Anya Culling - #42

0:00Anya Culling, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's very proper in here. I like it. No, it's pretty sick. I'm grateful to be down in London and for you to have some free time out of your busy schedule. No, it's great. Thanks for not making me travel up to Manchester. No one wants to come up north, unfortunately. I think the term is it's grim up north. I think that is a thing that everyone from London thinks and they're right. but uh for the people that may not know who you are would you just be able to kind of introduce yourself yeah of course um my name's Anya Curling I think most people would know me as the person who took two hours off their marathon time um I started running like so many people did in lockdown as mental health miles.

0:54Like I'd never been sporty before. Ran my first marathon in 2019. So it was prior to lockdown, but vowed to never run again. And that was London Marathon 2019. I did a time of four hours and 34 minutes. Trained through lockdown, knocked off two hours and three years. And my PR is now two hours and 34 minutes. I said PR then I've become American. PB. um and now i hope i'm just like the girl next door that can prove that if you put your mind to something you can achieve more than you think um if i was going to sum like myself up it would be like knock down four times but gets up five i think i'm very stubborn very determined and like being the underdog a little bit i like facing challenges and overcoming them yeah no that's and that is such an insane feat.

1:48It's not two hours off your marathon time. I want to take it back to, like you said, before lockdown, what motivated you to do that marathon? Did someone get at you as a present or was you like, I'm into running and I want to do a marathon? Yeah. So I remember watching 2012 Olympics and for the first time ever, I saw women sports stars at the top of their game and this sounds bizarre and I've actually never really said this out loud but like men can turn on the tv any time of the day and see men at the top of their game whether it's like international sport premier league whatever but women have never had that on mainstream media and that was the first time where I saw the best in the world being females and I think that moment stuck in my head I specifically remember watching the triathlon and the marathon and being like they are who I want to be inspired by rather than like the Kardashians or a reality TV star like that's never really been my thing and maybe that's because I grew up in quite like a male dominated environment like I was very close to my brother um I liked doing tomboy things I love playing rugby cricket and that was all to be competitive with my brother but then I went through quite a few health conditions in my late teens early 20s and that meant I lost a lot of confidence lost my spark didn't really have the means to like pursue this endurance career or you know take sports seriously I did play hockey and cricket but as I got older that turned very like counterproductive and it was more about going to the pub um but I think I still had this itch I still wanted to be competitive I've always been someone that has never been like naturally talented like I'm talking about school um with my exams but I always worked really hard and got results because I'd worked hard um and then once my health things like cleared up I basically had thyroid disease I had a tumor um I went through quite a lot and it was quite a tricky time to go through it because I was becoming a woman and there were so many like hormonal changes anyway and you know leaving school going to uni that is such a pivotal time anyway um yeah and I felt really lost so once that all cleared up I was like I'm going to make the most of my life and I want to pursue like really huge goals and that's when I signed up to the marathon um it was more to get my spark back it was more to have something to strive towards and so I did that London Marathon 2019 for charity and it was like the hardest race I've ever done.

4:34Yeah it's a marathon now I don't know why but it seems to be kind of like the new norm like on social media I think that's just because we've got access to so many people out there but it's an incredible achievement and especially like you say going through what you went through. Then like health conditions did it like give you a different perspective on life yeah going through them yeah definitely um so i definitely i i i'd never like been to the doctors been to hospital for any reasons um growing up and then i basically had a bulging eye um experienced quite a lot of bullying from it as well um went to the doctors how old was you at this time i was going through my gcses um so you know teens um struggling with like making friends as it was and they found a tumor behind my in my cheek in my eye and luckily it was benign but it was quite traumatic it was like quick action stations like we need to get this out ASAP but whilst they were looking at that then they also found out I had loads of I had something called Graves disease which affected my thyroid it's an autoimmune disease and now I have a lifelong chronic condition because I had to have radiotherapy to kill my thyroid which controls all of your hormones so not only was I going through hormonal changes as I was you know going through puberty becoming a woman but I was having huge anxiety like almost bouts of depression like I really struggled I was a horrible teenager to my parents and I think they just thought it was just me being a teenager but I think it was actually like my hormones and me really struggling um and yeah I think that definitely shaped me now I'm just really grateful to I'm really grateful to be good and sound and level but it does still bring moments of like so I had yeah radiotherapy to kill my thyroid I'm on medication for the rest of my life now and things can switch really quickly like I'm still being monitored all the time for my health and there's still days where I'm like why me like why can't my body like work with me um I know so many people have so many worse conditions um but I feel like I can train as hard as possible but say like my hormones are off my iron's low things like that I just won't be able to make the training adaptations and that really annoys me because it's not out of not trying it's just because my body isn't like working with me and I find that really frustrating but I think it's given me a really great sense of self I really understand my body now I can tell when something's off um recently I also got a diagnosis of celiac disease god this makes me sound just like I'm a really sickly person but in one sense it does feel like oh another thing like it's really annoying but in the same way it's oh another thing i can overcome and it make me a stronger person um and as i say like with the amount of things that are going on in the world and the amount of things that other people go through i definitely have a better hand um and it's definitely made me the person i am how do you like change that perspective because like you could just be a victim of all this and you could like you say just say why me and i i assume like even even right now you probably there are some days where you wake up and like you do feel like a victim but like how do you like switch that mindset and think no actually it's another thing for me to overcome like I've been knocked down but I'm gonna get back up and I'm gonna keep trying yeah um I think because the way I've always got through that is just to focus on something else and focus on something bigger in my head and I get this sense of achievement from achieving something I never thought I could or someone telling me I can't do it and me going and doing it like I'm very stubborn in that sense and anything that comes easy isn't worth doing you know that saying um so the easy option yes would be to give up or just to relax um but I feel most fulfilled when I'm totally empty like when I have given my all to something and I know I've done absolutely everything I possibly can that's when I feel most fulfilled and it's that like paradox of like yeah I and yeah and I also think like endurance sport and the marathon like it owes you nothing and it doesn't matter who you are and everyone's kind of on a level playing field like it doesn't matter what's going on in my personal life to an extent the work you put in is what you're going to get out and it kind of I separate the two a lot yeah no it's uh it's genuinely like it gives me goosebumps how I like inspiring that is you know the things that you you're overcoming like even day to day but like the harsh reality is like I think they're saying like sport doesn't care yeah and like whether it's the marathon distance whether it's another sport that you're playing like it's black and white and like you you either achieve what you want to achieve or you don't yeah and I feel like you've got to have like that bulletproof mentality to to kind of not let the hardship and the the bad times kind of like get you yeah but it seems like you're doing an amazing job so let's go through kind of like from that first marathon experience you vowed that you're never gonna do a marathon again yeah like what changed yeah that first marathon like I had no I didn't train very hard I had no idea what I was doing I had no carbon shoes I didn't have Strava I had wired headphones and I just remember like walk running it um but still four hours 34 is still like a pretty good time and I think that is all in my head that wasn't like physical talent I think that was again me being stubborn and hard-working and like literally refusing to give up um yeah then the lockdown hit and like so many people people struggled um I just gained back my independence I'd moved to London all my health conditions were great lockdown here and then like I go back home to my parents and again I really struggled with that so I took up running just for mental health because I remembered those endorphins I got at the end of that first marathon and I wanted to feel something anything again um and so I just started running I didn't track it to begin with I remember getting to Strava just as the world closed down my first ever activity on Strava is ran to the pub it was closed and that's what I titled it and I think that is shows where I was at at that time like I loved drinking I loved partying I loved boys I was working in advertising in London like everything was 100 miles per hour and then yeah lockdown changed that all um and I also said I would never really become a runner because I didn't like the idea of a solo sport it isn't until now I realized that running actually isn't really a solo sport and the people you're running with you're working with them it's like this team um but I don't know I just became totally obsessed with it all my friends became those I'd met through running it became the social sports I think I just changed my life completely it was never really about time because the running boom hadn't kicked off yet I didn't really follow any runners I didn't really know what a sub three hour marathon was or any of these goalposts I just liked running far and even now I do think my talent definitely isn't speed it's like endurance and I think that's again like the mental fortitude that takes I think it's all in my head I like yeah people say the marathon or running is majority mental I honestly think it's like 90 % mental 10 % physical you just got to believe in yourself um so yeah I just accidentally started running more and more and you was just doing it from like the pure love of kind of like self-progression was you kind of like tracking anything like was you tracking like your improvement in fitness all this time or was you just like literally going out for the love of running and just um yeah I wasn't really tracking anything I found a group that would run around Battersea Park um and I would jump on the back of them and I didn't really look at pace even my breakthrough marathon which was two hours 36 minutes um at London marathon three years later um I didn't look at my watch I ran it with my coach at the time and he was just like stick on my stick on my heels and he knew what pace I could cope with I didn't because I just never really quantified the level I was at it was all about just sticking with the guys and because of that because it was I was mainly training with males one I struggled being a female athlete I didn't realize I was riding the red line a little bit that I got too lean that I was pushing my body too far that my hormones were totally whack but also I was able to keep up with them and I didn't realize how good I'd got because I wasn't on any start lines with other women to compare myself against um it's so cliche but the times really did come secondary it really was this like perfect balance of training hard enough that i gained fitness but not too hard that i couldn't show up two days later for the next session to see my friends again which is like the secret sauce i think it's that like perfect balance between the two but at the time i didn't realize that was what i was doing but it was and how long was you doing this for um like three years of covid lockdown yeah training with literally the same group three times a week and is that all the training that you did or did you go for like easy runs on your own as well yeah yeah I would um do a track a tempo a long run and then easy runs myself um I've always kind of like loved mileage and I think that is because it's my own like mental headspace um I've always logged quite a few miles back then i was probably doing about 120k a week and then i pushed that up to like 100 miles a week it wasn't and that's when i ran my pb of 234 but looking back now that wasn't sustainable and every time i hit 100 miles i would like crumble and cry and burn um so i definitely have a healthier relationship and a better balance now but it's such a hard one i don't know yeah it's such a hard one being a female athlete I know it's really hard being a male athlete balancing all these things as well but you can ride that red line for so long or getting leaner and leaner helps you get faster a tiny bit but it's so unsustainable and if you want to be in the sport like for the longevity I wanted running to be like my lifetime thing like my whole life changed and revolved around running rather than the pub and so the thought of getting injured and not being able to do what I loved I think that is um what really made me realize I can't keep under fueling myself the way I was I didn't realize it at the time but was there a moment yeah I lost my period I thought that was normal um I was almost happy about it because I was like I don't have that inconvenience of bleeding once a month now I didn't really have any female people around me that I could speak to about that and I didn't realize it was an issue looking back obviously that is huge warning signs and the mild inconvenience of bleeding once a month is far less inconvenient than the entire hormonal breakdown of your body if you lose your cycle it wasn't until I got a new coach and this was just after I represented England at Copenhagen marathon I so that's my PB marathon was Copenhagen representing England um in 2023 that was um I got a new coach and it was a male coach and he said to me do you have a regular cycle because unfortunately I can't take the risk of taking you on if you don't and to hear that especially coming from a man and to put it so black and white i was like oh this must be a really big deal because i didn't understand yeah like how serious it was and like would you be able to kind of like explain like you know in depth like the because obviously i could talk about it but it's back from yourself yeah so red s is a thing that a lot of people talk about nowadays which i'm so pleased about back then it used to be called the female athlete triad um because it was assumed that only really females could get it um and it's basically when you're not fueling your body enough and there's not enough so red s is relative energy deficiency in sports yes so it's when you don't have enough energy for the amount of energy you're expelling in your training um you're not fueling your body well enough to support that and you're not recovering and I definitely had that but I didn't know it at the time um I was just so reliant on like caffeine and trying to like biohack my way out of a bad diet like I'd take all the supplements but like I wasn't actually fueling my body which is just crazy now like it's actually crazy how far I've come um but so go on let's go into that for on that like so obviously you was under fueling because you wanted to stay lean uh i think leanness in running is like a bit of a toxic trait like unfortunately like the lean you are like it can work out in your favor to be lighter on the start line and faster but like it's not again not optimal yeah and and you have like severe consequences yeah i think it's salazar who's a problematic coach anyway he's like a old nike coach who um has been put down for like supporting doping so I don't think it's even controversial like it's black and white but I think he came up with that lighter is faster and there was a whole formula for how much weight you lost is how much faster percentage you could get and I do remember hearing that because there just wasn't the education back then and it wasn't like conscious to lose weight but I was progressing at such a high like I was progressing so quickly that it was addictive like training more like and I did lose a lot of weight um not really on purpose but as I trained harder lost a bit more weight like I definitely got faster but it wasn't because I'd lost weight it was because I'd become more powerful I'd become fitter but um it's easy just to get lost in it and just being an autopilot and also the comparison to other athletes so with the underfueling the biohacking what did you kind of like trying to do to offset the underfueling um i was totally addicted to caffeine um how much we're talking what we're talking what's um i like six seven coffees or like energy drinks like i used to love an energy drink um i still love coffee but i'm just not i don't you i just use it to feel great because I love it not because I need it to survive um I was trying to take every supplement under the sun like like what sorry but also like I don't know I don't want to get in some trouble but like what is greens powder why was I thinking like greens powder would be the same as a drink or it's actually like oh I feel so bad like looking back and what I put my body through um yeah I just wish I had some more female role models that could hold my hand a little bit and just tell tell me that like consistency outweighs like literally everything else I got away lucky by the way I never got a stress fracture um nothing ever came of it but I think that's because I had the emotional maturity to realize what had happened and that I'd got a bit carried away but I think if I'd ran as a kid through school or I'd gone into the English school's pathway of running I wouldn't be like I wouldn't be mature enough to realize and I don't think I'd be running now into adulthood because I think I would have lost that love for it so I think it's a blessing in disguise that I didn't find running until my 20s because of that and then you you get this new coach he says like i'm not working with you unless you've got a period yeah so what do you do then yeah so that's called like amenorrhea where you lose your menstrual cycle because you're basically training too much um i went to see a lot of medical professionals especially female medical professionals who have worked with sports people and they gave me so much like invaluable knowledge and ultimately I had to eat a whole lot more and my body would start to calm down because I'd made this huge progression from 0 to 100 my body was on this huge stress response that it was then going to go from 100 to 200 percent whereas actually now I was on 100 yeah my running was really good I just needed to hold it there and I had to let my body catch up I had to fuel it better um yeah and I got my period back like I just I basically had to eat every two hours and so many girls are like scared of that or eating more than their partner but like it makes you feel so good like being able to run competitively rather than it like almost feeling like survival like my sessions in the end would feel like I've just got to survive this session rather than I've just got to have fun and like race the people around me like that is such a better and more enjoyable way to train um so yeah I got my menstrual cycle back I started working with this new coach um and at that point like my whole world changed and I was able to quit my job working in advertising I was like inching that way I was working in advertising then I went to sports advertising um and then at the same time as I represented England got a new coach I started working with Lululemon who I've been working with I'll be going into that my fourth year now with them um I started doing my own running coaching um and my whole life flipped on its head and I decided I finally didn't have that imposter syndrome and I was confident enough to call myself a runner I think because I made that huge jump so quickly I've always had a bit of an imposter syndrome and I've always hoped I wasn't a one-trick pony or like my luck's gonna run out um and I think at this point when my social media started growing I got the support from lululemon i started working with runner um i had just the support system and people around me telling me that i kind of inspired them or that i'm doing a really good job and i think i really needed that i had got myself to a really good standard of running but to take that next step or to continue in the sport and not break down, I needed that support network.

25:01Because pro athletes, they have a full team around them, nutritionists, coaches, physios, everyone, telling them every morning how great they're going to be or how they're going to smash this session, whereas the real heroes are the everyday runners who only have their own voice to motivate them, to get them out the door. And, yeah, I'd done that for a really long time, but I think I was struggling with my own self-belief at that point so at that time did you did you obviously said that you like you got good people around you and you you began to kind of create this team like you say that team that every like professional runner or professional athlete kind of has in the background because I don't think people really understand that that like yes they're on the start line but there's a whole team of people behind them did you decide to like I need this at that point um yeah I think so I wanted to make the like next step or at least keep to the level I was um I had this taste of running really competitive times and that really motivated me and yeah I I definitely was like I want to it was like the best thing that ever happened to me because I was like I have to fuel myself now in order to perform the way I want to and that was the the education and having good supportive people around me but I didn't have a choice like I couldn't under fuel because I wouldn't be able to keep up the performance um so I started doing gym work I started doing more structured training um I started doing a few altitude training camps which was a whole new world um I loved it and I was like surrounded by professional athletes on these camps and I realized that the actual pros that you see on tv or like your stereotype of what an athlete does what they train what they look like what they eat is like so wrong and like they're just normal people who eat like a shitload yeah it's so funny in it like uh you know talking and being around professional athletes and you're like oh they they have a dessert after every single meal like uh you know every lunchtime they're having desserts and then after that they're you know their dinner they're having desserts and like they're eating just for fueling and and they never skip breakfast they never they don't do any of this like fasting stuff like yeah we can go into that and fasting is great for some people but uh for endurance athletes at the top of the game it's probably not needed and especially um i don't know if you want to touch on that with with women and fasting as well like it's probably one of the worst things that you can do is go out the door on like an empty stomach yeah yeah because it's just your cortisol like spikes it's quite bad for your hormones i think especially female and you know you want to be in this flow state for your run you want to be relaxed your body needs to work with you not against you um yeah so i mean i now literally never train fasted um because like i wouldn't want the reason for me not to smash my session to be because i was hungry like that's such a silly reason to not like give you a roll yeah no no um how was altitude and where did you go yeah sick i've been to font ramo a few times um and it's just like this mecca of like amazing crazy athletes that just inspire you every day and you know you just you're just like seeing olympians run past you but i'm also really grateful for those athletes that like let me join them in their airbnbs and let me like follow them along because um i didn't have the experience that they had um but they also have said to me so i'm thinking of one specifically i went on with philly bowden um who's an amazing marathon runner and we lived together for a while and i think she's been one of my biggest inspirations in running um she's amazing but I remember her saying like how helpful is also for them to like have me there because they found it easy I think I think what she was I don't want to put words in her mouth but like it's so easy to get stuck in a routine or stuck in a rhythm but I had this like new zest for running and the sport and um I think they found that quite contagious as well because they've been doing it for a really long time and maybe the things that um they saw as normal were like the most exciting amazing things for me because I wasn't used to double training days I like found it so fun that we could like oh like how to adapt sessions to like work together um I'd never had like a bike pace me on the track before um like all these things that are so normal to them um and then yeah I remember training hard with them I would try and jump into some of their sessions and um yeah I represented England at Copenhagen Marathon with Philly and we were meant to have a full team of female British athletes at Team England on um that start line and there were even reserves and I remember every single person got injured in the lead up to Copenhagen Marathon including the reserves other than Philly and I and that was a moment where we stood on the start line next to each other and I remember like her saying like like the hardest bit is getting to this point like you really we've done it like let's just go like prove to ourselves what we're capable of um and we both run pbs that day um and we've been like friends since and it's really cool um and it really was just the cherry on the top of the cake like if you don't really have any expectations you can't be disappointed but yeah just like go out there and share them what you're made of that's cool and like you say being able to do that with someone that you've spent time with um and you kind of like look up to especially like you said yourself with uh philly and likewise she probably looked up to you as well i bet that was pretty sick yeah yeah exactly i think you can't be what you can't see and that's why suddenly seeing those olympians on the tv at london 2012 like lit a tiny spark in me that I ignited years down the line um but I saw those athletes I wanted to be them and then being around people in those training camp environments you're like well if they can achieve those things like why can't I like why can't it be me um if I put in the work like just like stop doubting yourself um and i think yeah i was on this flow state and i was loving every minute of this training and my new life and i was achieving yeah it's such crazy yeah it's crazy to look back so you do copenhagen marathon get your pb what happens kind of next obviously like like you say it was kind of like a whirlwind with yeah quitting your job like going kind of like full-time into coaching running and everything else like I don't know how'd you deal with it all yeah yeah I guess um um I was quite burnt out at this point I'd like put a lot of pressure on myself there was a lot of change going on in my life um I yeah started working at runner um it was a very small startup at the time and I gave my all to that really because it was so small um everyone chipped in no one really had set jobs um and we all had huge ambition to make it this insane app um and just help people genuinely help people around the world um and i i think my priorities shifted whereas i put a lot of my self-worth on what time the clock said the end of a marathon beforehand my self-worth wasn't this arbitrary number anymore and it was like being successful in every part of my life I wanted to have really great friendships relationships a really great work life um because I didn't want to just be Anya the runner which I had gone all in on I'd been so like all consumed by it that that I did you know have a little bit of perspective of um what happens if this is taken away from me like I've got to have other branches to myself um and I have achieved I achieved so much in those following years like working with Lula Lemon um being able to like love running again um I think you spoke to Mary on the podcast but we did the speed project which is an ultra marathon from LA to Vegas and that was like one of these stand up moments and something I'm most proud of like that really ignited my love for the sport again because it wasn't anything to do with time.

33:56It was literally just seeing what your body's capable of. And so I was able to say yes to all the opportunities that came with running. There was part of me that wanted to go to the Olympics. There still is. And I'm still young and I still could. But in order to keep the love for the sport, I had to enjoy every minute of it. I think if you want to go to the Olympics, you have to say no to a lot obviously there's so many sacrifices and saying no to all the opportunities that come with being in the running space um I didn't want to do that I yeah I was like you really you've put yourself in this position you've achieved all you have like you've you can give yourself a few years leeway to like really enjoy it um and so I guess that's what I was doing but I still ran some really great marathons at that time I ran Berlin Marathon 235 which is my quickest major um definitely yeah regained control of my body my hormones um struggled with celiac disease which is um gluten allergy I didn't realize until last year that I had been like poisoning myself before every single race so I had to get that under control and then I came back to London Marathon last year and I ran 235 which was like 90 seconds off my PB and I just had no idea I was in that shape and I think that was the biggest surprise marathon I've ever done because in my head I was like oh I'm far more balanced I am such a more lenient approach this training now I didn't know what to expect and then I was like oh I'm like almost in PB shape again like now I really have proven that you can do it all if your body is working with you rather than against you so yeah yeah so you are you an advocate of saying yes to the things that come your way because you know you've probably had coaches in the past and let's say if your aspirations are going to go to the Olympics you've got to make these sacrifices and they say say no more but like i assume you've said yes to a lot of things and like these are like you know insane experiences and you only have one life yeah exactly um so what would your advice be to someone who like is in that position because i'm in it like genuinely i'm in it like most days where like you've got to make decisions like you've got cool stuff yeah coming your way and it might be as simple as like to to an old person like going to the pub yeah the friends like and having a good time yeah um to kind of like say no i need to stay in because i need to optimize stuff like is there a balance yeah i think definitely and you've got to weigh up the pros and cons of where you are at that particular time like i think age makes a difference what point in your like competitive season you're at um you've got to be happy like a happy athlete is a good athlete it's really hard to race at your best if you're not enjoying it because what's really motivating you your motivation has to be like intrinsic it has to come from you you can try and impress other people at all you want but ultimately that's not going to be enough at the end of the day I don't think and maybe that's what made my performances plateau a little bit whenever I've spoken to like some of the best athletes in the world their motivation has always been like be a tiny bit better than they were yesterday no athlete has really ever said to me like oh I want to beat so and so or I'm comparing myself to so and so I think that is that comparison is the thief of joy um once I started running really good times I should have just stuck to be better than you were yesterday just like keep doing what you're doing everything's clearly working well but instead maybe I went for oh if I'm not on the podium it's not a good race or I've got to run a certain time for it to be like valued because I've got to stack up against these other women um and I think that maybe made me plateau a little bit um sorry I waffled a bit there but um ultimately yeah you've got to motivate yourself you've got to be better than yeah you were before um i think if you're in a position to be able to say yes to amazing opportunities then great um i am so grateful for those opportunities as you say they are like once in a lifetime um things sometimes what's some of the coolest stuff that you've done oh um oh there's so many yeah the speed project was insane um we did that that was a real passion project for me um i did it with lou lemon i kind of got the team together um we wanted to we basically wired ourselves up we had every sensor every uh tracking device on us everything and we brought anthony fletcher from one track club who is a data scientist um to hopefully write or influence some reports um and research into female endurance athletes because i remember looking at the time and it was less than 10 % of studies on endurance athletes for like specifically designed females.

39:22And obviously I'd been through all the female health struggles that I had been through. So that meant a lot to me. And we just got the coolest group of girls that I knew. And we were like, we're going to be these bad bitches and run this race. And we had this huge... yeah I think I like shocking people and yeah as I say that being the underdog but yeah I think people didn't expect it from us um and that was really cool so that was one really cool opportunity um Honolulu marathon was insane in Hawaii you start at 5am under fireworks and I still ran really well there but I remember because I ran quite fast I only saw daylight for like the last half an hour which was bizarre and then you're like okay I'm ready for my celebratory drink at the finish line you're like oh it's 8am what do I do for the rest of the day and that was really cool and now like working at runner I meet some of the coolest people every day and I help support their training um so I've worked with like Romesh Ranganathan I'm not not just I am name dropping everybody but he was one of the coolest people I've ever met like hilarious um comedian um like pacing Max Whitlock like GB gymnasts um just like I like yeah Roman Kemp like TV stars that I've like grown up like seeing all my streams yeah and it's like what am I doing next to these people but again it's having that perspective that like no you've put yourself in this position to be able to do that like enjoy it um I again I didn't really answer your question but I think there's a time and a place to enjoy and enjoy those things but I think what really fulfills me still is being competitive and running fast so I just have to compartmentalize my year and look at it as a whole like I'm going to do one really intense structured marathon block which I love doing but in order to find that passion and love again I have to have a bit of an off season um yeah so I think I just have harder periods and less hard periods where I'm able to enjoy it as well that's cool I think that's a great way of kind of like looking at life and I feel like uh I've had the conversation with quite a few athletes and I feel like with social media and everything like there is kind of like no off season like anymore yeah with with running with high rocks with all these sports like there's not really like a structured like you need to take this time off where there's no races so you can't physically race there's a race every week of the year that you could potentially race um so like you've got to physically put them down times in and also you can't like it's it is kind of it's a privilege being on social media and having the opportunities that come from it but i also worry that i'm going to become irrelevant if i just take some downtime time off social media to like really focus on my training you can see clear spikes in algorithms when you're racing and those like race posts and doing those things and it's hard not to just be like more more more more races like more engagement like but I'm pleased social media is becoming a little bit more transparent I think people can see through it and yeah you can post a viral tiktok trend i don't know but um you don't gain a real supportive community by doing that you get like a fleeting like um from a stranger and that doesn't ultimately fulfill you like it's fun but it doesn't fulfill you and i but i think building a community and a support like like the people that support me on social media like the followers i think they totally understand if i wanted to like really focus on my one a goal race a year um 100 i think they'd be they'd be kind of like happy for you but like also showing like say that they off time the times where potentially you're a little bit more vulnerable maybe you're going through an injury maybe you're going through um just some time where you're potentially not as motivated because that is reality yeah and that's what's um kind of like that's what everyone goes through if that makes sense so so like uh it's i think doing that and showing that side of you and just being real yeah i think is like the best thing that you can do yeah um would you ever like over the last kind of like four years like when everything is like you say you've been working with lulu for four years is there anything you would have changed if you could go back is there anything that you change or do you think you you've done it like as well as you could have um I think I would have been maybe slightly kinder to myself and maybe kinder to some of the people around me it is really I I'm such a positive person I like to think I'm a really good friend but some friendships did naturally break down as I took up running and some of them is just because your some of my friendships I think turns out they were quite surface level and they were all around drinking and they were all around at the pub so naturally our common interests changed and so those friendships naturally fizzled out um but I think some of my friends I I I it's so it is actually really hard to like when your whole life flips upside down to and when you become an adult and your interests change it's like who is working with you who brings things to your life and I basically found I just didn't have time um for any negativity and people who were like yeah yeah but I'm yeah so uh I would have been nicer to the people that were in my corner and were supporting me throughout um because I think they were so supportive of me on those start lines and congratulating me for those races and because they are huge pivotal parts and like huge achievements whereas some of my friends were achieving things in their backgrounds that aren't on social media and don't get a medal around your neck for doing and I wish I showed up a little bit more for them um but as I said equally some of those friendships just naturally progressed and weren't for me at that time so it was a balancing act um but yeah kinder to the people who really were in my corner and kinder to myself i wish i'd done that a little bit more i like that i like that a lot to be fair um and i think everyone could take something away from that especially yourself like i don't know you get so caught up in your own life and how busy you are and the things that you're doing and you don't realize it's like everyone's got their own life and everyone's going through different things it might not be running yeah it might be a new job opportunity yeah it might be a promotion or whatever but you've got to be there for them people as well yeah and they're the good things in life what about the bad things in life when people are going through breakups when they're going through um let's say health problems or like you know grieving or whatever like you've got to be there for them people and sometimes that means more than your training yeah 100 % um yeah like couldn't have put it better and but also I think I I had such a great like there were so many people on social media that were supporting me and I could share everything but it's also hard to sometimes think that remember they're real people um I also had my friends that were following me on social media and they also want a personal update from me not just a post like I have to actually tell them what I'm up to and chat to them um otherwise they are just a follower and it is far more important like going for coffee with a friend than them getting the update through social media which just like isn't as fun um obviously I'm so grateful for that social media following um but um it's yeah it's sometimes like too good to be true that social media following and i think i forget that they're real people behind the screen um who care about you yeah like yeah and if someone cares about you you've got to put as much time and energy as them as they do to you yeah yeah that's when i like races are so fun because it suddenly puts like a real human element to a community on social media like for the first time it's not like a number or a message in your inbox you can hear like thousands of people screaming your name and i think that is a real perspective like it really helps you have that perspective of oh my gosh these people are real and these people are supporting me and these people believe in me like that is why i absolutely love racing and that should be my motivation to race rather than the time on the clock again yeah no that's sick so going forward yeah what's your plans oh i have um so i'm doing an ironman in august how's training been going for that yeah it's so new um it's fun i think the last year or so or last few years as i as runner grew um and a lot of time and energy went into that um it's now at a point where it's humongous and it also allows me to do slightly less and slightly to do more of just like the fun things rather than the mucking in and doing everything um so I thought I now have the time to do one last like hurrah before I go really hard back into marathon training and I was like what better for variety I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone than signing up for an Ironman um I I'm fine running now my strength is definitely running I have an engine because of my background in running but I've never trained on the bike cycling was like commuting on a line bike for me I've never had like a road bike before now um and swimming literally never well I swam at school to like not drown but I have never done a swim set or anything like that um my partner Joe grew up swimming he had a gel when he was like under 10 he was doing double days from silly age um and that's what gives him the driving motivation to do all the training that i do with a full-time job um but i asked him like what is this one tip to be good at swimming and it was he was like oh start when you're seven years old and i was like great i'm 20 years too late um so that has been humbling i've been having adult swimming lessons again i i it really is taking the ego away no i love that and like say having the confidence to go and have adult swimming lessons because a lot of people just shy away from it yeah like they they shit at swimming and they just i'm shit at swimming for the rest of my life yeah that's it because like they're too embarrassed to because swimming lessons are something that you have when you're a kid yeah and that's kind of like it really but i think it should be like more acceptable to or like more just like normal normalized yeah i don't think lessons when you're an adult be normal at being bad at things like as an adult we're scared to be bad at things and you're meant to have your whole life under control and know what you're good at and stick to it but like everybody who's achieved anything started out as a beginner and i i'm no longer like scared or embarrassed about that it just means like there's a whole lot of growth that like there's potential for which is like even more exciting and i've actually seen like great improvement in my swimming and it kind of brought me back to like the start of my running days where I would just vouch for consistency is key um and if you love it like you have potential to be good at it because well at the start of my running I was running like four times a week probably and that consistency over quite a long time got me good and so I don't know why I would think that one swim in a blue moon would get me good like realistically I've had to commit to swimming four times a week um learning the basics like learning to float again um but I'm loving it and being put out of my comfort zone again and achieving things that I again like every every swim is now like the furthest swim I've ever done or the fastest swim and it's addictive and yeah you feel that invincible and I've missed that feeling running because I'd done four by five K in Battersea Park three times a year for like five years training for all those marathons.

52:33Um, and it just got a bit monotonous or the freedom of like running, like being out in nature. I'd kind of lost because I needed to do those laps of Battersea to like be able to stick on pace. And it was like kind of basically in the concrete jungle everything was so controlled and based around splits but swimming is like well especially I love open water swimming cycling like you can cycle like a hundred miles and be out in the middle of nowhere and it's like euphoric and so it's really brought back all the reasons I really started running and I think that was the aim of this triathlon journey it was to reignite my love for endurance sports and push myself out of my comfort zone again so I'm not scared but I also think it will really help my engine like it'll help my fitness I think there's a moment where a lot of my friends have gone over to triathlon and there's a moment where it clicks and suddenly they're running faster marathon times than they ever have before um because they are just this like endurance monster like you do so much training training for a triathlon like I I'm I did a triple day yesterday I biked ran and swim and I'm racing a triathlon this weekend like it's it's just a new world this triathlon thing but i love it as i said like i've always been i've always done quite a lot of mileage my body's really strong so i think i kind of quite suited to this ultra endurance world of ironman although yeah this ironman's gonna take me like 11 hours which is a whole new world that is a long time um how have you found the balance with that um because it's more training it's more everything like you say you're training for three things now not just one um have you have you balanced life all right yeah because i i've purposely chosen this year to sign up for it because as i said like i feel very confident in myself i've got all my health conditions under control runners like at such i don't have to commit as much to runner as i did before so if not now then when um in the future i'd love kids um I won't be able to do it then um I don't have uh as many commitments I have a flexible job I can commit to it and um even like the guys at runner my boss Ben he's always like put your training first um because we want the best Sanya working for runner and also obviously if I'm performing well that also helps the company um so yeah they've always just said like go for it and Ben loves Ironman anyway um but I don't I don't think it's one and done I love the training I genuinely am loving it um there's a lot more eating and a lot more sleeping which I'm great at um but I have some big running goals I want to get back to I definitely want to get back to PB shape um and I want to pull together a really cool idea or challenge and document it um um my grandma has unfortunately got terminal cancer at the moment um which is really sad but she found a picture of my great-great-grandma sorry she found a picture of my great-great-grandfather in 1912 or something running from London to Brighton and he did it in a time of like nine hours 34 minutes or something around there and London to Brighton race this year was one um as a first female did 10 hours and 44 minutes and I would quite like to in honor of my great great granddad to raise money for charity for cancer to support my grandma I want to like become this like ultra endurance beast like I want to run as close to my great great grandfather's time hopefully win London to write in next year um document it all um and put in all these hours of training I've done for this triathlon like knowing that I can if I can do an Ironman that's going to take me 11 12 hours whatever I can do London to Brighton and a shorter time than that so I think it's all leading to that um but that excites me to have a big scary goal yeah that is scary but like I say you've got that like intrinsic motivation yeah um I've always just believed I can do things I don't I again like I've always said like I'm lucky and I've said to my mum like oh things just work out for me I'm lucky but it would be so easy to have the opposite mindset of actually you've been quite unlucky in certain things but I think that is my actual superpower it's like I'm really positive and optimistic you know like yeah I've got an orange car and so I always see orange cars around and it's that same thing that like if you look for positivity you find positivity and I would rather yeah I don't want to get on this downward cycle because if you're looking for negativity feeling negative you just get bogged down and down and down but I feel like I'm kind of the opposite which I'm grateful for like I do just think yeah I can do it like it's crazy to think that I can just do an Ironman I have faith I can what these triathlons I did a triathlon a few weeks ago and I've got one this weekend the swim is harder than I thought the bike's harder than I thought which makes the run harder than I thought the harder than I thought I'm not saying it's easy but I do believe like if it push comes to shove like I've got the mentals to be able to like grit my teeth through that yeah no definitely definitely and then obviously that's like a big ultra goal you want to get back to like pb shape yeah is there kind of like a goal with that and do you think marathon is like your distance yeah I actually do think marathons or distance um i've got to get back fast doing the shorter stuff um i've definitely learned that i've lost all my fast twitch muscles by doing too many marathons i wouldn't change it because i've loved doing all of those marathons but um i used to run really fast um my actual best race i think i've ever done is barcelona half and i did it in 73 minutes um and i think that is actually more impressive than a 234 marathon in my head um that's like crazy i ran they're both quick but yeah um yeah uh so i want to get back you know sub 17 for 5k sub 234 sorry sub 35 34 for 10k quick you could get close to the 230 marathon i actually think i could i would love to it would take a whole lot of commitment and dedication but i'm almost ready to do that like i've almost got that itch again um even like having this conversation with you i'm getting so excited um i know what i've got to do now and my body's working with me um i've got that celiac disease under control um i eat a totally gluten-free diet now which was a whole new world how have you found that like transition into because you don't i think before you become celiac you don't realize how much gluten there is in everything yeah yeah even we were just ordering lunch before now it's like oh soy sauce is gluten in oh i didn't realize like everything was gluten in um but i think all of my past pb races or like some of my best races i've eaten like baguettes beforehand like i've eaten so much bread i love bread pasta everything um like a huge carb load which I was poisoning myself I'd get on that start line my heart would be through the roof because my body was like in this huge stress response from all of this like poison I'd effectively put in my stomach so to now have that all under control um finally my stomach lining was repaired which means like my iron levels are better which means I can absorb the nutrients I need from my food like this should be like a really great time to like push myself again um so i'm like really looking forward to that um but i think it's not too hard to be seen yet there's so many gluten-free options um and like endure like gels and sports nutrition is often gluten-free another thing like training for this triathlon triathletes are so further ahead in the game of carbs than runners um the amount of fuel they can take on and you can tell the difference that it's making in the world of triathlon because it's just like that people are achieving things that were literally thought impossible before now um so i think running more and more carbs are becoming more and more important in running but um it's still a bit of a way to go i think um so i think i'll take my knowledge from triathlon into fueling my marathons how many grams per hour do you think i know we're talking nerdy stuff now but how many grams per hour of carbohydrates do you think you could take on in a marathon um it's no coincidence that my pb 234 is the most amount of carbs i've ever taken on in a race and that that's that i don't think that is a coincidence like i had um i had 20 grams of carbs every 5k and my 5ks were like 17 minutes ish 18 i can't really remember taking on like what 70 grand roughly like plus or minus yeah 60 70 80 grand people would think that's mad to take on a gel every like 17 minutes but it worked for me that race and there's a reason that elite drink stations are every 5k um and when you're pushing your body that much um yeah like what's the harm going to be to have like more fuel at least with triathlon you can take on a whole lot more on the bike because it's just not like wobbling around in your stomach um so like casper stone has won iron man world championships last year there are reports that he had 180 grams of carbs an hour which is just like obviously that's insane um i could talk i could i love talk about carbs i could be so nerdy um but um uh i'll just pull out my earring sorry um yeah uh I think there's also a lot of research that says that basically there's no need to take on more than 120 grams, that your body just can't utilize more than 120 grams.

1:02:56I personally don't think I could do more than like 80 grams just because I'm a smaller female. Yeah, of course, it's definitely going to be like person dependent. And that's what I found mind blowing about these studies. Like it's kind of like a one fits all thing with these studies. I know a couple of years ago it used to be 60 grams of carbohydrates. And then if you had a two to one ratio of glucose to fructose, you could take on 90 grams. And that was the maximum. You just said there, some Ironmen are taking on 180 grams now. So like 150 to 180 grams on the bike. So it's obviously possible to take on more.

1:03:33Do you practice within training? Yeah. Yeah. um i'm so pleased more and more people are taking on more carbs um there are so many more brands out there but it's also important to know the science behind those brands because it's also really easy for companies to make a gel without that much research going into it and there are so many studies as you say like the best way to get energy out of your carbs is that ratio between glucose and fructose yes you can have carbs but it's much harder for your body to convert that into energy unless I'm not a scientist when I'm saying this but I've spoken to Alistair Brownie he's like one of the best Olympian triathletes and he like uh did a he did um medicine at Cambridge before he dropped out to become a two-time gold medalist um but he's really like drilled that in me that once you fine-tune what carbs you're having that also is going to make a huge difference um and also like the electrolytes and everything um i think yeah that it's going to change the game yeah yeah no it's interesting and like you say the times especially within running yeah just getting better and better and better when i quest on the marathon finish line this year and they were like oh yeah two people i was just hearing like chatter that two people would break in two hours i was like like are you joking like like that is so beyond there actually aren't that many more like time-based barriers i think are even like possible to break because yeah like marathon the half hour the hour has gone down for like the half like yeah sub two hours for like yeah it's crazy it is um yeah they've all been broken but um what do you feel about that like how do you feel about let's say uh especially like in the women's space like marathon times improving yeah like you said you've represented uh do you know t was it England so you represented England in Copenhagen uh getting the 234 would that still qualify you at the moment no no which is so crazy and it's like great for the sport yeah um I'm so pleased it's happening because when you see other people doing it it does mean like it does make you think oh I could do it too um yeah like the world standards came out last week and there's been uproar about how hard um they are but I think that is kind of said every year and somehow or every four years somehow people still make those times so yeah it feels really hard and almost unfair on the athletes but somehow we get there and there are women running crazy times at the moment especially GB marathon runners and it's really cool to see um and it's really cool to see like normal people or maybe it's because I'm in the space but um I see them as like friends some of them oh I see them training in London and it makes it feel possible and you trust what they're doing is legit as well I know there's also so much around doping and even like the a hard skating store on the other week um but i think the more transparency we have in the sport the better um the more people running fast times the better the more people being open about their training the better and then they are those role models for future generations getting into the sport yeah it's definitely uh good that people are sharing the training a little bit more now like you can go on youtube and you can look at the best marathoners in the world yeah and most of them especially from the uk europe and uh america like they're showing everything that they're doing on on youtube yeah like um i've had the luxury of uh meeting rory linkletter oh yeah i've met the canadian half marathon record holder uh and he puts all his training out on youtube and it's great to see yeah like you know you can pick the brains of these athletes because they're now seeing the value of sharing their knowledge and stuff like that but what it's doing it's bringing everyone that was kind of like sub elite so much closer to them yeah so the likes of uh in the male space like hugo fry for example like he now has a knowledge of what these athletes would have gatekeept yeah like you know 10 years ago and now he can do the same training and he can you kind of just realize things are possible yeah and like you say as you spend time with athletes they are just normal people yeah they've just been doing it even longer uh more consistently and they've got great genetics yeah and that's why they're at the top of the game but um yeah it's good to see yeah and i think there's yeah it's great that everyone's sharing everything um i know you said like it's like social media's a bit of an echo chamber at the moment of um everyone's running marathons everyone's running crazy fast um i've definitely there's good and bad of social media but people have like accused me and some of the other especially like fast females in the social media running space of like making sub three-hour marathons look easy and every day the truth is that I've never made it look easier like if you actually look I share absolutely everything I do on Strava you can see that the hours I put in you I've told like my health stories I've told like there is nothing easy about it but it is the most rewarding thing ever I never want anyone to think like you can just click your fingers and do it uh otherwise everyone would and it wouldn't be as rewarding um so yeah I think it's cool to see those people putting in the work and it's also cool to see the people at the top of the game also doing social media because there's always the argument that the best in the world should get the money and the resources because there is not a lot of money in this sport and why are influencers taking away money that could be going to gold medalists um but i've always had the i've always had the opinion that if you want to benefit commercially you've got to commercialize yourself and there are so many like yeah olympians gold medalists like now putting their training out and rightly so they should get the funding the brands the sponsorships because they can do it all but before then there's like yeah everything was so secretive like you wouldn't want your competitors to see what you're doing but the truth is everyone's doing exactly the same stuff they're just like a little bit more headstrong or a little bit more experienced yeah no it's definitely uh it's definitely good um and yeah it's an incredible thing i think um but do you know what i hate i hate when people start doing social media um like you know top athletes start doing social media and they might not do well in a competition and then someone will comment saying well it's because you started social media or you started like doing tiktoks or you started doing youtube and you're not putting 100 effort into training and you should be training that's it but like at the end of the day like you say it's hard because you don't make money out of just training yeah you've got to show your life and you've got to inspire people uh and that way you can get sponsorships you can be sellable and you can commercialize yourself yeah like it's kind of part and parcel of it now yeah i think that's the issue with the enhanced games we could i don't want to get into it all but um the money that they're putting on the line for these athletes it makes it attractive because there isn't the money in the top of the sport you don't like especially in running that there is no money and i think yeah it's it's it's annoying because like say that the the the prize purses and everything else for the enhanced games is obviously being given out by potentially like pharmaceutical companies that are selling these things and advertising yeah you know these enhancements but obviously that's not the fair way to do it yeah in my opinion like yeah like i think that you know there's a rule book there's wider for a reason you've got to stick to it yeah um yeah yeah and and that's the healthiest way like if you if you look at the uh you know drug testing and the wider rule book like it is there for athletes health yeah yeah and it's there to make sure that everyone's clean yeah but for their safety first and foremost it's not like it's not for anything else really yeah to make sure it's a fair playing field and to make sure everyone's safe yeah yeah 100 i'm like kind of laughing because you've probably heard the story, but there was this man who was jealous of people making progress in the sport and he accused me of doping.

1:12:22Accused you of Dolphin? Yeah, when I ran 204, this man is a wrong one. He was quite a big man in the running space at the time. Thankfully, people have seen the realities. I think he's had some restraining orders put against him now because I think he needs help, to be honest. but um he made these he made these group chat because he was a big person in the running space he made these group chats with loads of elite athletes um and literally titled it like anya's a drugs cheat he became obsessed with me um because i made this like really quick progression um and obviously that's not the case but i had these elite athletes who i'd looked up to for so long that i didn't have a clue they knew i existed but messaging me being like hey just ignore him he's done this before kind of thing um no offense if you were doping you'd be faster than 234 and I was like yeah I would um like it's just like bizarre um but I think that also comes down to um no one above you would pull you down it's only like the people below you that pull you down um and we're all in our own lane we're all just trying to be the best that we can and I think ultimately it's these elite athletes that don't really care about everybody else about them.

1:13:38They are the people that are just trying to be better than they were yesterday and yeah, they don't have time to be worrying about, I don't know, whether Anya from a little town in Norfolk is doping, which I wasn't. But that was crazy. He would like turn up at the track and I'd be scared to go to the track by myself because I was like, I don't know what this man is capable of. but that was uh insane like step back or like hurdle in my running career

1:14:10i don't even know what to say like uh the fact that there's people out there like that good job this guy's got a restraining order i guess a good thing on social media i'm not i feel i spoke a lot about social media but um people know everything about you like i have people commenting like oh your heart rate's higher at the moment you're okay and i'm like how do you know like i haven't noticed that yeah i didn't realize how much like goes into like because my watch i don't even know how to use strava like i know you you guys like literally like work for strava now but um like i've not got a clue how to use that thing like literally i'm like a dinosaur so apparently this is connected uh so everything that i record goes on strava so i do record everything on strava but i don't know that it's being recorded on strava and i've never actually been onto the app um i i understand a lot of people it's huge here it's huge in london um it's huge everywhere to be fair but i don't know i like just going out but isn't that refreshing that you're at the top of your game and you actually don't really care about what everyone else is doing or strava i think that has a message in itself yeah yeah yeah i think yeah i think it's a great tracking tool it's a great way you know what i do have strava for and i have the premium for planning routes when I'm like somewhere else.

1:15:25Yeah. So when I'm traveling, I can just press plan route and it plans me a route. And then I'll have a look at it and normally ignore it and just run out and back and that's it. You're not counting your kudos. I don't even know what's, yeah, a kudos. Thumbs up, it's like a poke on Facebook. A poke? Do you remember the pokes on Facebook? Like a like? No, do you remember when you used to poke people on Facebook? I don't know. I think you used to poke people on your fantasy. But anyway, I was snobbing to be running. Okay. There we go. But yeah. So it's like a like? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The kudos is a like.

1:16:04Yeah. And then people can like comment on stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's like full social media, isn't it? Yeah, it's now DMs. DMs? Yeah, on Strava. My boyfriend just slid into my DMs on Strava. Is that how you're... And people found out we were like official because our Stravas would start and end in the same places. This might be so uninteresting for you. No, no, that's like... That's like really like... Our first date was before Valencia Marathon and I was working with Morton Energy Gels at the time and he was like, hey, can I come round and pick up some last minute energy gels? And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure.

1:16:45And then the whole week before, he was like... We'd ran together for years we had always been friends but we'd always been in other relationships and the whole week before he was like I don't know if I'm actually picking up gels or not like I don't know if this is a date or I'm actually picking up gels and yeah it blossomed from there he did pick up gels but we also had a nice dinner and then he's been my training partner ever since and he's the one that's got me into triathlon to be honest all started from Strava I have the fast marathon time still there we go I love that i'm gonna finish with a couple of quick questions first one what is your worst habit um eating sugary treats too close to bedtime does it have an effect yeah i think it damages my sleep but i'm very good at sleeping either way um what's the sugary treat choice oh gosh because now it used to be m &s cookies um or m &s custard slices but now i have to be gluten-free I can't really have that

1:17:51I think just sweets and chocolate have you got a specific you can't just say sweets and chocolate M &S giant chocolate buttons M &S are getting a big shout out people love M &S I feel like everyone that I've been speaking to the last couple of weeks they're obsessed with M &S maybe it's more prevalent down south M &S yeah I wish if i could have a day of not being celiac i'd eat mns cookies again do you have a rather day i can't that's not a celiac disease i know but like do you know where you just suffer with the side effects no so i so you actually can't so celiac disease is like um kind of different like you actually can't it's like different to a gluten intolerance right okay um yeah instead of getting a stomach ache it's like far more serious and um yeah but you wouldn't like just once like the trade-off do you ever consider it no no it would just ruin my stomach lining again it would take about another year to rebuild yeah yeah fair play fair play i love that um if you could run or do any other form of exercise for the rest of your life like so say for example triathlon yeah where you can swim bike uh which one would you be picking like you can only pick one you can only run for the rest of your life or do other exercise i was gonna say run and gym but like you don't like i know the answer would be wrong so run or other exercises running yeah running's made me who i am and uh yeah i just love it so much it's hard to describe what running how running makes me feel to like anyone in the outside world who doesn't run but i hope that one day they get that endorphin rush and that runner's high that everyone talks about um because there kind of is no other feeling like it pre-workout meal um really into carb bars i am obsessed with them like rice carb bars um and i just have one of those before every hard work specific like brand or anything sterka rice bars really good i sometimes make my own homemade ones can you have a squares bars no no i don't think so i don't think so but sterka ones gluten-free um and then yeah obviously gels on my run and then i'll come back and have a second breakfast of like yogurt and granola and fruit if you could do any race in the world and it could be any distance any type of race what you're doing so say for example uh it could be a specific marathon major yeah it might be like say a mad speed project could be the oh come raids marathon yeah um no i don't think i do comrades um i still like i know i've just said i want to do a big ultra endurance challenge which i do but i'm still i still like to get them done as fast as i can um that motivates me a lot like the more you run the less you've got to run um which sounds like i don't love it but i do i still like being fast um i wouldn't be like ultra day endurance challenge I don't think I want to know where the finish line is I'd love to go to Kona and qualify for the Ironman World Champs I'm really looking forward to going back to do Copenhagen Ironman because Copenhagen Marathon was my PB so yeah, strong affinity to Copenhagen as a place No booking or slight locations or anything?

1:21:23Marathon Disables? I don't really So like the marathon majors are really cool and I kind of would tick them all off, but I don't have that much of a desire because especially the US ones, they're just like miles along a highway. I think it's cooler to do like those niche like European ones. I want to go do Paris. I want to go do Venice. I want to do Prague. They're really like fun city ones. Have you seen the one? it's somewhere I think like Sweden is somewhere where it's the midnight marathon so it never goes dark it's somewhere in the Arctic oh yeah that would be insane yeah yeah and it doesn't go dark and it starts at midnight yeah yeah yeah yeah I actually don't really care where the course is I'd like to be on an elite start line pretty soon again yeah sick I like that and then I want to finish with if you've got three pieces of advice for someone who who has been in kind of like your position in any way, any form, what would you give them?

1:22:29Training with others is invaluable. I think I plateaued when I became quite all consumed and I did a lot of solo training and I shouldn't have those people around me to really like push me. I have a theory that pack mentality is a real thing from like our caveman days that we are born as humans to hunt in packs and so when you have people around you whether you're all like hunting that prey of that finish line your heartbeat is like a couple of beats lower just because your subconscious has that feeling that there are other people around you to protect you and if they're doing it you can do it um and I think you can find a couple of seconds okay if you're training in a group um and that takes your mind off the splits because you've just got like one thing to focus on and that's the group in front of you and I think that would bring me on to my second tip which is always have a goal that isn't time orientated because if the time goes out of the window and it's just not your day which happens all the time like I think being successful at running is doing the best with the cards you're dealt with on the day um and you know marathons at the moment all the majors seem to be getting hotter and hotter um and so sometimes Sometimes a PB isn't realistic, but if you have a goal that isn't just time, which is I'm not going to get dropped by the pack or it can be as simple as when it's raining and I don't want to go out, I am going to make myself go out or I'm not going to give up or I'm only going to speak positively to myself this race.

1:24:04Then you can feel like you've achieved it. Be proud of your performance, even if it's not quite the time that you said on the clock. And my last piece of advice would be have some perspective. And whether that is long term or short term perspective, definitely notice like how far you've come, because I guarantee like what you're achieving now, younger you wouldn't even believe you're capable of. And that is so powerful in itself. But also like that short term perspective of just like before a race, I like to write in a journal all the reasons why I think this race is going to go well. and I have a perspective on my training block that I've just done all the things that I overcame all the barriers that I got over um all the times where I gave it my all for that moment on the marathon start line because inevitably you're going to be on that start line and you're going to feel nervous and that's so totally normal like everybody around you is feeling nervous and I reframe that positive that nervous energy into positive energy I'm like oh the butterflies in your stomach is an applause for what you're about to achieve um and I literally don't let myself think negatively because that's a waste of energy but the a few days before I've written down all the reasons why it's going to go well so that yeah when inevitably I'm nervous and I haven't got a sound mind and I'm going into panic fight or flight and I'm like I can't do this I just have to like think back to no no no like a few days ago when you were calm you believed you could do it because of this reason this reason this reason so just think about that right now like think about nothing else and i think having even that short-term perspective makes a huge difference thank you and yeah that was great i appreciate that i appreciate you coming in today thank you for having me it's uh it's been incredible i look forward to watching your ironman journey and kind of like the uh the result that you get thank you not just a result just by the day like you say it doesn't really matter about the result it matters about all the training like the the race is just kind of like the celebration of all the training that you've done so yeah but that long there's going to be so much more time to have highs and lows and doubt myself but um i think we'll be ready yeah a lot more time to get mentally strong yeah yeah thank you and we'll get on a start line together soon yeah definitely definitely another marathon yeah uh but yeah thank you for today appreciate that we'll catch up soon