like Australian prices, which was ah managed to get a lot of clients. And then I realized like this is Hong Kong, like this is Hong Kong Island where you can probably charge a bit more. And that's where I started charging a bit more. And I was able to um train by doing probably two sessions a week uh sorry two um lessons a day um so i think you know i was charging maybe about a hundred dollars a session um which was 90 minutes but if i did two sessions a day that was enough to like pay rent and food and and so on so when you say sessions what were you doing for coaching
00:59:27
Speaker
So pretty much like, you know, we would start with a warm up. We'll do some strength work and then we would do some running. um And that running could be from fixing the running form um yeah to, you know, hit doing hill repeats. um Those were very wealthy people that needed some motivation more than anything. But then I did offer some more specific guidance. So it wasn't like, okay, run quicker now. A lot of the times I would have my phone and we'd be recording the running form and seeing how we can improve that. And um at that point, I've learned a lot about strength work. So I think they felt it as well when I was showing them specific exercises that were affecting
01:00:08
Speaker
you know, maybe pains and niggles at the head or like they more strength when they were running. So they would tell their friends and they would tell their friends. So I had a lot of clients. I think at that point, like I was getting too much where I had to like increase my prices a little bit because I had so many requests for for lessons. So there were there were times where I was doing like, you know, five, six lessons a day and that was a bit too much because I would have to like do a session in the morning, then catch public transport or a taxi to the next one, do that for an hour and a half. then go to the next one and try and squeeze in my run somewhere in between and then do another one or two in the afternoon.
01:00:44
Speaker
um So, yeah, then I put the prices a little bit higher and had a bit less people because I thought, oh, what is this guy doing? Like everybody's charging like an X amount for a session and he does them for like half the price.
01:00:56
Speaker
um And yeah, and then i also so few people that time also asked me about online coaching and I ah didn't feel comfortable coaching charging for coaching. um I think with the one on one, it was more like, you know, here I am putting my time and showing them things and doing things with them where online I didn't feel too comfortable, like just you know kind of giving them a weekly um lesson. So for a while I did that for free. And then once I felt more comfortable and I saw like people doing well or like having some results, I started charging for online coaching. so at that point I was doing a bit of online and a bit of like private coaching. And yeah, I wasn't far from from going back to Australia. And and I was pretty close to like calling my mom to ask her for money for for a flight home because I did not have that money for the plane ticket home. And um there were a few times where
01:01:51
Speaker
I didn't have enough money for food as well. So I was pretty lucky with a few clients that kind of contacted me and um and became like, you know, ongoing clients. Isn't it interesting how kind of when you're at your lowest and not necessarily because you obviously have the history with with the smoking and drinking in in there, but like the point where you nearly nearly need need to pull the trigger and go is when it sort of starts to come together.
01:02:18
Speaker
i just, I always find it interesting how the world works like that. Yeah, I guess when you put yourself against the wall, that's when you you work the way out you you find a way. And sometimes you don't, like, you know. um yeah But yeah, luckily I was. And, you know, maybe if if that one client, my first client um for coaching would have kind of thought, oh, I'll give him a call in two weeks' time.
01:02:40
Speaker
Maybe that would have been too late, you know. So there was a bit of luck there as well. A lot of luck when I was in Hong Kong. you know I wouldn't be able to do it right now. Hong Kong has changed a lot. So I was i was there at the right time and yeah I was very lucky.
01:02:54
Speaker
Was there anyone else doing coaching whether in person or online in Hong Kong at that point? So there were a lot of local coaches. um Sorry, in person. I don't know online. I think like Andy pretty much started doing online coaching. um But there weren't... Yeah, Andy Devise. Hong Kong, sorry.
01:03:12
Speaker
He had a few Hong Kong clients. um But... There were local, like, you know, local um Cantonese people that were doing, but I think I was one of the first maybe that I know there was like a a running coach, like an English-speaking running coach.
01:03:30
Speaker
um So that opened up the door for like, you know i coach some really wealthy people like you know like some of the richest people in the world um literally like literally coach the guy that owns the icc building um i think he went to jail or something and he had um like two or three bodyguards with him um in the sessions he had somebody like literally wipe his sweat off him during sessions um coach one of the guys from the group that bought ironman
01:04:03
Speaker
um and i remember talking about it with him before they made that purchase um he was telling me a bit about it and it's crazy because i think he said 800 million or some somewhere around that number and that was just crazy numbers for me but um yeah i coach some yeah really really rich people did did you ever get a chance to kind of pick their brains about what they did and how they got there and their stories because obviously you've now become an entrepreneur and a business owner It's not different scale, but like it's... yeah Not really. I don't think I had like the even like the basic knowledge of what they were doing and how they were making money. It was like so far away from me. It wasn't like somebody you know selling T-shirts, you know like a small clothing brand that maybe I could...
01:04:50
Speaker
understand a little bit those people like you know make money in ways that I still don't know like obviously I know a little bit more but still so far from it that it's hard for me back then it was very hard to even connect or not feel dumb about a question that would mean like nothing um it would be like somebody asking me today oh can you um just order like seven tubes of bigs active in a new flavor for me to try like no it doesn't work like that can't just order the seven tubes um there's a big process behind it so i feel like that would have been like my questions towards them so i did not get anything like obviously i would try and talk with them about it but also i had to be smart about
01:05:34
Speaker
not being annoying and like not losing them as a client because they're obviously very smart people. um So I had to be pretty professional and focus. Most of the focus was on them and me trying to give as much value as I can. And I think that's why I was ah successful coach, even though technically I didn't have any degrees. There was that was a lot of focus always on the runner, um them improving. And I never brought that focus onto myself.
01:06:03
Speaker
And my experience is is people that have that level of wealth, they don't like to waste money. Like they spend, if they're going to spend it, and spend it wisely. And yes, if that might be extravagant purchases, but if they didn't see value in what you were giving them, they would have just gone elsewhere.
01:06:17
Speaker
So you're clearly giving what they needed back then. Yeah, and I did a lot. Like I feel like, you know, if the session was 90 minutes, I would do an extra 15 minutes. So like, you know, I was very committed back then because I knew that, first of all, I knew how lucky I was to be in that position. um It was a lot of money for 19 minutes. You know, coming back from like making $6 an hour, you know, in in in a fast food restaurant that I worked here in Perth um to to being to doing that, I felt very lucky. So yeah, I went... way above and beyond why what they paid for. And um yeah, I think that's important for athletes and and people that do provide those kind of services is to give a lot more than what they expect. And you'll be rewarded for it by them staying with you for longer or
01:07:06
Speaker
you know, being um being a client for a really long time. Yeah, no I would definitely echo that sentiment. It's, yeah, if you can if you can allow someone to feel like they're getting a lot more value out of the price that they're paying, you're in a very good spot and you'll create a life lifelong or long-term relationships with them.
01:07:27
Speaker
trans that that That goes across quite nicely to talking about the North Face, because there's also something I heard you say about when you were working with them. So, I'd like you to kind of talk about how that relationship came about, but also the fact that you were always trying to essentially give them more than you got from them. And that sort of established, like, what was a six-year, I think, yeah relationship with the North Face?
01:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, I was super lucky with the North Face. um Obviously, I was winning a lot of races, so was pretty cheap for them to, like, year one just to give me some free clothes and some travel money. um And then year two, I started getting paid from them. But, yeah, my mentality from the beginning was, like,
01:08:02
Speaker
keep this sponsorship, do whatever you need to do and do whatever races they want, like, you know, in that kind of sense. But then at the same time, it's like, how can I give them give them more value? so I would always offer like, you know, more. I'm like, you know, my contact person was snowy. She's not working there anymore. She's a local Hong Kongese girl. And Yeah, I would just like message her all the time. was like, oh, I think I can do this training session here. Like, you know, what do you think? Or like, I think I can do this, like extra stuff. Like I had a basic contract um of stuff that I needed to do, but I would always send her message like, oh, I think we can do a group run next Wednesday.
01:08:42
Speaker
Like, you know, I can do a run from the shop there or like a new shoe is launching. It's like, you know, let's do a run or like let me do a strength session with them. um Or like, you know,
01:08:53
Speaker
they would work on a new product or there would be a sales meeting or something like that. I would oh, do you mind if I just come in and you know listen or like be there and um try and give some some of my feedback? or like And they felt it and they knew it. And then I was getting more responsibilities as well. So I was getting a lot of shoes to test out. So even though I was in kind of like the North Face China Hong Kong team, it wasn't really the global team.
01:09:19
Speaker
Because I did so much for them, then they would kind of like get me some stuff from the global stuff. So I would test shoes before they would come out, give them my feedback. And like literally i would send them videos explaining what I thought about the shoe.
01:09:36
Speaker
So this is 2015 or 16. so fifteen or sixteen sending them a video like 20 minute video about what i thought about the shoe and really talking to a camera they were pretty surprised that he went so far and beyond because i'm sure that like back at that point like the better athletes that you know dylan bowman and and zach um would probably maybe give them you know a quick email or maybe they would have to call them to kind of find out about the shoe and i was like no i got this opportunity i'm just going to give as much value as i can i'm going to send them a whole video and and send it out and they were like i think they appreciate it and then i was getting more and more shoes to test out you know i was being invited to the global um athlete summit which usually they wouldn't invite somebody from i guess a distributor country um so yeah i i went i did so much for them and
01:10:28
Speaker
It was a bit unlucky with COVID, um but I feel like without COVID, I would have stayed a lot longer with North Face. um I ah love that. like I think it really speaks to when you give your time and your energy, people feel that and they pay attention to it and it gets reciprocated. And like, yeah, okay, there was um ah a very unexpected global pandemic that...
01:10:50
Speaker
got in the way of that but you're right like that's probably what created what had the potential to create an incredibly long-term and fruitful partnership between between you even as as you progressed outside of being a runner there might have been more more long-term options there um it when you got the partnership with them with that initial deal with them did you feel like your approach to how you thought about running or training had to shift at all or got like you you started it had to it took on a different meaning or different weight i think my main goal was just to keep that sponsorship so i like you know i just needed to do whatever like they wanted me to do and what i would think would bring them value um
01:11:31
Speaker
so like you know any any north face race first of all like was like yeah straight away of course i'll do it you know if i can't do the 100k i'll definitely do the if i can't do the because i did a 50k you know a few days before i'll do the 30k um so i think that i just went with that mentality of like you know i just need to do everything to keep this sponsorship and technically looking back at it right now um is the reason why we started bigs but it's the reason that maybe i haven't really achieved my full potential as a runner at the same time because i was so focused on winning local races and keeping them happy i wasn't thinking about like well how do i improve you know my speed like you know like how do i get faster how do i get better like i never thought about that always thought about like well um what races they want me to be at what can i win them can i do more for them so Yeah, in many ways, it was a good and a bad thing. um But I was so far away from professional sports. You know what i mean? Like I was a junior tennis player. So I was far away from getting paid for something. You know, I was the one always paying. So suddenly getting paid by a brand, you know, all those flights, those, you know, hotel accommodation, the amount of clothes that I got from them.
01:12:45
Speaker
you know I was just like grateful like and I didn't really care about my progression as a runner. you know I didn't come from that world of like, oh, you got to improve your times in a 5K or a 10K. I just thought about like, I'm just going try and keep this sponsorship. and At the same time, I was coaching as well, um and that money from coaching literally was just saved. And that's the money that we use to start BICS. So you know that's, I guess, the big positive from it is you know the money from North Face. It wasn't a lot of money. It literally like all sort of year one, it was just travel money and clothes and year two,
01:13:26
Speaker
I was like, look, I don't need much. I just need you to cover my rent. And they were happy to do that. um And I was happy with that because in Hong Kong rent was pretty high. so I knew as long as I can cover rent with with the private coaching that I'm doing, there will be enough of food. And then online coaching was pretty much all saved um you know for, I guess, a rainy day. I didn't think we'll start Bix at that point. And then when we started working on Bix, that money was used there. but Yeah, my main goal was keep this sponsorship because this is the dream. Like you weren't supposed, yeah I wasn't supposed to, like when I stopped tennis, I thought this was my end of the opportunity of being a professional athlete.
01:14:07
Speaker
But yeah, once I got that, I was like, just do whatever you can to keep it for as long as you can. I heard you say in a different podcast that you had that thought that you essentially stayed fit enough and healthy enough to race frequently, but you never fully committed to that one big goal that would have meant you had to forego that and have a big recovery period, which, yeah, from the outside, one can go, oh, it's a shame because you obviously you you never really get to see what the potential was at that point. But I kind of came back to just the question of like, were you enjoying it?
01:14:36
Speaker
yeah i was enjoying it i mean like i was winning races so like yeah maybe i didn't win laveretto and a dnf in laveretto and mount blanc marathon dnf but i didn't do so well but like at the same time i would come back to asia and you know win everything and you know be treated as as like a celebrity there um you know literally my face was on billboards and and in train stations in ads and like it was like i know i know like probably a lot of it didn't come to australia but back in hong kong like i get hundreds of pictures i'll go to thailand for a race and literally like a hundred people will ask me for a picture um ah obviously it to europe dnf like as a nobody and then go back to asia and and you know there's somebody like a king technically yeah but yeah it wasn't great for my development and
01:15:27
Speaker
You know, i I played the numbers game. so I was like, well, if I now train for a race for like two or three months, don't do well at that race and then spend some time recovering, that's three or four or five months of like missed opportunities. At the same time, I could do 12 races and podium in all of them.
01:15:47
Speaker
Surely that brings more marketing value to North Face. Like I knew maybe, ah well, I mean, I knew even at that point they had the big superstars on the global team like Dylan Bowman. He would bring the big wins two or three times a year. And then like I was happy to be a little soldier on the side that would... you know literally they just win small races and give them marketing values in in different areas probably in bigger markets technically and probably markets have made them more money maybe um but that obviously stopped i couldn't train because i would just race and then just jog for the whole week and then race again jog the whole week so there isn't like an opportunity to really improve i kind of stayed on the same level um but yeah i was enjoying it oh you know the
01:16:31
Speaker
i I didn't really care about my running, like, you know, improving as a runner. I cared about that sponsorship. And, you know, while I was winning races, that also did not help because I was like, well, why do i need to really improve if I'm already winning here? And that's the main goal. Of course, I'll go to Europe, lose there. NAF will like come, you know, 20th.
01:16:55
Speaker
but then i'll come back to hong kong and then everything will be okay um yeah come back to your small pond and safe yeah exactly yeah so it it wasn't great but yeah um i'm i mean i'm happy the way that i did it and uh even though i feel like again i could have done it better to be a differently to be a better runner i wouldn't do it differently even if i had that shot over again which the end day like that's all that matters and yeah it's it's interesting you speak because you can see why people get trapped in their small pond and why it does like it's safe you can win you can make a living out of it You go overseas and it all goes to shit and you go, well, cool, I'm just going to retreat back to what I know and what's what's safe. Yeah, it's it's it'ss it's really fascinating because I put myself in the same position with what your life was like at that point. I'm probably making the exact same decision that you did.
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like, it's not that I came from, like, any knowledge about professional sports as well. Like, all you know is what you see on TV. And then if you get a small little percentage of it, then I was, like, as happy as I could be. So, yeah, I was just happy to be in that position.
01:18:03
Speaker
Again, like, you know, the amount of money wasn't big at all. And, like, technically today, it's like under minimum wage, way under minimum wage. Even back then it was under minimum wage. wage It was just my rent. It was literally just my rent. It wasn't much money, um but it was enough to kind of be able to focus on running and coaching. And coaching it was obviously pretty flexible. You know, i would usually do one or two private sessions a day, one in the afternoon, one in the morning. um And then, yeah, have time to train and do online coaching in the middle. So it was a pretty full on day, like obviously kind of 12 hour days, um probably even a bit longer. A lot of them would start 5 a.m. m or 5.30.
01:18:46
Speaker
But yeah, I was really happy and it was yeah simple. But and probably like, you know, I didn't have that experience of road running to like understand times and speeds and splits and stuff like that and workouts um so i probably could have done some hill repeats or something like that but it was yeah again like hong kong is just beautiful trails and i would just go for like long trail runs in between races what was it like the first time you saw your face on a billboard It was pretty crazy. Like it was, especially it was a big one. um So there was a few like in shops in Hong Kong, but there was one next to the, under, like there's a tunnel that goes from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon to mainland.
01:19:30
Speaker
And it was a big one. It was like, you know, it was really, really big. And yeah, ah somebody sent me a picture of it. And then I got the bus, I think, to kind of see it by myself. And yeah, it was pretty, spread yeah. was I guess just not a like if you're a good junior that kind of knows that you're going to be a professional and this might all happen to you. and Maybe it's not much of a surprise, but from...
01:19:54
Speaker
not having a chance of being a professional athlete to being a professional in this small market. um Yeah, it was definitely um surprising. Not like i felt like I've made it, but i felt like this is good enough. Like I'm pretty happy with this.
01:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. but I think being content at that point would be yeah pretty pretty easy. the The coaching side of things, and this is like what we've spoken about offline quite a few times about, and I find it interesting because you were outside of the North Face, the money you're getting for rent, essentially a professional coach before there was really any, like but that very few professional coaches. You had a full roster. You were doing it, how I would say, you kind of like properly.
01:20:36
Speaker
And it was like it's quite a rare thing to do. How did you find like getting into it, especially because you hadn't ever actually had that, I guess, traditional training background? Yeah, probably was a good thing because I would just, again, just do as much as I can. And I would, you know, from when I started to when I stopped coaching, which wasn't that long ago, was only a few years ago, um once Biggs got a little bit bigger, um i would still like handwrite every single day of the week. in Excel.
01:21:05
Speaker
um So a very it will like I would never write like 8K easy. Like so i would have like the table of the days like, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and so on. And like there's no chance in the world that I would just write Monday eight k easy.
01:21:20
Speaker
Like I would write a whole paragraph of going like why we're going easy. That's because Saturday was this and this and you know, like I want you to keep the pace and this and this and this is how much elevation you should try and aim. And if I knew the person a bit better, i would try and choose the route to like give them advice or like a few.
01:21:36
Speaker
Like I just did quite a lot. Like I think you can write a program in five minutes by copy, copy, copy, paste it. Or you can spend a good half an hour and hour like going through the last week, um sending maybe a voice message, getting some more information about how training was last week before you write the next one. So usually I would send out an email a day before um and then they would give me like how they felt last week before I write my new program. So I would never write a program unless I heard back from them. If I would not get email till the time that I needed to write that program, then I would try and call them or send them a voice message. But I would never write a new program unless I heard from that person before. um So, yeah, I think, again, it was just just going above and beyond. And um I had a lot of clients that stayed with me for a very long time because they felt that I cared.
01:22:27
Speaker
and you know i was coached by some people that i felt like send me a can like a copy paste program and it doesn't feel right when you're paying 50 for a program and you know that it took them 10 minutes even if like the same information is on both prog and probably like a professional athlete would be fine but if this is a person that wants to break four hours for the marathon they maybe just started running a year or two ago like that attention i think means a lot more to them than a professional athlete probably doesn't want to read the whole paragraph on like why they're doing an eight k easy recovery jog yeah but for them i think they were learning more from it they were understanding the coaching and whenever i had a call with anybody like my goal was like
01:23:13
Speaker
I think coaching should be not forever. You should learn from why we're doing this and you'll be able to do this for yourself in the future. So you might, like I would openly say to them, like I think coaching is good for a little bit, maybe a year, a year and a half, two years. But after that, you should know why you're doing A, B and C and then be able to do it by yourself.
01:23:34
Speaker
And yeah people appreciated that. But at the same vein, we all know that the the program, understanding how to do it for yourself, writing your own program, like that's such a small part of what the value you get from a coach is. And just like what what you've explained, that contact, those questions, like people aren't, I think unless you are an elite and a specific type of elite,
01:23:56
Speaker
to be that self-reflective and ask yourself those questions and then be able to actually like objectively analyze that. Uh, it's like, pretty rare. Like I can imagine the people that if you, if somebody got to a year and a half or two years with you and you were like, I think, I think you're ready to graduate off my coaching. You can look after yourself. There would be like, piss off. I want to stay like, don't kick me out, please. Um, did you ever like have that conversation with anyone?
01:24:20
Speaker
no i definitely did i mean like you know there there were times where like you know i didn't connect with the person so maybe i would have to like let them go yeah um but no of course not but that was my goal is like i wanted people like i guess like how i learned strength Because a lot of my program were were like you know strength and mobility and and so on, the other things around running. So it wasn't just obviously 8K running, but that would be in the beginning, I would write all the exercises that I needed to do with pictures.
01:24:51
Speaker
um Then the next step was like the video YouTube ones that obviously all the YouTube workouts that I have were for coaching so that i can send people you know a link to the workout that i want you to do on that day so it was a lot more than just running um but yeah my goal was for them to learn how to stay healthy and and my like you know my main goal is as an athlete was not to get injured because i knew if i get injured i can't race maybe lose my sponsorship um so that's also like every single phone call that i would have with the people in the beginning before they would start coaching or think about joining the coaching like that was my goal is like not to get injured um and also obviously i wasn't i wasn't telling them that but i'm like if he's injured i'm not getting paid because there's i would i would not charge like i would never do like you pay for a month and if you're injured for like three of those weeks you're still paying for that month i would only charge for the programs that i would send so if i wasn't sending a program for six weeks that's six weeks that i'm not getting paid for and yeah you know
01:25:55
Speaker
i I think like that combination of not getting injured was very important for me as an athlete, but also i mean as a coach because it was a job in the end of the day. yeah oh hence We all know. If you can stay consistent, and you're going to get better.
01:26:09
Speaker
no but like I know coaches today that like would charge you a monthly fee Oh, okay. Injured, not injured, like you still have to pay. Yeah. Which would hurt me as as a client. Like I would feel like it's a bit weird that I'm paying for me not running for the last few weeks. But yeah, I obviously from the beginning told them like, you know, obviously if you have to miss a few weeks or you're injured or there's anything going on and you need to put the program on break, like I'm not charging you for that money. Yeah. obviously charging you for the time that I'm coaching you. And that was important also to let people know. You then create a successful coaching business.
Creation and Growth of Bix
01:26:47
Speaker
You're in Hong Kong. You've met your now wife over there. where Where did the whole Bix... bit come into this it literally came from doing double runs during the hong kong summer ah so yeah 30 degrees which doesn't sound that bad but 100 humidity and even if i was doing like you know 40 minutes in the morning and an hour in the afternoon like it was hard to like feel okay for that second run um So my wife was German and we would try and spend like you know two or three or four weeks in Europe um during summer. And i would go to the DM there, which is like a discounted supermarket and get like vitamin C, effervescent tablets, um magnesium ones. i think that had immune support ones, they had electrolyte ones or maybe not electrolytes or different ones, but I now get noon electrolyte tablets.
01:27:42
Speaker
And literally, would finish my run. First thing would do is would put like five, six of those tablets in one liter to try and like hydrate myself, get those micronutrients back into my body so I can like feel normal for that second run, which, yeah, was tough. So we kind of thought... It tasted great.
01:28:05
Speaker
wasn't great for my stomach because they were like the cheapest ones as well. yeah um So actually, I think technically they were making me feel worse. You're not supposed to have like eight of them or six in like at once. But I would also have them during the day because I knew that I needed to like rehydrate a lot. And there's so much plain water that you can drink a day when you are running, you know, 10 or 12 or 14 hours a week.
01:28:31
Speaker
so yeah i was kind of thinking it was weird there wasn't like one with all of them and we talked with a sports scientist about a formulation of some of the ingredients that i was already taking and maybe some other ones would be cool to add in um like bromelain and stuff like that and Q10, which I was supplementing with outside of that. And yeah, I started sending messages to manufacturers. a lot of them did not reply. I said, no, it's not possible. And then one did. And um well, i think actually a few did. And we did some samples, but one was like, you know, you could do this. This is going to cost you 5000 euros, but it's probably not going to work. It was a very German email that didn't want us to even try.
01:29:16
Speaker
um But yeah, we tried. took us about two and a half years, that whole process. and By that time, we already moved to Australia. um And then, yeah, got the first product pretty much like early 2020. So as COVID was hitting, um which was like,
01:29:35
Speaker
So the thing is, we launched in Hong Kong and it did really, really well, like really well straight away. And their COVID hit straight away like a few months later and then you know everything kind of stopped. So it was it was a bit hard because yeah we we launched this good product that was different, perfect for the Hong Kong market, Asian market.
01:29:54
Speaker
and Yeah, I was obviously people knew me quite well in Hong Kong. um So that combination worked really well. Again, like at that point, like we just moved to Australia. So probably like a year before. So I was still traveling to Hong Kong for races. I was still sponsored by the North Face, North Face Hong Kong, China.
01:30:14
Speaker
um And I was very connected to the community there. So, yeah, we were supported by the community there straight away. and um did really well but then yeah covet hit and we entered a survival mode and i knew if we can just survive i don't know how long it's going to be but as long as we can survive this on that it's probably longer than what we thought but um long as we can survive this it'll be okay you know at the same time i'm obviously coaching full time i'm having like i have a little bit of money coming in from the north face so wasn't
01:30:47
Speaker
like it was a bit more of a side hustle in the beginning in the first two or three years um but yeah slowly kind of sold one product developed the second product with those things like samples are very expensive so that was you know there's a lot of money that goes into product development and a lot of time and effort. um So, yeah, it was a pretty slow you know build up of one, two, three flavors of our recovery, effervescent tablet to then launching some f ah like pure electrolyte effervescent tablets and then high carb powders and then salt tablets and and now two gels.
01:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was a very slow kind of build up. And, you know, I don't have much business understanding. a lot of it came from testing, you know, letting other runners test, um you know, getting obviously paying somebody a little more to have a look at our formulations and stuff like that. But a lot of it was testing, you know, on myself. And in the back of my mind, i always had that thought. If like this product doesn't sell, it should be good enough for me to use the whole thing by myself.
01:31:57
Speaker
um yeah That was like the main goal. It's one thing to come up with the idea and even like pursue reaching out and seeing if it's if it's possible. But it's an entirely other thing to actually create a business, develop up it and be at the point now where you're five, years six years in. And it is seemingly from the outside being really successful and growing. And we're seeing it on athletes all over the world now and YouTubers that have got massive following. So it's seemingly like taken off. But when when you first had the thought of, I reckon I could make something here.
01:32:31
Speaker
was there ever a consideration of, I want this to become a business and sustain me and be the focus? This was just, i feel i see a need for this product that I want and I'm going to see what happens. I think i think there was obviously like, you know, some thought about like, you know, i'm not going to run forever and I'm always one step away from never running again. Like we run on <unk>s pretty dangerous trails and that was always in the back of my mind.
01:32:56
Speaker
I never went into this whole thing like thinking I can make millions of dollars. Like, you know, I've obviously been brought up pretty poor. And like those numbers are so far ah like ah so far away from me and like it's almost like not realistic. so i always think about just like just getting through and surviving kind of mentality and just doing enough to like, you know, just so I can pay the rent now of an office and the employees and stuff like that.
01:33:26
Speaker
um And that's probably... why I'm still running twice a day and you know the business is growing fairly slowly. It has been literally growing by 20 or 30% every year, but it's a very, very slow, gradual growth. And it's been good because we could learn how to operate, um learn a lot of other things. There's so much that goes into a business that we never realized in the beginning, like me and my wife. um But yeah, it was's I'm still happy just with a small growth. Like I don't want to be the biggest nutrition brand in the world. um I'm very happy that we're like supported by local communities in Australia, in, you know, a bit in Germany and Austria and in Asia. And maybe like people appreciate the fact that they see me run twice a day on Strava and I'm not some kind of a boardroom businessman that just thinks about margins because
01:34:21
Speaker
Like we had no idea about those things in the beginning. Like we kind of like thought, all right, well, it will cost an X amount of dollars to produce that effervescent tablet. Maybe we'll sell it for that price. And we have not increased our prices since we launched. um You know, maybe maybe it would work, but then suddenly there's storage costs, shipping costs, accounting costs, taxes. Suddenly you go like, wow, it's not a very profitable number of products that we are doing.
01:34:47
Speaker
So like you know it's definitely a lot of learning and I was just happy that it's a like a long process of learning it and um people did trust us. We haven't spent much money on marketing and we went into product development and trying to improve taste and flavor and still improving things. Even products that work really well, we still um you know experiment with how can we make it better and profit is not like the most important thing. um we have this little shop that I'm recording from that is right at on the trails here in Kalamanda in Perth.
01:35:22
Speaker
We could have paid half the price being five kilometers down from here. But I wanted like a bit where ah more of a community place where, you know, we could do a group run from. And yeah, i I don't think that I'm like a pure businessman, like, you know, that it's all about profit. It was more...
01:35:43
Speaker
about like a bigger picture of creating a good product and hopefully people appreciate it It's not like you know trying to build funnels that we can squeeze more money out of people and so on. And it was you know and and that's where I think you know I'm proud of the brand is because people believe in it.
01:36:01
Speaker
Like we're literally spending $100 a month on um Facebook ads where most of the companies that we like compete against. So so to say, are spending literally millions of dollars a month or $100,000 a month. um So yeah, a lot of us, a lot of you know our success was just repeat customers and we have a very high repeat customer rate.
01:36:25
Speaker
um So yeah, I think that shows that people believe in the brand. Hopefully, like I said, hopefully the fact that I'm still running and training kind of shows that if I was all about profit, there's no way that I'd be running twice a day. There's no way that I'd be doing, you know, double thresholds on a Friday and a Tuesday. Like, you know, I would run maybe for fun or for health.
01:36:50
Speaker
um But yeah, we're leaving a lot of money probably on the table, but that's not the most important thing. And at least to this point in your life, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that's also probably the the sustainable way for you.
01:37:01
Speaker
I get the impression that if you gave up on your athletic ambitions right now, you there would be a disconnect. There'd be something missing from your life and you'd probably find it quite hard to put all that energy into just the business.
01:37:12
Speaker
especially because we're like a very well running or trail running business. Obviously, we probably expanding a little bit outside of running and and um and trail running, but that wasn't because we wanted to. It was kind of a natural progression when we don't push that. We've never done a cycling event. We've never done ah triathlon. You know, was still pretty focused on running. So definitely me, you know, being in the sport,
01:37:38
Speaker
kind of feels a bit more natural. um And I do feel that if I did stop running, I'll probably be looking at numbers or markets or like you know ah new possibilities where the product might fit better. I think that um you know when we launched a product in the beginning, um the recovery tablet, like supermarkets wanted to take it in Hong Kong.
01:38:02
Speaker
and it wasn't a direction that i felt comfortable with um yoga people were taking it some yoga places wanted to kind of sell it and i wasn't very comfortable in that because i really wanted to be a brand for runners like myself um and we did say no to a few things right at the beginning um because we wanted to make sure that we pretty true to who we are and our interest obviously my wife was a trail runner as well we met trail running um So, yeah, it was very important for us to stay in that path and in our lane and not think about it was almost felt like, you know, if we did give it to some of the supermarkets in the beginning, it would have been more of a sellout where we wanted to be a bit more in the shops that I was buying shoes in in Hong Kong or like, you know, was supporting me or like the shops where I pick up my raised bibs every single week. um So, yeah, I think that was kind of important in the beginning and again, Probably lost a lot of money by doing that, but at least we stayed true to like ourselves and where we wanted the company to start with. I don't know where the company will go once I i mean, I'm not going to run twice a day forever. There's probably a couple of years left of that.
01:39:15
Speaker
um I obviously will always be running because I love the sport and I think is very healthy and good for you. But yeah, I don't know where the company is going to go. But for now, like, you know, I'm pretty happy with us being in that space, even though that means that, you know, we're probably losing some money by not targeting some other markets that probably could do better for us, like triathlon.
01:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, I find that really interesting. I'm sure that that any any business entrepreneur that creates a product and they get the opportunity to go into a supermarket where it's going get in front of thousands of people every day, that's that's probably it a dream come true. But the fact that you already knew like, no, that's not what we value. That's not how we want to be seen in the community.
01:39:58
Speaker
ah it's like you have to commend it and i think it it stands to like a lot of the stuff that you've been been saying throughout this like it's it's community focused it's commitment to sort of trying to help people and not just take the best option out there even even like down to your sponsorship like not pursuing like being content and like giving back the most you can instead of just like constantly trying to get more from from things or asking north face for more it's more i'm going to give you more because i value what you're doing for me it's um yeah there's there's there's a lot of correlation that but from the business side of things do you your wife works within a bit within bix as well yeah i mean so she's mainly kind of doing accounting so again we did not know how much it would require but yeah she's mainly accounting bookkeeping um making payments and stuff like that which is yeah a lot of work it's
01:40:49
Speaker
It's crazy to think that a small company like us with literally three employees would need literally almost a full-time accountant. Yeah.
Sponsorships and Business Challenges
01:40:59
Speaker
The North Face side, what eventually did happen there with the sponsorship?
01:41:05
Speaker
So they moved their offices from Hong Kong to to to China. um Obviously, China was a massive market for them and I was doing a lot of races in China at the time. um But yeah, they moved the offices from um from Hong Kong, which was a bit more of a gateway from China to the world. They kind of thought like, we don't need that anymore. we don't you know And some of the employees from Hong Kong office had to move to China. Some have left, like my contact in North Face have left the company. So yeah, it was just a bit unlucky. like it was
01:41:38
Speaker
you know probably there was you know a bit of financial pressure from them to like save some money maybe you know with this whole move from to China. I don't know. um Yeah.
01:41:51
Speaker
They kind of said, we're changing a few things around. And at that time, so this is 2021, towards the end of 2021. at that was...
01:42:02
Speaker
bakes was pretty stable again, I was still coaching full time at that point. But you know I thought maybe this is not a big deal if I run with um you know a big T-shirt instead of a North Face T-shirt. And also like North Face only started having like good trail shoes in the last two or three or four years. like My time with North Face, the shoes weren't great. And like that would be happy for us to even run with non North Face shoes um you know if I did a road race or something like that. so
01:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, obviously, though again, like I said, if COVID didn't happen, I think that I would have still stayed with North Face, but um that's what happened. my The people that were in contact with me have you know left the brand, so um yeah yeah, lost the sponsorship. So there was one question i ah I meant to ask around Bix. You said that you but growth and profit is what isn't the goal, like you don't want to become the biggest nutrition brand in the world. like What is the goal for Bix then?
01:43:03
Speaker
just to be a brand that people can trust, a brand that people can like look at and go like they're not trying to lie on the packaging or they lie on like how much they actually give you or like what it actually does for you.
01:43:17
Speaker
um like just be like a good brand that people can trust. I think that that's something that because like I think that is so much of myself in it, like the amount of emails that I get like, oh, yeah we can manufacture bix for you in Slovakia or Hungary or, you know, other Eastern European countries, like like literally showing pictures of our product. Like we know what's in the product with the ingredient list. We can make this for you in our factory or like, you know, out of east Southeast Asia as well. A lot of emails.
01:43:48
Speaker
and Like, I don't want to do that. Like, I want to stay, you know, then even if it costs us 40% more and we manufacture in Germany, that it makes it 10 times harder. But I know that the quality of the product is a lot higher and we use good ingredients. And like I said, like, I feel like people feel that. And that's why we have like a high return customer rate. um But yeah, that's the goal is for people to feel like this is a brand that they can trust. Like, we...
01:44:15
Speaker
not selling out we're not trying to sell something cheaper than what it is like you know our pricing i feel like like i said like i was also we haven't put our prices up because i feel like we want to be a a semi-affordable product as well at times and our running becomes is very expensive right now with some like a basic shoe could be like 300 today or a gel can be eight dollars um so there's also a bit of a feeling that i am i'm still a runner like you know that's how i would wanna or maybe that's a brand that i would want to support yeah um if that makes sense yeah yeah but definitely and it's it's commendable it's nice to hear like obviously i have a personal interest in in knowing you in the podcast but it's also just nice to know that they're
01:45:01
Speaker
people people behind the businesses that are still like actually connected to the community and haven't got lost in what they've created which google would be so easy to do is like you you start off well-intentioned and then you get into it and the pressures and the stress and growth and you start talking about profit margins and you say you have employees now and locations and suddenly you go like if i just up my prices by a dollar it's going to change things massively because that's essentially net profit for you so it's yeah no i i really commend that and i think it speaks more to who you are as a person than you who you are as a businessman because as a businessman there's probably well there's better money decisions but is there a better decision for perception long term and how bigswood will work out i'll probably argue no but yeah no i think i think like i'm like the longer i've been in bix i realize that i'm not a good businessman you know it's yeah because like our numbers don't make any sense um literally um but as long as we like surviving and like you know still moving forward even if the amounts are not big As long as I can pay my employees and pay the rent, like I'm pretty happy. Like it's not like my goal is to buy a $10 million dollars house. Like that is definitely not the goal. The goal, like I said, is just keep this as a brand that people can trust. And, um you know, we do our best.
01:46:23
Speaker
literally with everything that we do and might not be perfect at times but you know it's a very small operation compared to the people to the brands that we you know kind of competing for yeah competing with ah we've spoken a bit about training through the years which essentially has just been run easy and race hard frequently at what point did you start to think a bit more critically and nuanced about how how one can train No, I mean, like I always understood training. It's just like my kind of way of racing didn't allow me to train. So I always like, I mean, obviously, you know, i I just feel like I should have put more effort towards that. um I think that I understood very well, like training volume and the improvements of volume in general.
01:47:11
Speaker
But it was only when I came to Perth, um when we moved back to Perth and I started training with Matt Ramson that I got a bit deeper into it. um But that that's the very top kind of thing. um So I understood how to get, let's say, fit like 16 minutes for a five k fit. but That kind of work with Matt helped me understand, all right, well, how do I get from 16 to 15? And that's, yeah, that's what I've been doing for the last few years, which does require um a different approach. I mean, it's not just go and run for as long as you feel like today or like you have time for today. It's a little bit more structured and yeah i i kind of enjoy it as well but also and i remember the times of just running in hong kong without really knowing how far i'm going to go today um having a 20k loop in mind but also sometimes doing you know a bit more and stopping at a petrol station and getting some gatorade or something just going for a bit longer where today it's a little bit more like well it's exactly an hour like you know yeah yes there's exactly 50 minutes i'm doing exactly 50 minutes you know it's a little bit more.
01:48:29
Speaker
It's different now. It's less flexible. But I also know that I need to do those things for my own running to hopefully not take it to the next level, but just to have like a little breakthrough, which is a bit hard. Like um I feel like I've been towards the top of my ability for a long time now. um And just to have a little breakthrough if it's tough now and I feel like I have to do so much and like training 15 hours a week now, I could do 10 hours a week and that extra five hours a week is only like one or 2% of fitness at the top that I'm trying to achieve, which makes it, um yeah, pretty challenging. At the same time, I train with a lot of like young kids that you see them like just improve like literally with every two or three weeks. But it's a lot harder at 38. Yeah.
01:49:15
Speaker
yeah i it's I don't know if you would essentially call it diminishing returns, but what it is, isn't it? like to get get fit, you can do that quite well, but to get great, to get really competitive, it takes so much effort for a tiny improvement. And it is that tiny improvement that also, it like I think it breaks people, it wears people down, but it's what you've got to commit to long-term to actually become...
01:49:40
Speaker
that next and like yourself like you've been you've been running now since what for nearly 15 years yeah yeah and rate like and your volume and your mileage and your racing frequency has been high so for you to actually cause your body to adapt and to develop and grow especially in your late 30s like you're gonna have to keep playing around with things and change change it up and i think like we've seen that at the moment with ah the double threshold that you're trying of like all right what what is actually going to be novel for my body to make me get better, which I think is really interesting. and I think it's also a testament to, it's easy to look at people's Strava and their training and think like, oh, they're doing way too much they're doing this. But like when you actually apply the context to, or if you ran, if you ran even ah like hundred and forty k a week with two sessions, you're probably going to regress.
01:50:26
Speaker
yeah yeah absolutely i think that if i look at my last 13 years of running which i've been pretty full on i've been averaging about half a marathon every single day if you take away all the elevation it probably is more like 24 every single day for those 12 years it's a lot of volume and now i feel like if i only do like 10 hours a week i'm taking small steps backwards not much but like i'm not like staying or i'm definitely not improving that's for sure um i could maybe do that with one very very hard track session yeah like kind of like an all-out track session
01:51:07
Speaker
That's just very, very risky. um But I know that could work, but it's just almost like too risky. I did a little bit of that and that worked a few years ago, which was probably, yeah, probably about 160, a hundred and sixty one hundred and seventy k a week But with a threshold session that wasn't threshold, like I know now what threshold is. um Back then, my threshold and track session were two sessions a week where I went all out.
01:51:33
Speaker
um Like I would not be able to walk at the end of that track session and threshold it would be like a race. yeah It did work. Like I definitely improved and had a few little break breakthroughs, but it was pretty demanding on the body and mentally it was also like tiring.
01:51:51
Speaker
yeah like going all out all the time now it's a little bit more sustainable so the paces are ah more controlled but it feels like you need to stack a lot a lot of bricks to see like a small improvement which is also tough as well and you want to push a bit more and sometimes i over push it um but yeah a lot of the times i have to hold back and kind of go like no this is going to take a few weeks this is going to take a few months and Yeah, it it was nicer when I started running, you know, like I was like improving with every two weeks, you know. Yeah, it'd be great if you could run five hours a week and improve. It would be amazing. Yeah. it do Do you still include those sessions where you go you go to the well and bury yourself to try and actually cause ah a sim, like a growth?
01:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, so that's probably like the conversation that I've had with Matt. So like kind of my coaching now is, I guess, 80% is just me because like I know a little bit about trail running and maybe some of the stuff that I need to do, even though sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. With Matt, it's kind of like I think that when he changed his training, my my training changed, from especially that track Tuesday track session. um It used to be all out, like literally every single week, go as hard as you can.
01:53:09
Speaker
Now it's to bit more controlled, but then like once in a while, we would throw a session when we do go all out. so like two weeks ago, it's only three times 400, but with a three minute break in between. I've never had a three minute break between sets in my life. um I know it's very common for a lot of athletes, but it was going all out. And In many ways, I was surprised myself running like 62 seconds a lap, like on a hot day um at the end of the session, which I haven't really done like all out efforts like that for a while. It's a lot more controlled. So even when like this week we did on Tuesday, it was more like around 70 seconds a lap or 72, but only two of them.
01:53:50
Speaker
So only really two fast laps. So I think it's touching the fast stuff, but not 8K worth of like all out stuff. i remember my first track session with that group um the first set we did like four times and then some 400 meters the first 1k rep was my all-out pb for a 1k it was like 50 58 like literally i look at all it beeped at 258 for the 1k and that was my fastest scale of my life at that point that was a painful way to start a session yeah first session ever i'm already like literally
01:54:27
Speaker
you know max heart rate yeah but that was very common in the beginning and yeah and vi beyond it might the 400s you were doing now sort of that that's sort of i guess you'd say just a bit faster than 5k you're doing sort of 70 seconds or so you're doing that at the end of the session i'm assuming they could be mixed in so like this tuesday was yeah 1600 1200 800 400 and slowly getting quicker and then start again um but yeah i think the thing is that you know i'm training with a group of like track runners a lot of the time it's not a specific session for me it's more like
01:55:05
Speaker
well what's the next race that the group has coming up if that's a 3k or a 5k and when that race is so when do you need to kind of sharpen up so like i did those all out 400 meters efforts like 10 days after terra where like technically probably not not ideal but when you when you said the time the timeline i looked at the date now and i was like hang on yeah i just came back from terra where yeah um Yeah, so I think that's the thing when you do train with a group that they're not trail runners, they're not running, you know, they're not trying for ultra marathons. um They are training for free and 1500. So yeah, but I still find obviously a lot of value from doing those sessions.
01:55:47
Speaker
And overall, like I'm not trying to like improve my 5K time or 3K time. It's more about getting some quality work that would help my running form, my strength, my speed for some longer races. And I know it has, but probably not at the same effect as when I started you know five years ago when I joined that group.
01:56:09
Speaker
So you're not on the same band as David Roach going for the the fastest 5K runner will win Western States. No, I do believe that obviously speed plays a big role and that's where I feel like it's very important to add um some speed work. But I feel like if I was a bit more specific towards the 5k, I'd be doing a lot more of those all out efforts.
01:56:30
Speaker
um Especially for me, I think that helps because I don't have much speed naturally. Yeah. um So it does does give me a big fitness push when I do some faster stuff. And that's what really helped me like when i started when I joined the group. like I went from like zero fast running to a lot of fast running and I had a big breakthrough. Yeah.
01:56:54
Speaker
But now, like, it's tough. It's just kind of finding, like, is it worth doing all out 400 meters for eight sets or 10 sets or is free enough where, you know, I'm still getting, you know, 14 or 15 hours of running every week. Yeah.
01:57:11
Speaker
yeah And that's the beauty of individualization, isn't it? and we're all so different in different times like it feels easier and harder and yeah i mean the body is is amazing at times and sometimes it doesn't things just you do the right things but you're not progressing and sometimes you just have to like you know push through those times as well and sometimes it does feel a lot easier and we're all so different like um that yeah training as i think as long as you are training and with the right amounts here and there you should be moving forward but a lot of the times it feels like it doesn't it i don't anyway yeah yeah that is
01:57:53
Speaker
ah it it It can be demoralizing, like especially when you're working so hard and then especially when the races themselves don't come off. And like we've we've seen you, the the recent conversation on the podcast obviously was a whole build up to Tarawara. I was pushing for your your golden ticket run. Yeah.
01:58:11
Speaker
but and it But it was like, it created this this kind of cool return 100Ks that has been the ah trying trying like the the last 100K that you actually, the last 100K that you finished was in 2016, 2017? 15. Yeah, 15.
01:58:26
Speaker
15. Okay, yeah. And then there was a DNF, I think, at UTA, 100. Yeah. And now TowerWare. Yeah. TowerWare. how are you processing that DNF at TowerWare?
01:58:40
Speaker
ah Definitely, like you know I think the fact that I peed blood at the end of it made it a lot better. i think if that didn't happen, then I would have hurt a lot more because you know I'm getting to that age where like I know I don't have too many more years. um And I was like, well, you know maybe I should have done soccer marathon or Tokyo marathon instead because...
01:59:04
Speaker
I probably would have ran a PB knowing that I stacked six or seven weeks at 200K and had some good training. Well, like in the marathon, it's a bit easier to on the roads anyway. It's a bit easier to kind of like go like one plus two plus three equals this. In trail running, it's not right. Like it's it's so different and so many variables and so many skill sets that you need to get right. and I'm just a little bit disappointed that, you know, I had downhill sessions planned, but like, you know, like, oh, like, you know, suddenly it didn't happen. It was too hot that day and i couldn't do it. Or like the long run changed location. and Like, it's like, yeah, I mean, it sounds like excuses, but I should have just stayed a bit more focused on some of the sessions that I needed to do, like downhill running, especially. Yeah.
01:59:52
Speaker
yeah That was the main one. And probably my mistake was looking at it as a bit of a road race, which it wasn't. It's a proper trail race. And even though saw few people do it with road shoes last year, it's not a road race at all. There is runnable sections, but it's a trail run. Especially not in those conditions as well. Oh yeah, exactly. So that will make, yeah, that makes it a trail race and a half at that point. But yeah, definitely disappointed because training through the summer in Australia is not easy.
02:00:19
Speaker
Um, you know, luckily this year i had a treadmill, so that meant that probably got a bit softer. um but it made it a bit easier, like knowing that a lot of the afternoons here is still 35, 36 degrees. And you know, when you are trying to hit 16 hours a week, that second run of the day is usually an hour and a half or two hours. Um,
02:00:39
Speaker
So yeah, that made it a bit easier, but then at the same time, probably didn't get enough specific trail running in. and do you Do you think that this is somewhere where training with a group and having to do what they're doing can come at a detriment?
02:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So I think, I mean, the the thing is that's the only social time that I have is that. So like I don't really have...
02:01:05
Speaker
friends outside of running right now um some of my good friends are not living in Australia at the moment or um I don't have too much time outside of running so that is my social time the cool down and the warm the the warm-up and the cool down is when we joke around um even though everybody is like 10 to 15 years younger than me um in that group that we have like 15 year old kids in that group which feels weird um you know but um Yeah, I do get some social time and I do enjoy running with the group. But at the same time, yeah, it's probably some times where I have to do my own thing and not be too focused on doing the group thing, which makes it a lot harder because it means that I have to go back to what I did for 10 years, which is like run by myself.
02:01:51
Speaker
um And it was nice kind of joining a group and doing a few runs a week with with some more people. But it's just finding that balance for specific races. And I think the longer the race is,
02:02:01
Speaker
and you know the more specific you have to get probably the more times you have to say no to those group runs and have to do your own thing yeah do you find yourself periodizing your year much in terms of your your training not too much like i think that i come from like a year of a lot of racing like i said probably like the last year and a half i've been doing a bit less racing um but still will do a fair amount of racing. So my goal is kind of like, you know small buildups.
02:02:33
Speaker
So like four or five weeks for a race rather than like, you know, proper, i guess, professional athletes, you know, base build. It could be like three or four months. Yeah.
02:02:45
Speaker
Yeah. yeah think it might be a little bit light for me too. I guess the reason the reason I asked the question is because when I think about someone that's training with a group, but then it also has to offset that against the specificity of the trail event that they're trying to train for is that like that's where...
02:03:00
Speaker
even if your training doesn't necessarily change much in the week to week volume and the and the intent is that, okay, you know that for Tarawara for this last eight weeks, that's when I'm going to forego the social side to get my legs ready. And that like, so it's it's only an acute level of periodization, but it's just, it maintains the social element the rest of the year or, but it kind of works.
02:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, you're right. um Yeah, that's probably a mistake that I made. And, you know, the last um two long runs, I didn't join the group and actually did my own long run. So usually I
Balancing Personal and Professional Goals
02:03:33
Speaker
would join the group for like they would do, you know, an hour 45 or 90 minutes on the trails. And then I'll go off and add on my own stuff, which would be a bit more specific. um But in summer, they try not to get up onto the trails because it's a bit hotter on the trail. So they stay in next to the river. So...
02:03:49
Speaker
Probably that's the mistake that I made is going down and doing some long runs on the roads. Not enough downhill work where like the last two weeks or since Tarawera, I've been doing my own long run. yeah And yeah, kind of learned from it, which is weird because I've been running for so long, but I still make so many mistakes, like basics mistakes like that.
02:04:09
Speaker
Yeah. Which... playing devil's advocate i would i would say that that is a prime example of why no matter how good you are you still need a coach like somebody that's that can ah especially like you've got matt kind of writing some of your workouts you need i feel i feel like most of us need somebody to to look at look at what you've done and go there's a gap like that's the thing that's going to really get you and whether it's your hydration your nutrition or your downhills or you've not accumulated enough load or whatever it is um but yeah
02:04:41
Speaker
You're right. You're 100% right. I feel like um you know sometimes even when you feel like you're doing a lot. So the thing is, that's the thing that I thought that like I'm training a lot. I'm running 200K a week.
02:04:52
Speaker
you know I'm running twice a day. I'm doing the sessions. But there wasn't enough guidance of like, no, this has to be you know a downhill session like another uphill on the treadmill like it's not going to do anything for you right now yeah exactly it's not specific enough for this race like yeah you're getting some fitness but not specific race fitness so yeah yeah that was the mistake um for sure the other other thing that sorry i feel like i'm kind of dissecting your block here so just tell me to shut up at any point but no it's okay the The other thing that i think is interesting is that, like you said, the last year and a half, you've pulled back the racing. And I don't remember you doing a race before Tarawara in 2026 or anything the trails.
02:05:31
Speaker
anything on the trails No, I mean, I did. um I went to Oman. So it's, I mean, it was about seven weeks between races, seven or eight weeks. um But yeah, you're right. Like I usually would do a lot more. And I think I kind of started pulling back a little bit on races in Europe last year.
02:05:48
Speaker
um So usually I would, you we do a lot of expos and and I'll do a lot of races. But then it kind of felt good just to kind of train and try and actually improve. And again, at the same time, I feel like the sport is just, the level is is so high right now. There's no chance of just racing.
02:06:05
Speaker
Like I need to train specifically. And yeah, maybe it didn't work for Terra Aura, but I feel like hopefully it will pay off in some other races where I now have... four, six weeks between races.
02:06:18
Speaker
um So, yeah, i think i think I think that's probably the wise thing to do. And and it's also obviously like it's it's demanding racing, it's demanding traveling, um you know, racing and stuff like that. And I'm not you know 29 28 30 anymore um so yeah and i'd still like i feel like i have some goals that i want to achieve so i need to be a little bit you know more specific about it like also like you know to be completely honest like a lot of the racing that i've done in the last three or four years has some marketing value for bigs you know if it's me running with a hat you know and winning a small trail race in perth it has of course marketing value so i also have to
02:06:57
Speaker
factor that in um I feel like the brand is a little bit bigger than me right now so that allowed me to do less racing like ah there's so many races that where I would do the race and then put on a drink station at the end of the race and that was like super hard I'd be like sweating on on while I'm mixing drinks and like you know people look at me standing behind that table you know didn't you just race Like, yeah, so it didn't look too professional, but I had to do it um back then. Now it's a little bit more flexible. Like I do a lot of events like for tasting events, but I don't race at the same time. um
02:07:35
Speaker
And I feel like, yeah, the brand has outgrown me to the point where I don't need to do as much racing and maybe get some better marketing by doing better at some bigger events rather than the same North Face mentality of like,
02:07:48
Speaker
well i'll just win the small races and get some marketing value because there is marketing value in small local races yeah well and also your hat your hat your shirts they are on a lot of athletes now worldwide and i think that it's good like if your business can outgrow your you and your brand is so much more yeah the brand is a business or the brand is vlad's nutrition company like that's a perfect scenario And I felt it and I think when I felt it, it's probably when I was kind of doing a little bit less social media and stuff like that, because like it's not as dependent on me anymore. And um it's a nice feeling to also know that, you know, I don't have to force social media posts and when they come, they come. And when they don't come, they don't come, um especially in today's world. So I think that that was a positive thing for that um is there's a bit more breathing space, obviously.
02:08:42
Speaker
you know any business there is risks and you can't just kind of like relax but probably just being a little bit more relaxed than some things especially with the stuff that i needed to do um just means that i have more time for my family and stuff like that at the same time which is a positive Yeah, and that's not really something we've touched on too much. and And I feel like because you and your wife are in the business together, it's sort of the answer is there. But you're balancing 16 hours of training, creating a business which is not just working a 40 hour week, it's probably working a 60, 70 hour week, and then you never stop thinking about it. And then you have young family as well. It's got to, how that all marries together. Like um it's not, I'm guessing what you're doing right now is not sustainable for no too much longer.
02:09:33
Speaker
No, definitely not. And I mean, again, there's like that when I had North Face, like, you know, I could justify myself going training twice a day and traveling to races. Now it's a lot harder. I feel guilty, like especially, you know, Tara Ware is a good example. Like i was away for five days, six nights with a flight. You know, it's obviously something that I paid for with my own money. Um, but then at the same time, being away from my family and not coming with a result that I'm proud of for like the dedication. So it's not just the six days, but it's a bit of extra training, a bit of extra stuff that I did seven or eight weeks leading up to it. And then I can't show for it. So yeah, it definitely makes it hard at times. And, um,
02:10:16
Speaker
i just feel like and i have to do a bit of extra after for like family stuff after a race to make up for you know doing less of it for the last few weeks which definitely is not nice and when i travel i literally don't do too much i try and do the work that i need to do get some rest but like i don't go outside and like experience the town that i'm in or i enjoy like touristy stuff like i would just get out there and try and get back home because i've already sacrificed so much family time i can't sacrifice anything any extra yeah and we stayed together at uta i definitely noticed that it was like it was run it was work yeah it was go to bed early and just like get out essentially um which
02:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, obviously it's a sacrifice in the sense that it's it's a trade-off, but also I'm sure your wife would very much be like, you're pursuing something that makes you happy. And the as long as you're making the most of it, like you're using the opportunity that your family is affording you, it's it's like it's not it's not always a ah sacrifice in every sense of the of the word.
02:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, of course. Like I think it's obviously like, you know, me chasing my personal dream um means that I'm hopefully a better husband and a better father. um But then at the same time, ah I just have to find a bit more balance at times. So like some periods I do more and less. Yeah.
02:11:42
Speaker
And yeah, it's, it's, it's, I feel guilty at times, definitely feel guilty, especially if I, if my daughter tries to like show me something after school and here I am on the treadmill trying to finish my workout. Um, yeah, there's definitely guilt at times, but then I try and make it up sometimes, but I know it's not, you're not really making it up.
02:12:04
Speaker
Yeah. There's two last things I want to finish up with. You said something earlier that really stood out to me that you're, we are all, which is completely true.
02:12:15
Speaker
One step away from never running again, especially because we want to run the trails and we're in an exposed environment with that mindset looking forward. What's the, like, what are you trying to achieve before that day comes?
02:12:27
Speaker
I mean, yeah, one is definitely um a fast marathon time. um I think that I would like to run sub 220, which is six minutes faster than my current marathon, maybe. So it does feel like a long way, but I do feel like that's possible.
02:12:41
Speaker
I think sometimes with road and numbers, it's kind of a bit easier to create goals. And me running a sub 220 means that it's probably still me coming 100th place at Berlin Marathon. It's not like my goal is to win ah marathon.
02:12:57
Speaker
So I think that's realistic um goal. I mean, like I've always loved Transvolcania, so I do have a goal to go back. It's hard for me to say like my goal is to win it.
02:13:08
Speaker
um I know how far I am from the best trail runners in the world and It's not like a Rocky movie that you can just train hard for five minutes or an hour or a day. Like it's years and years of like improving on talent that you already have.
02:13:24
Speaker
um But I do feel like maybe I can go back and finish in the top five. But I think even the goal right now is actually just to be back at the race. um It's obviously so far away at that time of the year. And it's just, it's a race that I always want to go back to, but it's a bit hard to. So my goal right now is just literally do Transvolkani again. And even if I just do it once, that's great. If I can finish top 10, top five, that would be amazing. It's hard for me to say there's a chance of me winning it with how competitive trail running is. But um yeah, top 10 would be amazing. And just being back at that race would be amazing. And that's pretty much it. I listened to a podcast you're on from 2021. And it said that you thought you were going to go and do a miler in the next couple of years, which hasn't happened. But is that still there?
02:14:09
Speaker
I think that would be um the only one that I would want to do as competitive would be Western States, which means a golden ticket would be the only option. And I do think that I will try and and maybe run one or two or three golden ticket races in the next few years. But I never like looked at UTMB as being like the race that I really want to do and I'm not a big fan of like running in the night.
02:14:33
Speaker
um Like will I ever do 100 miles? 100%. It could be when I'm 50 just for fun. But as a competitive 100 mile, like I would want it to be Western States. It could be like another golden ticket like um the other one in the US, which is 100 miles as well. Javelina. Javelina. That is a possibility and i kind of thought about it. Definitely not this year, but maybe next year. So that could be a 100-mile race for me. That'd be Yeah, I feel like I want to do it, but I want it to be very special because I know there's not many...
02:15:07
Speaker
opportunities and like i've enjoyed short trail races like i've really enjoyed it um in the past few years i think a lot of it has come from smashing my body in long training weeks long runs without the proper nutrition um for many years it kind of like forced me to to go to shorter trail races but i also enjoyed them um a lot so i'll definitely be doing a lot of 50k races and stuff like that but Yeah, 100 miles. i mean, I wish I was like, you know, even though I didn't have a great day in Tarawara, like I saw second, i was I was one minute behind second place at 53K into the race. um
02:15:45
Speaker
So like that kind of gave me a bit of motivation that it is a possibility. um it um ah I will not just blowing smoke up your ass here. You look at what happened at Tarawara, like you, especially, especially at Tarawara, like canyons or black canyon canyons, they're different. um But Tarawara, potentially Chianti, potentially Javelina, because it is a hundred mile. Like you've shown you've got the capacity. You just have to race your race. Yeah.
02:16:14
Speaker
and Yeah, exactly. And and those are the three races that are I have in mind for next year. Like I definitely will be back hopefully in Tarawara again. um But then if that doesn't work, like I thought about, maybe I should plan a second one for next year because it will be special to be at Western States and run 100 miler. Like you said, like I've started with a lot of 100K races, but it's been a good 11 years since i finished one. Yeah.
02:16:42
Speaker
so dude yeah Do you think that in this year, something that you probably need to do for yourself is just go and run a 100K event and take it off? Not really. I don't have the goal of just finishing 100K. I want to finish it well. And I know how much effort it goes into 100K races and the recovery after it.
02:17:02
Speaker
So I don't want to just go after like a smaller race that, yeah, maybe I know I could do better at. I think if I'm going to go into a 100k race, I want it to really count or mean something and also compete against people that are good at that distance. And um if there is like another bonus of a golden ticket and the ability to run Western States, that would be like really cool. But I don't have that goal of just finishing your hundred k anymore um or 100 miles to that point. like It's not like I just want to go do the distance. Like I said, like I feel like you know when I'm 50, I will do a slow 100k race. I'll probably do UTMB one day um just to do it, but it will be like very slow kind of for fun, enjoy the event, enjoy the views. But
02:17:50
Speaker
when i'm kind of racing all out 100ks i don't even know where i'm running like it could be on a treadmill it could be in my backyard it could be in a beautiful course like terrawera like i i didn't see anything of the course like i saw like a meter in front of me and i remember running next to a river at one point but don't really remember yeah no that's yes i completely get that uh okay last last thing because i found this absolutely hilarious I was going for your website and it has a bunch of articles on there from 2015 and 2016 and little write-ups and I zoomed in and there was a bit that really so stuck out to me.
02:18:27
Speaker
And it was you saying that you're not a big fan of protein and gels. So I stick with more natural stuff, which I found absolutely hilarious given what you now do for work. It's like, when you look back at what you were doing 2015, 2016, when you were were racing and kind of think where you are now, like it it must feel such a,
02:18:45
Speaker
difference like i guess such a kind of i know laughable thing just go like wow that was what i was doing yeah i mean i think everybody were doing it like well i don't know in the trail space of the people that i know definitely the person that i was looking up to killian johnette would go well in his videos he would say that he would go up to the mountains with like one snickers bar for eight hours so i was like well that's i guess what i have to do and i've done so many faster runs like no breakfast but ah maybe some water um and then not or maybe even no water like I've done so many fasted hot runs
02:19:19
Speaker
in in all the years i was doing like longer racing um that i feel like yeah it's probably the main reason that i went into triathlon i think we didn't really talk about the fact that i got so tired of ultra running that i needed a change and i did like half iron events for like a good year and triathlons for ah for a solid year the number one ranked in your age group in the world correct Yeah, Half Ironman. Half Ironman, yeah. Yeah.
02:19:46
Speaker
And I've never swam in my life. um Would go to the swimming pool with my laptop and do like a YouTube lesson for 10 minutes um in the pool.
02:19:56
Speaker
And like all like all I could do is literally like 10 or 15 minutes before it would really hurt me. And I would have to come back in the afternoon and do that again. um But yeah, i feel like you know I did not feel at all like gels would be like, you know I'll do a 50K with maybe one gel.
02:20:14
Speaker
yeah um I had some kind of like ah ambassadorship with with Hammer like when I lived in Hong Kong. And like, I'll probably get one box of gels for the year and like a few bars and stuff like that. And I would just try and have that whole box for the whole year. So, i would like you know, one gel, a race for a 50K and never in training.
02:20:35
Speaker
um I guess like because nobody did it and we didn't know the benefits of it. then i was like well yeah i'm trying to stay away from those things maybe um but i guess if you knew the benefits you definitely wouldn't stay away um i think protein is a bit different i didn't feel like i needed much when i was a bit younger i think with me getting into the space and learning how important it is especially as you get older yeah That's when I started having it a bit more. and But like you know i was like I said, like I was running. I've been you know running for so long. And I've only really supplemented with protein in the last year and a half.
02:21:14
Speaker
um Did try and bring out actually ah organic pea and rice protein, which... didn't really go. um But I feel like protein is more important as you get older. it Yeah, it is.
02:21:29
Speaker
I mean, I did fine in my mid-20s, early 30s with no protein supplementation and supplementation and I've been... vegan for 15 years now 16 so i don't know kind of worked fine um but yeah i think like even even starting bigs like i looked at electrolytes and micro micronutrients more important than carbohydrates and back then the gels didn't even say how many carbs were in them that was all about calories like you know yeah this gel's got 100 calories and that was like the standard um of a lot of them and
02:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, my first 100K race, the Malaysian one that we talked about, I had 10 gels, 10 goo gels that probably have 20 grams of carbs in them.
02:22:14
Speaker
And then I didn't like the feeling of it or didn't feel good after it. Couldn't fall asleep. My stomach wasn't happy at the end of the race. So the Singapore race, I probably only had three gels for that race and a few bananas.
02:22:26
Speaker
So the next 100K race. Yeah, but obviously now it's it's different. Yeah. um of yeah if If I had to launch a nutrition company right now, I'd probably start with a gel where we kind of yeah went with what well where where the sport is going to and that's where we launched the gels last. yeah Last thing, i just just remember this one and I said that twice now, but We're are going to do this with Sim and Brody and Jess as well as across across
Podcasting and Building Trail Running Community
02:22:58
Speaker
this year. And question I want to ask everyone from my side of listening to this for a year before I was involved was, why the podcast? I think that I've always been passionate about... australia in general like i've done my best to try and represent australia in like all the world champs and champs that i could um so i felt like there was a space for like talking about trail running in australia because you know all the podcasts that i'm listening to have been listening to was all like american based
02:23:31
Speaker
Um, so having something a bit more Australian, and a bit more local and trying to build the sport here as well. Like I feel world champs in 2017, like i was me and Kelly, like there was only two people in the team again, like the year after that, I think i was the only one.
02:23:49
Speaker
um ah So I feel like, yeah, there is enough talent here so we could be competitive in the world stage, but there's not enough maybe knowledge or information or there's not enough sharing about the sport. So I think the podcast kind of hopefully kind of gives people um a bit more information about what's happening in Australia, but also a touch of what's happening in Europe and and and the US and the world scene. and um yeah trying to elevate the sport here because we have a lot of good road runners but we're very far back with you know their elite level of side of things in trail running so that was my kind of thinking why i wanted to be a part of it
02:24:33
Speaker
I like it. Awesome. all right Thank you for that. That's been good fun. it's It's been nice to kind of dive into a few things and have that have have the time to actually ask the questions that've been on on my head. And I think hopefully people now, when they listen to you after this, will have that little bit more context of like, okay, cool. This is this is where that comes from. Or this is why Vlad is so calm the whole time because it's his background didn't talk about emotions or whatever it is but yeah it's been uh it's been been been very good fun thank you i know thanks a lot for doing this and um yeah it was actually fun too it's things that i don't really think about but sometimes when you are asked that question you kind of even while i was talking like i was going in my head like why don't i have a good relationship relationship with my parents why i'm so bad with emotions um so yeah it's a good way of reflecting on it
02:25:19
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. It's it's a pseudo-psychology appointment as well. Wonderful. All right, well, have a great day. Appreciate it. Thank you. you later.