TRIBEathlon Podcast Season 4 Recap

Foreign. I'm charlie redding.

And I'm claire fudge.

And this is the tribe athlon podcast.

And as an athlete, that's the space that you're searching for. A sense of knowing that you have strength, knowing that you've done the training. But you also, you're very calm. Like, no matter, you know that no matter what comes across your plate, you. No matter, you know that no matter how good you feel or bad you feel that you're going to keep going, that you're going to make it. You're going to make it through those moments, every moment where you start to doubt yourself, you're going to find a reason to keep going, and you're going to find a way to get back to that place of peaceful and powerful.

That was Mark Allen, the most highly rated endurance athlete of all time. And this episode is actually the season four finale. And it's the best bits from our guests that have been with us for season four. So as we draw season four of the Tribathlon podcast to a close, I am absolutely astonished by the quality of the guests we've managed to get on and the wealth of information and inspiration that we've taken from them. You know, whether it's Mark Allen, the top rated endurance athlete of all time, Bob Babbitt, the godfather of triathlon, Sharon Davies, the Olympic and broadcasting legend, and Tom Evans, the breakthrough British ultra runner, to name just a few, we have been absolutely spoiled by a wealth of riches on this season of the podcast. So by way of a bit of a taster of the whole series, we've put together an episode of some of our key highlights. If you've not listened to all of the series, then why not dive into this episode so that you can see what you've missed and you can go back and then pick out the ones that are really for you. And if you're an avid listener, then this makes for a great refresher of what we've covered in series four. Finally, if you do like the podcast, the best thing you can do to help make sure that we continue to deliver these podcasts of both inspiration and information, and basically learning from the guys at the top of the endurance world how we as age groupers can do better. And the best thing you can do to help us and to ensure we can continue to do this is to follow the podcast like the podcast or whatever your chosen platform is, whether it's Spotify, Apple, Google, whatever. So, yeah, follow it, like it, whatever. And also to spread the word, please share it with your endurance friends. It really is appreciated and it helps us continue to make the podcast better and better. We have an amazing Series five lined up for you. We've got some awesome guests already in the pipeline and a few tweaks and changes to the format as we go. But for now let's dive into the season four finale of the Tribathlon podcast. Watch out for season five. 33 Fuel Produce Award winning natural sports nutrition and everything they do is led by their fuelsophy for performance health and for a fitter future. 33 Fuel's awesome products have been fueling triathletes since 2012, as well as many of the world's best athletes from other sports like the England football team, Tour de France winners and triathlon world champs, including football four times Ironman world champ Chrissie Wellington, who's been using 33 fuel for years. I personally love their price. I particularly love their protein shake. I think it's delicious, but it's also not full of a load of junk. I love their meal replacement which is kind of brilliant for pre or post workout recovery. I love their Chia gels. Actually they work really well for me, but especially I love their energy bars and their protein bars. They feel like a proper treat to eat as well as being packed full of real amazing goodness. So find out more about 33fuel.com and if you use the code tribeathlon or click the link in the show notes, you'll get a very extra special discount on your order. So let's start by diving into that Mark Allen episode and hear about him winning the Iron War in Kona in 1989.

And as, as it turned out, you know, it was such an amazing day in 1989 with Dave Scott and I racing together side by side for eight hours.

It is that, that is, I mean, I've only seen bits of it, but it is incredible to see. What was your, that was your, that was your decision to race alongside him, wasn't it, rather than his?

Yeah, you know, I, I knew that I didn't know how to pace it, right. Obviously I could, I could go fast, but I couldn't go fast the whole way through without blowing up. I could, I could not blow up, but I, that came on the years where I didn't really push it very hard and I thought that's not a great race either. That's not the best I can get out of myself. So I thought, stick with him. The guy knows how to do this thing. And so I, I stayed on his feet the entire swim I stayed with. Right behind him on the bike. And, you know, there were points where I could tell he was trying to pull away from me, but his effort wasn't. Wasn't like, otherworldly, so I was able to just kind of stay with him. And we started the marathon, and, you know, literally every step of that marathon was. Was side by side. And. And people ask me, well, what did.

You guys talk about?

Like, wow, what? There's nothing to talk about. Like, hey, Dave, can I get you another Coke? How about a Gatorade? You know, but you could. You're. When you're in a race like that, you're. You're in this sort of almost altered state where you're. At least for me, where, like, you're sensing things in a very different way than you do normally. And so I didn't need to ask him how he was feeling. It's like I could feel when he was strong. I could feel when he was maybe doubting some of his. His abilities, but he was. He was pretty strong and solid. And the further we went into the marathon. Marathon, I knew that the further we were getting into the territory where he was nearly invincible. Like he was from hour six onward in that race. By far, he was the best guy ever. And, you know, we're at hour six. Hour six and a half, hour seven. At about the half marathon point, he started to surge. And it was getting harder and harder to stay with his surges. And finally it got so hard to stay with him that, you know, my mind started. Finally started going nuts like, oh, my God, Dave, Scotty's gonna win. I can't do it. My legs are killing me. I've got these blisters. I shouldn't have come back. You know, I was whining and, Claire, you might find that you're. You might whine a little bit out there. That's okay.

That's a very good thing. I like that.

Yeah, but.

And I. I was. I was really close to giving up. And finally my mind just. It was so hard to stay with him, and I knew that I had to stay with him. Like, if I just gave him, you know, a second or two, that might be the race right there. And so, you know, it got so hard to stay with him that finally my mind just went quiet. And literally in the instant that my mind went quiet, I remembered an image that I'd seen in a magazine two days prior to the race, and it was in an ad for a workshop that was going to be taking place in Mexico, teaching about a Way of life from an indigenous culture that lives.

There, the Huichel people.

And in this ad for this workshop, teaching about this way of life from. That's very simple. It's. It's connected with nature. It's, it's. It's truly sort of like working with how we're hardwired as human beings to feel good outside and, and honoring the sunrise, the sunset, you know, the seasons. It was. There were two shamans or medicine men that were going to be teaching this workshop. One was 110-year-old whel shaman, Don Jose Matsua, and the other was his adopted grandson, Brant Secunda.

And.

And they both had a look on their face that was this magical combination of peaceful yet powerful. And as an athlete, that's the space that you're searching for. A sense of knowing that you have strength, knowing that you've done the training, but also you're very calm. Like, no matter. You know that no matter what comes across your plate, you know that no matter how good you feel or bad you feel that you're going to keep going, that you're going to make it. You're going to make it through those moments, every moment where you start to doubt yourself. You're going to find a reason to keep going, and you're going to find a way to get back to that place of peaceful and powerful. And so anyway, in that instant that. That my mind went quiet, Don Jose's image came back to me. And it was almost like he was floating right next to me. And I could just feel this energy or life force coming from that. That image of him or that memory of him or that vision of him. And I could just feel that sense of peaceful yet powerful. And it's sort of like it just washed away all doubt about my ability, and it washed away any need to have that race turn out any way other than the way it was going to turn out by me giving the best that I had to give. And my shoulders relaxed, my breathing relaxed, and my stride opened back up. And I could just feel like all of a sudden it was just that little bit easier to stay with him. And we were. We were running side by side, you know, mile after mile after mile after mile. And he was stronger on the downhills than I was, but I was stronger on the uphills. And we both knew that just before you drop down into the town of Kona and do that last little stretch to the finish, that there's one long, steep uphill. And both of us were waiting. We knew that that was the Moment that the break was going to take place. And this is at about mile 24 and a half. And we got to the bottom of the hill and there's. There was a. An aid station at the bottom of the hill. And, you know, conventional wisdom says you take one last glass of whatever it is sport drink or coke or whatever, because at that point, you really are pretty much running on fumes. And even a few calories is going to help propel you, you know, to the finish. And so Dave sort of wrestled his way in front of me and he reached out and he grabbed for one last glass of whatever he was going to grab. And I started to reach in behind him and I just heard this something just like shout out from the universe. It said, go. And I pulled my hand back and I started sprinting as best as you can sprint at the end of an Ironman. Not very impressive, but it was enough to start to open up a gap. And so literally, as he reaches and then in those few seconds, he looks back, I had started to pull away from him. And you can see it in the footage. All of a sudden, now his mind is blown because I am pulling away from him in his territory. Those last miles of the marathon where he was, he'd shown that he was always the strongest. And the gap got further and bigger and bigger and bigger. And I got to the top of the hill before him. I knew I had to get to the bottom of the Palani road, Palani hill, before him. If I had it, I was going to have a chance to win because he was so strong on those downhills. I got to the bottom of the hill before him, and then I knew that there was nothing that was going to happen, that I was going to win the race. And I made that last stretch and was coming down. Ali' I drive. And, you know, my. I had this huge smile on my face and the tears were coming down my cheeks and people were cheering. And I knew that they. They knew that this was not just one race. It was seven years in the making. And there were many disappointments that I'd had to overcome to get to the point where I could have that. That eventual victory. And I did. I did win the first of six Ironman titles that day. The difference between Dave Scott and I, he actually had his best Ironman ever. He broke his previous world's record by over 17 minutes. And I did my best time on that day by nearly 30. But the difference in our times was a mere 58 seconds. Very small difference on a long day.

All the stories from Mark Allen were just incredible. That Ironwall one is one very close to my heart, but they're all amazing. So if you didn't listen to that episode, you must go back and listen to the whole thing. It's incredible. Now, let's dive into. For want of a better. Sorry, excuse the pun, that's really bad. But let's dive into the interview with Sharon Davies and let's particularly think about, or focus in on the science behind the transgender discussion. We've just had another transgender female winning in the cycling event in the news this week. So let's look at the science behind the transgender discussion.

So, basically, what Fina has done is they decided to set the limit on male puberty, which is what we've always been talking. It's what I've been. Always been talking about is male puberty and creating a female protected classification and an open and inclusive classification. You know, anyone that loves sport wants everyone to be involved in sport. It's never been about trying to get anybody banned from sport. And when newspapers use the word banned, it's so artificial and unfair and incorrect because no one's ever been banned. They've only been banned from a classification that they don't belong in. So they've always been able to do sports. They just have to do it with the other people in that race has the same biology as them. They've been banned from the women's class because they're male, you know, or they banned from the under 12s because they're 15, or they're banned from the lightweights because they're a heavyweight, you know, so that's the whole point of classifications. If we didn't have classifications, young, fit, healthy men would win everything. That's it. You know, disabled people wouldn't win anything, children wouldn't win anything and women wouldn't win anything. So, you know, we have these classifications to press to enable success across society in sport. Now, testosterone is what comes in, obviously, with young boys, about 11, 12. My son's 15. It's bursting out on him all over the place at the moment. It's just crazy. And he's, you know, a young rugby player. It makes an absolutely huge difference. Having said that, though, males also benefit from being taller, having different bone structure, having different Q angle, which is your angle from your hip to your knees, which we know creates a lot more injuries in women than it does in men, because we have a wider hip because of childbirth. None of these things are ever going to be changed by reducing your testosterone Levels and all of the testosterone levels that we have in place at the moment still do not bring you down to women's levels. So men's testosterone levels are anywhere between 7.7 up to about 30 nanomoles of testosterone per liter of blood. Most women are under one. If you've got endometriitis, you might go up to about two, but then you've got all the problems that come with endometriis which are not very nice. So, you know, so the vast majority, including Olympians, extremely successful Olympians, including myself, are all under one nanomole of testosterone per liter. Now if I was to compete tomorrow with the testosterone that say Emily Bridges is allowed to compete with in British cycling, I would receive an instant four year band. So again, I find that extremely hard to understand how that is. Okay, Even so, she's benefited from male puberty and she's also allowed to have five times what I have in my system. And if I put in my system what she has, I would get a ban.

As well as having then the advantage of having the better Q angle which cyclists is actually shown to really important in cycling.

It's very. Because it creates where you can get the power, you know, so that, that benefit will never go from Emily Bridges. She will always have that benefit. And to me, that's not fair. You know, when we spend so much money trying to stop people from cheating in the, in cross sport, but obviously we are fighting so that men can have fair sport. Why are the governing bodies not fighting so that women can have fair sport? Why were we just expected to move over? And again, the other thing that's, that's ironic and ridiculous is that transgender men, so biological females still opt to compete with the women. So Both at the NC2 as and at the Olympic Games, the transgender and non binary athletes that we had competing all chose to compete with the women so they can identify as whatever gender they want to, but they still find it perfectly capable of racing with their biological sex. And that's again, what I feel is very important. You know, if you, why yes, identify however you like, but race where it's fair.

I think what Sharon has to say is brave, but also I think it comes from a place of genuine passion to continue to have a fairness in sport. And so if you didn't listen to all that episode, really you should be going back and listening to that. It's a fascinating chat. Now we're going to dive into a. The godfather of triathlon, Mr. Bob Babbitt, the, the, the host of Breakfast with Bob in Kona. And what I loved about chatting to Bob was going back to the roots of triathlon, the roots of Iron man, and the roots of. Of Kona and as it was. Or Hawaii, actually, before it was Kona. So let's hear about the first Iron man for Bob and the third ever Ironman in Hawaii.

So anyways, we. We find out. It's not like you go online to find out about this Iron man thing. We had to. Basically, Tommy told us who to call, and we called this John Collins, and then they sent us an application, and then we filled it out and sent our $25 in to. To sign up for this iron thing. And then, you know, we get over there. Well, then we gotta figure out what to do for a bike. And I thought, you know, we went to a police auction, got a bike for $75, went over to the island. The funny part was I get off the plane and I've got this bike with solid rubber tires because I didn't know I'd change a flat. I had a fuzzy raccoon seat cover on it because, you know, we want to protect your butt. Foam grips on the handlebars, and a Radio Shack radio mounted on the front so I can listen to music. Bungee corded on, listen to music. Plus pan your sleeping bag and tent because I thought you swam 2.4 road 56, day one. Camped out and rode back day two and did the marathon. I was a little bit of a surprise when I found out you're supposed to do the whole thing day one. So anyways, this bike rolls off the plane. There was no bike boxes back then. You just sort of roll the bike into the airport. And I had this big beard. The guy who won the race in 78, Gordon Heller, had a big beard. The Navy SEALs who were in the waiting room at the. At the airport see this bike roll off. They see me with a big beard. They think I'm Gordon Haller. They think I won the Iron man on this 75 police auction bike. I think it made them feel like, okay, we got this in a bag. This loser won. Who is this guy? So anyways, we get out there on race day, and I have a. A crew that I didn't meet until that morning. I was a school teacher, so one of the kids I taught her dad lived over in Oahu, and he brought his two girlfriends. They had their little Fiat convertible. We didn't know what to eat or anything, so I had, like tons of Gatorade. And then I had Hawaiian sweet bread because we thought you needed carbohydrates and that there was no gels, there was no electrolyte drinks. Nobody measured their carbohydrate. We had no idea. So I'm swimming along and, oh, the night before the race, they get us all together and say, hey, we got huge storms rolling in and we're standing at the host hotel. The waves are breaking against the building and ten foot. And Ned and I are like, we're gonna die tomorrow. I mean, it's nice knowing you, but there's no way we're gonna get through this, sir. We walk into the meeting and again, because of the Sports Illustrated article, now there's 108 of us from 15, and the race director, this guy Hank, goes, guys, you know what? ABC Wide World of Sports, which is a big TV show, they're here to cover cliff diving on Sunday, and they want to cover the Ironman tomorrow because they're here. But the problem is, if we have to. If we have to postpone it a day because it is huge surf, I'll lose ABC Wide World Sports. So I'm moving the swim to Alamoana Channel because that way we can do the race tomorrow and we won't have to postpone it because the huge surf now Dave Scott and all these Navy SEALs are like, what a pussy event. You can't change it. It's the Ironman. Go in the surf. And Ned and I are like, yeah, what are you doing? Knowing that, oh, my God, we're going to live. So we get out there the next day, gave all my Hawaiian sweet bread and Gatorade to my crew, and it's four lengths and Alamo on a channel. I'm swimming down. And on my way back, there's a guy named John Huckabee. His claim to fame is he'd run the Athens Marathon three times in one day. Back, back, back. But he couldn't swim, and back then anybody could sign up for this thing. So he's walking the swim. He is. Seriously. I'm staying as shallow as possible. I almost run into him as he's walking, moving his arms like this, right? He's the only guy in the history of Ireland and to get blisters on his feet during the swim portion of the Ironman World Championship. Then we get out of the water, and I'm so excited that I got out of the water. I got my wool bike jersey on. I got all this Hawaiian sweet bread jammed in my back pocket. We're riding through Waikiki. I'm tuning in my Radio and There's my crew, 25 miles in the side of the road. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is like the Tour de France. They're going to give me one of those little things with food in it. This is awesome. They give me a brown bag with Big Macs, fries and a Coke and I'm like, this is awesome. And then we get to about mile 90 and I got a root beer snow cone, which was wonderful. Then at the end of the bike, I come rolling in and I'm hearing this music. And as I roll in, there's my crew and they got a bamboo mat rolled out, rolled out. And they're like, how about a massage? I'm like, you know what? My neck and back are really tight. So I laid down for a massage about 45 minutes between the bike and the run, which felt really, really good. And then we got out on the run. And back then they had a rule that said if you lose 5% of your body weight during the race, we're taking you out of the race. So you had to get off your bike a few times to get weighed, and then you got weight in the run. So I get on the scale, start the run, and then I'm waddling through Waikiki, eating, you know, Hawaiian sweet bread, drinking Gatorade. I get on the scale again at mile five and I can hear the guy on the walkie talks. Can you give me that again? This guy's gained five pounds. You can't gain weight doing this thing. So then I'm running along, waddling through Waikiki, and then I get to Diamond Head and I'm so excited because I'm actually at this point mile 19, mile 20. I'm going to finish this in one day. I never thought I was going to finish this thing in one day. My crew is behind me in their little Fiat convertible with their lights on. And I'm running up Diamond Head and I'm thinking, this is the coolest thing. I can't imagine what they're going to have to finish. They're going to have bands, they're going to have cheerleaders.

Is me.

Really exciting. I drop into Kapilani park. Running along, there's a chalk line on the road and there's a light bulb above me and I sort of slow down and I hear this voice in the darkness. It's like, hey, you like? Yeah. You in the race? Yeah. You're done. That was it. There was like one guy doing one arm push ups in the park and me and this guy saying, you're done. That was it. It was like. But you walked away from that finish line. Ned had waited for me and I went, you know, Ned and I walked back to the room and I'm thinking, this is the coolest thing I've ever done.

Just an absolute pleasure to listen to. Bob, if you didn't listen to the whole episode, he is such a fantastic storyteller. You must go back and listen to that episode. It is just wonderful to listen to. So let's take over now and go into the sort of opposite end of the triathlon world and let's look at, let's go into a clip from the Leon Chevalier interview. Now. He's one of the young up and coming triathletes. He's actually my prediction to win the Ironman World Championships in Nice this year. Who knows, we'll see whether that comes true or not. I was sat next to him on a plane on, on the way back from Kona last year. Just a genuinely lovely guy. But one of the things we've done in this series of the podcast is we've been asking the previous guest to ask the next guest a question. And the question that came out or the answer that came out from Leon was about his how he hopes to make the world a better place through his impact in sport. And I, it was just a, it wasn't on my list of questions to ask, but it brought out a brilliant piece of content that I want you to take a listen to now. So this is Leon chevalier.

You know, 18 months ago I probably had 400 followers on Instagram, all of them that I knew. And now I've got like 8,000 and growing. And when you look at people like Jan Frodeno or got hundreds of thousands of followers, then all of a sudden your platform just explodes and the influence that you have on people is way greater than, than you might think. So, yeah, I'm in that, I guess I'm in that medium position now where I've not got a massive following, but.

I still have a platform.

And I've already noticed, you know, how I've, my family or friends and people have picked up running or exercising again by following my racing. And I just like, I'm glad that I can create that sort of motivation for people to make changes in terms, in, in their lifestyle and just enjoy being outside again and, you know, try something new. And, you know, the more people I can encourage to do that is great. But beyond that, there's a lot of, you know, I was in Hawaii. And I was watching Frozen Planet 2 from David Attenborough. And every episode I'm thinking, leon, are you just wasting your time doing triathlon when you could be, you know, an engineer, put your degree to use to solve some, you know, basically the climate issue, which I think is one of the greater issues, is that in some sort of political instability, I guess. But yeah, I mean, I, my career as a triathlete will be, well, not too short, but it'll be 10, 15 years. And through my sport, hopefully I can build some sort of platform to influence people to make the right choices. And, you know, if it means a small change in habits and lifestyle, you know, if people start walking to work or riding their bikes to work or going for a walk rather than say, drive to the shopping center at the weekends, I'd really, you know, I'd really appreciate if that made a bit of a positive change.

I completely agree. I think that's absolutely brilliant and it's a, it's topic that I'm very passionate about. One question that I can hear people bouncing around in people's minds is how do you kind of offset the fact that, you know, you're, you're, you. You know, it'd be great if people are doing that. And I completely agree with that. But equally, we're based in a sport where we're flying to Hawaii for a race. How do you kind of equalize that?

Yeah, it's a, it's a real problem because on the one hand, yeah, I'm saying stuff like that, but then I've got, you know, I get new kit all the time and bikes and yeah, like when I'm riding my bike, I'm say riding my bike to the swimming pool rather than driving there. It's got less of an impact on climate. But when you've got five bikes, well, the carbon impact of building those bikes and shipping them all over the place is, is huge. And, and then you're flying it to races all over the world. So I'm really grateful to have Enduro as a sponsor. They make loads of cycling kit and they're, they're actually going to be carbon negative by 2024. They're already carbon neutral now as a company and they want to be carbon negative. And one of the things in my contract with them is that they will offset all my carbon emissions linked to training and racing with them. So that means basically paying charities to then do projects such as planting trees or whatever it is. But I mean, there's a price put on the kilogram with a ton of CO2 that you emit and they've agreed to offset those emissions. So that's, I mean, that's a little thing that you can do. But obviously, you know, just riding to the swimming pool rather than driving is one of the little things that I can do daily to try and minimize the impact that I might have on the environment.

So much great advice from Leon, like if you didn't listen to the rest of that episode. He also talks about the power of consistency and turning training peaks green. And just brilliant. Really some really great advice. And I also particularly love his because he's got a chemical engineering background. There's some great stuff in there about what he can take from that background and apply it to triathlon. But also wonderful that he's making a social impact through his sport through those contracts. Now let's take a sideways step and go into the world of ice swimming. So Ryan Stramrood, the South African guy that swam the ice mile, just incredible story. And I loved talking to Ryan in particular about him pushing past impossible. So I want to recap on him swimming the British Channel and pushing past impossible. And I got to a point in the English Channel, I think I was.

Nine hours into my swim and it.

Had started to get dark, so I was freezing cold.

I was absolutely exhausted.

I had drunk so much salt water.

Which makes you very, very nauseous. I'd been rolled around by the waves.

I was freezing cold and I absolutely hit the wall. Now, I'm sure your audience understand hitting.

The wall, that is pretty much when.

The tank is empty, you've got no more reserves to keep you going to draw from. And I hit the wall and I.

Realized that was the end for me. I got to a point mentally where it was absolutely impossible for me to carry on. I mean, these waves were ban in my head. I, I didn't.

Everything I tried to put down was.

Coming up, nothing was working.

I could not take one more stroke. I just wanted to get out.

Okay.

And this is the part, this is one of the probably the key learnings in my entire life and messages that I now share around the world.

And Charlie, you'll remember if I had.

Pulled out of the English Channel on.

That nine hour mark, without a doubt, everybody would have patted me on the back on that support boat and said, wow, nine hours in those conditions, you.

Got really unlucky, made bad luck, you.

Know, well done, you gave your all, you did your best.

And I would have sucked that all.

In as an excuse magnet. I would have become and nodded my head and said, yep, it wasn't me, it was the weather that was terrible.

I gave my best look at those conditions. I hit the wall, impossible for me to go on. I would have sucked in every little excuse that just helped me to justify essentially the failure. But I didn't pull out of the English Channel on that day, which was, which was largely thanks to a very strong support team that I had on board on the boat next to me.

And one of them being my brother is a guy knows nothing about swimming, but he's a solid, solid as a rock. He's a big unit as well.

And I had kind of pre briefed him, you know, if I show any.

Sign of weakness from start to finish.

You need to say the following to.

Me, which he delivered with great gusto, very rude phrase and you know, kind of just gave me a kick in the pants and I put my head.

Down and somehow this, for the first time in my life, I changed from.

Body, which was finished, to head.

Okay. And it's very hard to describe, but.

I say with the absolute 100% certainty that every single person can do it.

Everyone's got this, I refer to it.

As a switch or a button you can press where you find a point where body's finished.

And now you need to change gear into mind.

And in my case, the first time this happened to me, I had another.

Short of four hours to sort swim.

If I was going to get anywhere.

Close to the French coast in cold, rough, pitch black water and somehow stroke by stroke, inch by inch, screaming and crying, I inched my way across to the French coast and finally found myself.

Standing on a deserted French beach. And I'd made it across. So, and you know, once I was.

Able to kind of digest it all.

And compute what had gone on for.

Me out there in the English Channel.

On that nine hour mark where in my head it was absolutely over.

And how had I had now swam another four hours. I couldn't quite figure it out until started to realize that I'd actually just pushed past impossible.

And that's been my catchphrase ever since.

I've managed to push past my own impossible, not anyone else's because lots of people have swam the English Channel and done amazing things, but I had reached a point where I couldn't go on and I could have got out of, of the water until that's into, back into my comfort zone, so to speak, on the comfort of the boat and I could have held my head up.

High and no one at all would.

Have gone oh, shame.

You know, he didn't, he didn't push hard enough. Everybody would have gone, wow, you flipping did everything. You got unlucky.

And that made me look at my life very differently. And all the little things that challenged me that have just shaped me and, you know, done such wonderful work to keep me in my comfort zone and keep me safe.

And I started to challeng those one by one. And that took me on that. The fascinating journey into what I call the journey into cold.

Orion's just a brilliant. Was brilliant to interview brilliant guest, lovely guy and just, you know, pushing past impossible as he got, you know, closer to swimming the channel but in a really tough conditions is an amazing story. Again, must listen to episode. Go back and check that out. So now I'm gonna. We're gonna take a snippet from McKeely Jones. And McKeely Jones is a phenomenal athlete, having won Kona and having won silver in the Olympics. Tells great stories, lots of really brilliant takeaway takeaways from the stories that we can implement in our own training. So again, listen to that. But I want to listen to Michele Jones talking about controlling the controllables because I've referenced this a few.

But, you know, it's. It's hard work that gets you to where you need to go. And I think that's where the self belief comes in that, you know what it's like. This is. All those hard workouts have led me to, to this point. And then like the belief of like thinking that I could never do an iron man, you know, that was part of the training process at each session you did. It's like, oh, you know, maybe I can do this. And then it's like, well, how do I run a marathon after swimming and biking all that way? And it's like, you know, just run from aid station to aid station to aid station. So that's another thing that's like really good is like breaking it down. You know, I just have to get to the first swim. Boy, I just have to get to the next one. I just have to get to the transition. All right, I just have to do 10 miles on the bike. I just have to drink every 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is. I think when you can control what you can control, because that's the other big thing that I always say, control what you can control. Because you can't control what everyone else is doing. You can only. And you can't control, like the, the dynamics of what's happening in a race. But what you can Control is you. Like, you can control your breathing, you can control your pedal technique, you can control your form, you can control, like, your path. Like every 20 minutes I need to do this, or it's like I just need to, you know, find a way to get myself to keep moving.

I was going to ask you about this specific terms. I've heard you talk about controlling the controllables before, but there was a story behind it as well where I think you, you set off on the swim of a triathlon without even the bike being in transition.

Yes.

So tell us about how you control the controllables in that example.

Well, you know, the thing was, I knew, well, you know what, at least I'm going to get a swim in today and hopefully my bike will be there. And it's like. And you know, it's just one of those things. It's like, you know, I could have said, well, I'm not going to race. You know, I don't know if my bike's going to be in transition. But, like, I couldn't control that. I had other people dealing with that. All I control is get through the swim and see what happens when you get to the transition. And I think that's like a big part of it, right? Is like when these things happen. Like, I turned up to a race and my bike never showed up another race. And it was like the year it was in 2000, so it was an important race to get in and everyone else was running around. So that's why, like, having a good team, a good team around you is important because they were running around freaking out that I didn't have a bike to ride. I'm like, they'll figure it out, you know, and if they don't, I'm still, I'm still going to do the swim and, you know, I'll still go for a run or something. And, you know, I think that's the important part is like thinking about, well, I can't control that the airline lost my bike. I can't control that my bike never arrived. And but what I control is like, I'm here. How do I make the best of this situation? And that's another one of my favorite sayings, make the best of the situation. That you give it.

Just brilliant advice in all walks of life. You're controlling those controllables is so important. And not trying to control those things that are outside of our control, whether it's sport or whether it's, you know, help, you know, towards thinking about our health and well being. It's so important that we only focus on controlling what's in our control because otherwise we become very unhappy and stressed if we're trying to control things that are outside of our control. Loads of great advice for Michele in that episode and I want to, I want to dive now into a snippet from Sabrina Pace Humphries or Sabs as she's known. Loved a few things from this episode. Really great and passionate runner that has done amazing things for herself and her own mental well being through running, but also now doing amazing for the Black Trail running community. But I want to particularly pick out the part of the episode that is about the Fab Five. So let's listen to the Fab Five.

In the course of writing my book Black Sheep, a lot of people had asked me and a lot of people have asked me since kind of launching Black Trail Runners. You know, what is it about you? Where do you, where, where is this, where does this resilience come from? Where does this need and want to go to dark places and see if you can kind of come out of them and come through successful? And I kind of had a think about the strategy that I use in order to accomplish these goals. And I mean, I created an online course about it. But the five Fab Five are basically someone who, the, the group of people that I believe I need in order for me to accomplish things. So that's someone who's been there before, someone who's done it, someone who is on the same journey as you, someone who can be a truth teller. So somebody who won't put up with your bs, your excuses, etc, if it's winter and you don't want to go out, someone who will be your cheerleader, someone who is that person that is like, you are the most amazing thing that's ever walked the earth. I'm gonna be there for you. I'm gonna be there with my pom poms, rain or shine. And then community. A community. A community who, who can provide experience, Expert comment who, who, who share an element of your lived experience. So that Fab 5, when I look back from very, very early days, before I even knew I was doing it, I was surrounding myself with people with, with those people. And I think it's the accomplishment of any goal that I see. Even the I surrounded myself with those people.

I think that's really, that's really good advice. And for people that are coming into these sorts of endurance challenges or, you know, any challenge, like you say, writing.

A book.

It'S, yeah, that's a Brilliant process. I mean, I think back to achieving some of my goals and I've probably done a lot of that.

Yeah.

But I've never actually gone into a goal and gone right, okay, who are going to be these five people in advance. And I think that's a, that's a really great exercise.

Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I do that every single time. And I. Every single. Even if it, you know, even if it's a small goal, even if it's, you know, or if it's something to do with the children or. You're certainly within my endurance adventure, certainly within the, the creation of Black Trail Runners and certainly within. When I was writing my book, it was. These are the processes that I go through in order to focus, commit, you know, find that tribe, you know, plan and do. Don't quit. There always comes a period where you want to quit. So it's. It really is a process that I go through and I just, yeah. Found a way to, yeah. Kind of get it done on paper.

So that I can let other people do it.

I've used this Fab Five principle a few times in business now. I think any goal that you're setting in life, if you've got your Fab 5 identified, you've got a much better chance of hitting that goal. And I think it's brilliant. So now for all of my big goals, I make sure I at this, when I'm planning those goals, I have a Fab five lined up so that I know who I can speak to, who's my cheerleader, who's on the same journey, who's my community, etc. Etc. Etc. That episode was a brilliant episode. Another thing I've used from it, which we didn't take the clip from just now, but worth going back to the main episode for, is her why, knowing your why, knowing her why Sabbath is why was what got her through the 268 mile spine race, despite the fact that she felt injured and almost unable to run from. I think it was about mile 68. So another 200 miles to go. But it was her why, her passion for doing to. For making an impact in sport that got her through that. So genuinely brilliant episode. Loads of great advice from Sabs. Now another one, another episode that provided loads of brilliant advice was Owen Everard, the, The Irish runner, but also the physio that specializes in things like Pilates and the light. And one of the things that Claire and I talked to him about was the how to avoid injuries. And I think that this is really important for all of us, particularly coming from somebody that spent a good chunk of this year not being able to run through injury. So let's listen to Owen talk about how we avoid injuries, particularly with using his SNC triangle.

All running injuries are passing of injuries. Okay? So they're like, they're. They're injuries to the ligaments, the tendons, or the joints of the body. Plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, knee pain, hip hip pain, hamstring tendinopathy. Nobody gets like a muscle tear. Calf sometimes because the calf gets overloaded again. But. So all these injuries really are like the passive structures taking too much load because the muscular system is asleep. Like, we're sitting a lot. We're not really having active jobs that, like, activate these muscles. So when you're younger, like, I didn't do much of this, you get away with that a lot more because you just have a lot more regenerative capacity in your body. But as you get older, you need to wake up the. The muscular system. Like, the analogy I use is like, if me and you, Charlie, were in a bar and someone starts, a classic Irish person in a bar having a fight. But if we were in a bar and someone, like, say, starts a fight on me, you can be there to help and diffuse the situation. If you're asleep in your bed, I'm on my own. And that's essentially what can happen. It's like, if I'm running and my muscles are asleep, they can't be there to help. Where if I have something like Pilates or like strength conditioning, what we're trying to do with it is just wake up the muscles so that the muscles then take pressure off the joints, the ligaments, and the tendons. And if they're a war, if we wake them up with that, they'll naturally do that. The body doesn't want to be breaking down, so it's not something you have to, like, contract or squeeze on it. Excuse me. When we run, it'll naturally do it, but we need something that wakes it up. Now, why the Pilates, then? Al Vermeil has this, like, hierarchy, which is like how we develop strength conditioning safely. So on the bottom of the pyramid is, like, good movement so that you're able to move through your full range of motion in a controlled manner. So that's where the Pilates is going to work, because it has, say, the three elements of that are mobility. So can you move freely, Stability. Can you, like, activate the right muscles of the glutes and the core, and then motor control. Can you, like, do your squats, your single leg deadlifts, the different actions correctly? Once you have that good base, then you can move on to like, what we call like, then you'd be in the gym. The next best layer is like, you know, work capacity. It's the ability to tolerate load and resist fatigue. So you're looking at like 3 by 10, you know, 3 by 12 reps, that kind of rep range with weights. And then you can develop strength, which would be like a 5 rep range. Then you can look at power and then plyometrics, and you've done it like safely and effectively, building strength and the speed. Most runners, kind of, myself included, don't want to. They just want to like stay injury free and then enjoy their running. So if I was talking to someone on a podcast about like just good development, it would be like, maybe sports Pilates for that movement base, then like strength and conditioning for like, strength and work capacity. And then maybe a bit of plyometrics or speed would be like, ideally for a human. But if it's just. If it's just for runners, do either strength conditioning or Pilates. But make sure if you're doing strength and conditioning, you have a base. If you're used to those moves, brilliant. If you don't, maybe start with your sports Pilates, get the base and then just decide which one you enjoy more.

Brilliant advice from Owen. And another thing that I loved in Owen's episode, which is nothing to do with endurance sport. It's all about in. In understanding how you can promote a business that you're passionate about. And that is, we talked about marketing yourself as the expert, and I think Owen's done a brilliant job of that with his books and his online giveaways and all that sort of stuff. So if you are running your own business or wanting to run your own business and you want to market yourself as the expert, listen to the rest of that episode because some really good guidance and advice in there from Owen and I think he's also a really good demonstration of how you can do it. So you can almost literally just look at what Owen's doing and follow that model. Right, okay, so let's go next into the Dee Dee Greece Bauer and Laura Siddal episode. So this is predominantly about Dee Dee Grease Bauer and her winning the Ultraman, but obviously Laura Siddal was former co host of the triathlon podcast and she was part of the crew that helped Didi win that race. So it's brilliant to get Sid involved in that conversation as well. But, and I want to talk about, because both of those have been affected by injury and, and so I really wanted to talk to them in particular before we started about creating longevity in the sport through smart recovery. I think that was a brilliant conversation that we had with both Sid and Didi about that and some of the tools that they find are giving them longevity in the sport. So let's take a listen to that snippet now.

I mean, there's so many things I think that have contributed to my longevity in the sport and, and there are things that I'm not even sure that athletes today can even take advantage of. There's so many more race opportunities now and so many exciting race opportunities, particularly for the professionals with the pto, high level racing. Lots of opportunities to earn money as a, as a professional triathlete, which is super exciting, but it demands an awful lot of racing. I've always been very sort of poised and patient in my racing strategy. I didn't, I tried really hard not to over race in my career and I think that has contributed a bit to the longevity, my passion for the sport. The fact that I still want to be here is I think, the number one driver. I just, I love it, I love what I do and I'm happy, super happy to be able to be doing it still. So that's, that's another thing is that I just, I want to be here. I think other professionals, look, I don't start an Ironman anymore with the expectation that I'm going to win it. You know, I used to have that desire and I still have the desire. But I think reasonably speaking, my performance expectations have evolved where I'm happy to be in the mix of the race and yeah, if I finish fifth, yeah, that's not great. I'd love to win, but hey, I've finished fifth in a professional field and I'm 50 something years old. Like that's pretty darn impressive. Like, so I, I don't think, not that my standards have fallen, but my expectations for where I'm at in my career. I find satisfaction being able to finish in the top five at a race with women who are in their 20s and 30s. I, I think it's exciting. Um, the other thing, and the more, I think depressing side or the, the bleaker, less fun part of my longevity at this stage of my career, my training and racing demands perfection. I could make mistakes in my late 30s and early 40s and slack off on certain things and it wouldn't be that big a deal. But now I can't make those mistakes anymore. If I have the expectation to perform even marginally well, I've got to be good about my recovery. My sleep, my nutrition, my mobility, my strength work, it's all gotta be executed at a higher degree of perfection than ever before in my career if I want to keep performing at this level. So, you know, those things, those things sort of combined an evolution in what I find satisfying in the sport, my love of the sport, and my willingness to focus on all of those minute details that sort of in my 30s and early 40s, I could give lip service to and be like, oh, yeah, all these things are super important, but kind of do them maybe not with the same degree of attention to detail. Now I've, I've really got to step that up and, and be near perfect with the execution of all of those little things as I get older.

Is there a. Is there a particular. We've talked a lot, we've talked a bit about nutrition, but is there a particular area of recovery that you found to. That you, you know, whether it's a technology, whether it's a process, whether it's, you know, is it sleep or what. What area in recovery have you found to make a bigger difference as time has gone on?

I'm gonna. How many hours did you spend in your boots yesterday?

Like, I came close to my pr. I think I was in them for like three and a half hours.

Yes.

Just to be clear, these are the inflation. The inflation boots from which I don't know which brand new.

I'm not sponsored, but I use the Normatec boots. Yeah, yeah. You know, think technologies like those, technologies like the Normatec boots, the percussion guns, things like those have definitely helped in self care, and I use those with a degree of discipline. But an old school Epsom salt bath also does a marvelous trick and is a great way to recover. And I do that as well. I think for me, the biggest focus. I've always been a good sleeper. I've always been really diligent about getting my sleep and happy to do it. Like, I'm happy to go to bed at night. I really am. I don't nap much, but. And I've always been good about, you know, massage and, and I, I see a, a pt. This is another change. I see a physical therapist on a proactive basis. So I don't wait to be injured before I go see the pt, who then gives me exercises to get me healthy again. I will check in with a PT on about a monthly basis, assuming everything's going Fine. We'll do a quick movement screen. What's been bothering you? Oh, my hip's been a little sore or a little bit tight. And we'll work on those areas proactively before they become problematic. So that's been a bit of a change. But for me, the biggest hurdle has been my nutrition. It's been a source of. It's been something I have struggled with and not really perfected, even going back to my swimming years. And as I've gotten more into the ultra racing, it's become more demand. Like you, you have to get it right. It becomes a bigger piece of the puzzle. That that piece gets a lot bigger. You can go through an Olympic distance race and sort of botch your nutrition and still do okay. You can get through a half ironman and make a couple of mistakes in nutrition and it'll impact your performance, but it might not crush you in an Ironman all of a sudden. Yeah, those mistakes get magnified if you're off on your nutrition and Ultraman, it just gets magnified because it's day after day after day. So you've really got to get that right. And for something that I'm not very good at to begin with, it's. That's been the most difficult piece of the puzzle for me is. But on the bright side, it's the biggest opportunity for improvement. And I think that in cleaning up my nutrition, it's also sort of helped me stay competitive just because I'm fueling myself better than I ever have in my career and I still have a long way to go.

So much great advice in that, that episode around recovery and smart recovery and technology that you can use and. But what was also really interesting about the episode was understanding what it takes to win an Ultraman compared to an Ironman. First Ultraman athlete that we've had on the podcast. And let's, let's go next to Sam Beuley, the Kiwi cyclist, Absolutely awesome guy, very funny. Known as the stand up cyclist for.

His.

For him bringing humor to the team. But I really wanted to drill down into the, the, the culture of the team. Of course, being an endurance podcast, I don't tend to talk about the team that much. And so therefore it's really interesting to understand how the culture of a team can really have a huge impact because that applies to both business and sport. So let's listen to Sam Bewley.

All right. Hugely important in the culture. Like and like, like I said, sort of touched on briefly in Radio Shack, the culture was, was quite different. It was, it was, yeah, team centered around Lance. It was a team centered around winning the Tour de France. And I, I, I often felt like that team as a young rider who was so green to road cycling and was just going to bike races and getting my head kicked in and then, you know, getting told before I got on the plane, make sure you're better next week. But I, I was never told how to be better or never really given the, you know, the, the, the coaching or anything like that to, to be. I, I used to say, yeah, I want to be better, but I, I have no idea how to be better. Like what do I need to do? But that, it was just like, it's almost like I felt in that team they didn't really care that much about the young 20 year old, 21 year old from New Zealand who was just there by chance. But so I didn't, I didn't enjoy it that much in that team. The second year was a little bit different because I started to get a grasp on things and there was, I'd kind of identified by that point who the, who the riders in the team were that I wanted to surround myself with that would help me and were good people. But then when I went to Green Edge and well, which is Bike Exchange now call it Green Edge because that's basically the name of the organization and it's had many different sponsors but that this team, yeah, it's been the number one focus, like when the team first started was we need to build a culture that's, you know, encouraging to people that people have, feel safe, feel people, you know, want to perform because they're racing with people that they really care about. And a big part of that was just communication. You know, it was, people have always been encouraging this team to, to speak and to talk and you, you know, share opinions and you know, you're never going to be judged. And you know, it's basically about like a collective, like high performance. High performance is like high performance is a result. I think at the end of the day, first place, second place, third place is high performance. But I think high performance sport is about a group of people with a collective goal and a collective buy in into how we're going to achieve it. That's what high performance sport is. Let's do this together. Everybody has, everybody has different roles, but everybody's trying to do their role the best they can to push the other guy to the top of their level. It's about doing all this stuff together and that's what this team's always been about. And, yeah, a lot of it. And, and that. I think it's so important to longevity in the sport as well. Because, you know, I, I've had. I mean, I, I love cycling, but I've, I've never been the kind of guy that's like, my life is dedicated to this. This. I've got no other interests. I've got nothing else. I just want to race my bike for as long as I can. Like, I've had periods where I'm like, oh, how long do I want to do this for? And I've also had times where, you know, I've. I've been in negotiations to leave this team and go and ride for another. Another team. And then I, then I kind of would reflect and go, man, I'm getting longevity out of the sport because of the people I'm with, the organization that I'm in, you know, and that, and it's, it's so a good culture is, Is really important to longevity in sport as well, I think.

Great stuff from Sam about culture. I think it's. There's so many takeaways that we can have there, both for sports teams and also in business, really just kind of aligning that culture. But also what I loved about the Sam's episode was how he used humor within the cycling teams he was a part of, to bring other people up to the top of their game. Being a top leadout man, that was essentially his job and that's what he did. So again, great episode to listen to. And let's go next into the ultra running world again and let's listen to something, some snippets from Tom Evans, because Tom Evans, top, top ultra runner. Amazing. I've been trying to get him on the podcast for a while and having an army background gave, give. Gave him kind of a head start in planning and executing races really effectively. So that to me was a real lesson learned in terms of what you need to do to plan and execute a race correctly. So let's listen to Tom talking.

There are just so many uncontrollable factors in racing. If you can control the controllables in your training and, you know, if you set yourself a goal firstly for the races, is your goal to finish? Let's say it's to finish utmb. Okay, cool, that's great. Brilliant goal. I'd probably make it a little bit more specific, right. I want to do UTMB in less than 24 hours or less than 30 hours, let's say. Okay, well, what does that mean? Okay, well I need to get to call my ear. Need to get to the halfway point.

In 13 hours because I know I'm.

Going to slow down.

Okay, well what do I need to.

Do in order to be able to do that when you sort of break down? Okay, well there's climbing. So I need to improve my climbing ability in order to do that. Right. How am I going to do that? Oh, training. I need to maybe add a little bit more climbing into my training. How much climbing is there at the UTMB course? 10,000 meters. Okay. And it's 100 miles long. Yeah. So for every 100, you might say something, right? For every 100 miles in training that I run, I want to climb 10,000 meters, for example. And you can just play it out like that. So you then know when you're then stood on the start line, right? I did. You have that self confidence because you know deep down that you have done absolutely everything you possibly could do in order to give yourself the best chance of achieving that goal. But if you take away the first step and you don't set yourself a clear goal. What are you training for? I'm training for utmb. What specifically are you training for at utmb? For me it's, it's so important. Some people probably say, oh well, that takes the fun out of it because trail running supposed to be super relaxed and not stressful. For me it's not, it becomes not stressful at all. Yes, it's probably a bit more stressful in the training, but I then come to the racing part, the bit that is the important phase in my opinion. And I'm not at all stressed. I'm so relaxed because I know that I have made all the mistakes I'm gonna make in training and I'm 100% ready for the race to come.

So much great stuff from Tom in that episode. Just love listening to his enthusiasm for the ultra running world, but also that, that kind of amazing preparation and planning and everything else. So, so really, really good. And then let's finally, let's listen to a snippet from Julian Dean. Now being being a cyclist and being a British cyclist, I couldn't help but ask him a question about marginal gains and he totally sidestepped me. I mean, didn't sidestep me. He blindsided me in giving me an answer that I really wasn't expecting. So I think let's listen to that piece of from Julian Dean.

There's going to be an evolution in sports psychology, I reckon, and sort of the next three to Five years. And when I say sports psychology, what I'm meaning there is helping athletes create more broader identities of themselves. So I think we've gone, gone through a phase where everything's been really sort of scientific down to the nth degree. You know, collecting data on that, logging that, fixing that, you know, making these small changes around all the stuff that we can measure scientifically. And there's a lot of that and that stuff's still going on and that will still go on. But I think there's a lot of unknowns around athlete mindset. You know, Certainly, you know, GB's done a lot of good work in this space, but I think they've only really scratched the surface of it. You know, I reckon there's going to be some big shifts around, and this might sound a bit out there around spirituality and individuals being a bit more free spirited about their identity. Creating identities for individuals where they can work in high performance environments but still connect back to where they came from and allowing that connection to where they came from to be brought into that high performance space. Even though, you know, a group of scientists at British Cycling or British Triathlon might not be able to quantify that. But if you can make that athlete feel a little bit comfortable and make those connections to where they've come from. And it sort of goes a little bit back to, you know, when I talked about one of the drivers, for me, about forging a pathway through professional cycling was the need to travel and the need to explore different cultures and experience different cultures. And it's sort of like that was sort of a, a cultural or a social need of mine. And, but cycling was kind of almost the vehicle to do that, right, to fulfill that. And I think that there's going to be a really interesting space and really sort of started to explore some of this stuff here in New Zealand with MORI frameworks and indigenous frameworks and what makes those athletes thrive. So I think there's going to be some big openings and some real interesting cool stuff. You know, we're seeing, you know, athletes from all over the world, you know, competing in sports at a high level that we've never, you know, from cultures that we'd never really expect before. But you know, you can't take.

You.

Know.

People from Africa, drop them into a European professional cycling team and hope they're going to be all right, you know, but if you create that, if you're, if you connect with where they're from, bring some of that stuff into the team, support them around that, I think there's some real interesting space there to be able to, you know, change the concept around high performance.

Brilliant. Really interesting observation from Julian there about kind of the future of marginal gains and there's again loads to learn from Julian and also love his stories from cycling in the peloton. Just, just absolutely brilliant. So let's. That's it. That is series four done and dusted. Some amazing highlights for, for me from, from the podcast. I have learned a huge amount. I know players learn a huge amount. I just think we've had some incredible guests this, this series and we want to continue to get more incredible guests on. So please continue to. If you don't already follow the podcast, please follow it, like it, share it, spread the word. We don't ask you for patron contributions like most podcasts do, so we're not asking you to put your hand in your pocket. We don't tend to chase down massive sponsorship deals either. We, we do this because we're passionate about the sport and we also work around the sport. For me, it's more about business. So we have my, I'm a moving transitioning to business coaching from having sold my, my previous business, Claire. It's obviously nutrition and helping a lot of endurance athletes with their nutrition. So that's why we do this. But of course, 33 fuel have been the sponsor for this series and I just want to say a huge thank you to them. Amazing products. Love the guys at 33 fuel, Warren and Erica, you guys are awesome. But their products are awesome too. And they're made, they're made with love and they're made without all the gunk going in. So really great products. Love their protein shake, love their bars, love their cheer gel, love their 33, their daily green. Sorry, just all, all brilliant. Love it and really grateful that they have been a part of this podcast. So go to the show notes, get, get your discount book, book, book some 33 fuel products in. I promise you won't be disappointed. Particularly their protein shake protein shake with a banana, bit of a bit of peanut butter and, and some almond milk or some coconut milk. Just the nicest vegan protein shake you will get in my opinion. Just. That is lovely. So Anyway, thank you, 33 fuel as always. So it just leaves me to wrap up that is season four done. Look out for season five. We've got some changes coming. We've got some completely different guests coming with different angles, different conversations. We also will introduce a few different formats to it, some new sponsors, all sorts of cool and exciting stuff. If you can also get in contact with us. Let us know who you'd like us to interview on the Tri Bathlon podcast. Let us know if you've got any questions you'd like us to ask. We're going to start a bit more of a question lottery where they get a bit of a kind of random question in there. So if you want to contribute to that, we would love to hear from you. And from from Claire and I at the tribathlon podcast, just want to say huge thank you for listening to the podcast and supporting it and for the feedback that we get. It's amazing that we can continue to help people with this content and we it's continuing to help us improve as athletes and as business owners and just people in general. So we love it. We're glad you love it too. But some feedback is always appreciated. So don't forget, like it, share it, spread the word, give us some feedback. And until season five, which won't be that far away until season five, keep on training. Sam.