Holly Archer - #34

0:00Holly Archer, welcome to the podcast. Hello, thank you for having me. For the people that may not know who you are, would you just be able to sum yourself up in a couple of words? Yes, I am a middle distance ex-runner, I guess, European silver medalist, now endurance athlete. And do we say hybrid or do we say hyrox? I don't know, but we'll go along with that. Yeah, I'd say you are definitely a hyroxer in regards to, obviously that's not your full title, but you're definitely like a pro hyroxer in my eyes. you've put some impressive results out there thanks um I want to take it all back to like where it first started for you how did you even get into running well there is a story that goes way back to when I was 12 I was a like I mean I've said this on a few other podcasts and some people might know where it all started but like I was 12 but I wasn't very good at anything else so I was like a b d student in English science didn't really feel like I fit in anywhere until we had double PE and back in my day you're a bit younger than me but back in my day we used to do double PE and we'd do like this cross-country and we used to run out of our school you probably can't do that now because it's like a health and safety hazard you wouldn't be able to like just run off school property and come back on and yeah it was our first ever cross-country it was like year six um had plimsolls on these black stripy shorts you know the ones with the white t-shirt um and yeah our like teacher was like right go around the pond come back first one's back and I came back like fifth and I was so ecstatic and I remember like you know waiting for everyone else to come back getting in your line of your like classroom and then I got called to the front of the like everyone had finished got called to the front I was kind of buzzing and then I got detention and then my teacher was like this girl has got detention and we're using her and setting I was setting her as an example.

1:51I know who would have thought me getting in trouble. But yeah, one of the guys in front of me, I remember his name to this day, dubbed me in for cheating and he said that I cut across a housing estate because there was a housing estate that you're meant to go around and come back in. I didn't. I overtook him and he was like, oh, I've got a stitch. And yeah, he told the teacher I cheated and then I got double detention, cried my eyes out. Dad picked me up. I lived in a village, so I had to wait for the bus, missed the bus. And he was like, did you do it? And I was like, no, I swear in my life I didn't do it.

2:24And he said, look at me in the eyes, did you do it? I said, no, Dad, I didn't do it, I'm 12. And then he took me to my first ever running store and got me some shoes, signed me up for the local running club and then I went back and we did it another four weeks' time. And I was like training so hard for the last four weeks and I was like doing sit-ups in my bed like the night before the race, like that was going to help. But yeah, I remember that was kind of the pinnacle moment because I came back came second only one guy beat me and then I got an award in assembly and that was like this is my thing like this is what I'm good at I enjoyed the whole process I enjoyed like the pressure I enjoyed like getting my teeth into something and then from that moment I become like county champion on cross country like then I did the like track racing got introduced to that and then when I was 16 it kind of kept snowballing and I was like I heard about getting a scholarship to america and i was like if i can get that i'm gonna do it and try and get like all expenses paid and go to a d1 school um and that's kind of my eyes will set on that i was like right i'm gonna do that now and try and get that paid for and go over to the states so yeah super super competitive from the off yeah i think so and just enjoy like the process of something like the challenge you know like i think kind of that's where i'm at your school sounds a little bit different to my school i don't know why but when we did cross country half the people would walk yeah we'd get sent out most people would be sent out on the cross country and they'd go to the bike sheds yeah yeah they would do that yeah yeah and then like you say only a couple of people would take it serious um so my school's now burned down i'm not sure if it was arson or like it was it's burned down so i was kind of from a rough state so yeah it was the same for me but I I loved and it wasn't you no it wasn't me it was actually like last week all right in the news but um no no I'm the same like I think as well like there was a lot of girls that are in like you know I'm not gonna do PE or you know they're like hiding in the changing room I was always the one that's like I want to play I want to play football with the guys I want to play rounders with the guys like I want to do the sports so why do you think that is I don't know I think it's just like British culture I don't know I think maybe I have a I I have like a brother who was like one, two years older than me and I kind of always wanted to do what he was doing.

4:40Maybe. Not sure. But yeah, I was never kind of, I was just always wanting to like run or win. But yeah, I'm not really sure why. It's just kind of always been there. So let's say you prove people wrong. You got quite a bit of success when you was younger. Yeah. Did you naturally just fall into, like you say, become like county champion and stuff like that? like did that naturally happen or was it kind of a mixture of genetics and hard work yeah it's a good question I mean nobody in my family is running or in sport at all um so not my mom not my dad none of my like yeah no one does sports it's only me so I kind of learn everything on my own but I guess when I went to the track I tried everything I tried hurdles I tried long jump and my favorite thing was just the running so like I remember when I completed 10 laps without stopping for the first time I was maybe like 12 or 13 and like the buzz I got from that like I really enjoyed pushing myself and then I can't remember we used to race 600s I think as an under 12 you can't do an 800 you can do 600s I never would win but I would be in there or about and I just never gave up so every race I was there every week um and I think eventually when I got like 13 or 14 and understood like the principle of training like Tuesday Thursday Saturday Sunday Tuesday Thursday Saturday Sunday without failing that's when you start seeing the results and then I was like right then I become county champion and just knew how to hold it and like how to handle the pressure or or how to get better um but yeah I wouldn't say I won everything as a junior and I and we we do this thing called English schools like a lot of the runners who who have have gone through the like from track and field and have come through that that side of things there were no English schools um and I never would like win English schools I was I would come like seventh or eighth so I've never been like the number one junior but I've also like never not been involved if that makes sense so just like showing up I think counts for something and like eventually you'll have your time but you've just got to be in the race or stick to it and you know um sometimes if you're the best as a junior you don't hear of them anymore like the 14 15 year olds that were like winning English schools like some of them are not to be seen because of the pressure too too young or or the enjoyment gets dissolved at that age a bit quicker so um yeah what do you think kept you in it uh I just think I always had a goal I think if you always have a goal that's about yourself like for example when I was 15 16 the goal was for me was to go to America and in order to go to america i had to run times what was the criteria do you remember yeah it was two it was 213 for the 800 so um 67 66 is three eight three four hundred moving yeah for a for a you know i'm 16 year old 17 year old at that time um and i think for the 1500 it was like four i think it the two criteria and I ran 213 point something five times like consecutively each week and my mum was like why don't you just run faster and I was like and then the sixth time we finally we got under 213 and got the criteria what were your parents like like growing up were they like super sportive yeah my mum and dad are so different um so I'd say I'm a I'm a daddy's girl so he would take me I would like wait at the curtains for him to come home from work like now looking back I I didn't realize he finished work at like half five, but I needed to be somewhere else that was like an hour away, 45 minutes away for training.

8:23So he would like go through traffic to collect me to get me to training for half six. So he's kind of doing double time to try and get me. And I'm like standing at the curtains like he's late. So sometimes I'd miss my warm up and I'd be furious. Like I want to get the full like 10, 15 minute warm up in. But dad took me every single Tuesday, every single Thursday. and then I used to do a paper round every single morning before school and I think like back then I was obviously doing double t's but didn't know about it because I'd like race myself on the bike but if I had the Saturday round you know it has like all the tv mags in it he'd feel a bit bad if I had a race that day I got across country in like Parliament Hill or in Nottingham somewhere and I'm up at 6am in the cold like with this trolley he would sometimes put it in his car and then I just run to his car door and he'd help me that way um but yeah he he took me to every single race pretty much and my mum has horses so she kind of came to some that she could um but then that's kind of flipped now I'm probably closer to my mum than my dad um because I'm kind of independent now I don't know I'm off doing all these different things dad can't keep up with it on social media but mum knows it before me so um yeah but they were really really supportive but never pushy like my dad at cross-country races I always remember this now as well because when I went over to America I remember there were some girls parents that were really pushy and my dad like if a guy would come up or like another parent would come up to me but oh what does Holly have before she runs like and I'm like 14 15 and like you know it's one of the key things at that age is kids don't don't want to eat they get nervous so they'd come up to my dad and ask all these questions or how is her training going I remember dad just didn't say anything he's just like yeah good like he never like bigged me up or like you know put pressure on me and I didn't really realize it until I went to America and there was some other parents going yeah she's in brilliant shape she's been running all summer and yeah she's gonna crush it um and I was like oh and then that pressure on an 18 year old girl trying to hold a scholarship is like really tough and I didn't really realize it until I was out there and I was like oh my parents would never say that to me so yeah he was he was really good he was there but never bigged me up or like put pressure that was unnecessary on me really so yeah yeah interesting it's nice like you say that he's like that yeah especially when like he devotes so much time to you yeah to devote so much time but then not live through you almost yeah exactly and not like scream and shout about you obviously like you say probably if if you ask him now like or whatever he would have said nice things but it's not like screaming when people aren't asking if that makes sense no exactly and it makes such a difference to you when you're actually performing like everybody else's sounds like even now pressures come from everywhere else like small things comments like you take it all in even if you don't want to but at that age you don't know how to block things out like psychologically now when i hear comments from people like online or through various people i know what to block out I'm like I've like been through a sport long enough now to like understand mentally what I need to listen to and what I need to shut out but at that age you just you just don't know what to shut out and what's and how to to react to it in order to like not have your performance plummet but yeah so it was nice to have a very good support circle at that age that wasn't like you will do this you will run here you will run every day he wasn't strict or or anything like that because I think having strict parents or making you get up early and run or like making you eat certain things can just ruin the fun for you at that age so yeah no I definitely appreciate him for doing that so the goal was to obviously get a scholarship yeah in America yeah did that happen it did and big up cowboys hometown I was in Dallas Texas for ended up being five years because I did an extra year for my master's so yeah fully paid went out at 18 went out on my own didn't like visit the university Instagram wasn't a thing so couldn't see anything online um yeah first year was rocky uh big very very big like culture shock um but incredible and then once I found my feet and once the coaches understood me and got my teeth into it like the next four or five years were brilliant it's like almost like you're being a semi-pro at a young age you're taught like get up early like 6am practice get to the van because it's hot texas heat um fly into california for track races fly into new york for indoor races fly into like notre dame for like cross-country races but like kits recovery we were getting like cryo chamber cryo sauna we were getting like cupping we were getting like needling and we were doing all of that while studying so it's like you're you're sort of being a like a full-time athlete and also working a job so I think it prepared me a lot mentally to understand pressures and stuff like that and like you're trying to hold your spot as well there's certain amount of people with a scholarship on your team and certain amount of walk-ons so they're just girls that are going to the school but also like want to do the track team and like if they're beating you that's a pressure because you're being paid so you shouldn't be getting beaten by people it's like nowadays if you get beat by someone in in high rocks that isn't on a contract you think oh shouldn't really be getting beat by someone that's not doing this full time so it's it's the same thing so you've got to learn to handle pressure and like know your job really like it's a job um it's not fun anymore it's like not a hobby you're being paid in in a way of academics but I was being paid so yeah you have to kind of raise above it quite young how did you feel about that did you kind of like lean into it did you enjoy it or kind of resent the fact that there was so much pressure on you i think first year i struggled first year it was just such a culture shock i went to like this d1 very very posh private school having been from like i wouldn't say i was from the ghetto but i was from i'm from a place where you know like if you're getting a c you're good like the teachers don't care um and then my first class was like econ and i was like what does econ mean like i had it was a very big step up for me so I remember having to get tutoring like every day for two hours in order to get my right grades and then I was actually ineligible for the first year which is why I got my fifth year back but then the coaches were really angry because they recruit for you to score points because if you get points you win conference and the conference is put together by the football and the basketball teams and our football and basketball team was pretty good um and if you win conference you win money for your school and so if I'm not getting points then I'm not helping like the team and that was the year I my academics didn't cross over because of the exam board nothing to do with me so it was like basically I hadn't been to school and then they had to like do a three-year appeal process so I did get it back eventually but what that meant was I couldn't compete for the first year so I've gone to a brand new country I'm training for nothing just to be with a team and like I'm struggling academically I'm like a long way from home I'm 18 and I'm not doing what I came here to do so I found that really difficult um I did party a little bit then and then it was a whole culture like you got red solo cups you got fraternities sororities you got like all this going on in the background um so I kind of struggled but I went home and then I was like do I join an English school do I go to Loughborough and just do like they've got a really good like track team or do I go to Birmingham or do I go to like St Mary's and like win bucks or something like that and then you start doing the appeal like you start doing the process like to get into the school and I'm like oh there's so much money and I was like no I'm just gonna go back and my dad was like yeah you do what you want but if you're staying here you're gonna get a job or you can go back and and get back to work and I went back and that's when I put a really big shift in over the summer to do well for their cross-country season and then I was top scoring and then it was all okay once you find your feet and like your coaches respect you and your teammates respect you a bit more as well because that was the other thing it's like my teammates were like she's not pulling in her her work here she's out partying we're out at six o 'clock in the morning but I'm like well I can't train like what's the point in me training with you I'm not racing so it was really it was it was a tough place to be mentally especially at that age um but yeah it taught me a lot of lessons early and then shapes me to like learn how the system how how to respect your teammates how to respect respect your coaches like what's asked of you how to get your job done but also a bit of balance as well um because I think that was quite hard as well like not having you've got to have a social life and like be able to balance it all too um and being that age learning how to do it I think has helped me now like not go too all in because I think a lot of people go too all in on on like just sport and yeah there were some goals that I was just like just chill just relax like it's not end end of the world um so yeah yeah no that sounds uh pretty crazy over them five years like what was like the proudest moment did you achieve anything like great out there yes so obviously I had that whole first year out and everyone thought that like I was useless um because I was useless but then when I came back and then I won like so you got indoor season you got outdoor season you got cross country I think I'd win like the most so you get 10 points if you get gold to like eight if you get silver for conference so I'll do like the 800 and then I would actually do the 1500 they do the mile over there but then I was also do the 400 so I'd double back and get in the relay team as well um and I'd want I think I got one of the most like points in conference and then at the end of the year you have like this athlete banquet and I won the perseverance award so that was pretty cool in front of like the whole school um and I won it with Bryson Duchambo so he was the guy so he was like in my year as well so he was a male winner and I was a female winner so he was actually in my dorms at that school um so that was pretty cool because I was like okay I've come back I fought my way back and actually I've it's been noticed um and then I became the track the our team leader like our like I was the head leader of our track goals um and then I mostly won conference or got a medal within every single race going forward from that point but I never made NCAAs which is the top 24 in America to go to Eugene Oregon to compete that was like I got to regionals which is the top 48 but I think people forget like when you get a scholarship to America it's not just Americans you've got all the Spanish you've got all the Germans you've got all the british you got all the swedish like everyone's trying to get a scholarship so it's almost like a mini like olympics because it's the top 48 of everybody of that age not that 300 million people the population of america isn't off yeah exactly everyone from everyone else buy all of them off so i never made it um that was the only thing i didn't manage to do but yeah yeah that's uh that's an incredible achievement still so after that did you come back yes i came back Like I got my first job.

19:44It was like a marketing job. It was awful. And then I left after seven months. It was kind of like you're back now, get a job. And I was like, oh, this is not right. And then I got another job, which was in pharmaceutical marketing in Cambridge. That's my hometown. And that was brilliant. That was absolutely what I needed. So I was like the youngest there. It's a startup company. It was kind of in tech and also like helping, like, you know, helping people. but also in marketing and it also they all like they love sport all the guys there so i was just getting tea break like chatting to all the guys was it a specific like pharmaceutical drug it was rare diseases so the diseases like like just get no research i'm talking like 300 people in the world might have it and like there's just one pill for it so like we would like basically change it into strawberry flavor for kids so like it's because it has no research there's only one so like if you get diagnosed to it it's like here this is one option for you and then we'd give them plans and help and then with the money that the company makes it's reformulating drugs basically they're already out there and and then with the money that the the ceo um the owner made from that he put all into cancer research because he was a very he's still working there and i'm still in great contact with them and i was there for four years and they were the people that like they saw me go out on my lunch break and run still and then work till 6 p.m and then go to the track and then just repeat that day after day after day and then i won like indoor european um sorry i won indoor british champs and then i asked them to fund me for my first altitude camp which was expensive so you got flights i'm 25 at this point 24 at this point and i'm like right okay i've got flights to pay for i've got a rental car in america which is just so dear where was the the altitude camp flag staff so i knew i got to the point where i'm winning and i'm i'm good and i'm i've just won british champs indoors but i'm i'm up against like laura muir i'm up against these girls that are like still like 10 seconds quicker than me over 1500 and stuff how am i how am i going to close this gap and the only difference was i was working full time and they were going on these training camps so i was like okay i'm training at the track two three times a week I'm doing my runs I'm eating well I'm sleeping well how is this talent or are they doing something I'm not and I was like right can I go on a five six week training camp and then I asked my line manager and she was like go ask you know go and ask James Harrison he's the founder and I was like okay so I went ask James he was like go ask your line manager and ask exactly what you want so I went back to my line manager and she was like right everything you need so I need like five weeks off I'm going to get up at five o 'clock in the morning over there which would be like I know 2 p.m over here and I'd work three hours and then I'd get all of the meetings done and then I'd need this amount of money I'm going to gone for this amount of time and I'm going to wear this branded like cycle pharmaceutical outfit and we got everything sorted and I did my first camp and came back and got a European silver medal and I'd never represented GB before got selected competed got to the final and won a medal and I was so close to getting gold as well um and it wouldn't have been if they hadn't said yes to that as well because I think that which just gave me that confidence and like I threw everything at it for like five weeks did you when you went over there did you live on your own I knew so again because I was racing girls all over America all the time for five years you start like knowing who's who you start knowing names and then I just knew who was living in Flagstaff and I know some of the some of the girls there so I reached out to a girl that I used to compete against actually in college she was UConn, UConn Huskies and I said hey I'm coming over can I stay with you and she said yeah of course so I stayed with her got a rental car and then yeah trained with them a lot at nine o 'clock in the morning come back would work work got up at five o 'clock in the morning did like three hours stint then went train with them at nine o 'clock so that meant I had a group of people to run with um I was at altitude and I could still work um so yeah I did that and I kind of just knew and then from doing that then you just start knowing everybody there so then you if you want to go back you're like oh okay I didn't know these this this person has a house there and these people rent these rooms out so um yeah it's just a nice community over there and yeah yeah did did well off of it yeah like you say uh second was it yeah silver yeah not quite the gold but it was a little bit dramatic um it was like six people dq'd in that race because it was just really pushy shubby race um and it was like really slow at the beginning it was classic like championship racing and i dropped like a 58 second last 400 to try and yeah to try and i went from fifth to third to second in the last 200 meters so that the last lap so um yeah it was a tactical race and just scraped through but yeah it was it was the pinnacle as well because then from that i got a contract and then yeah i was just about to ask for that didn't anything come so not straight away and then i was trying to go to tokyo olympics so that was um 2021 um it got pushed back it was maybe 2020 then it got pushed back to 2021 which did me a favor um but it i didn't quite get the contract until like i think i was hoping that i'd make tokyo so i was just on my own so went back out and self-funded and just worked remotely and just said like i'll fund this second bit and and worked remotely again in flagstaff and did the summer stint so i did the january stint for indoors and then the summer stint is april may and then you race in june july um so i did that and then when I got over there raced really really really hard um and I just missed out I came fourth at the British Champs to top three top three go and we like we're all in a line missed by like 0.04 I think so it was savage um yeah I broke my heart like I couldn't get out of bed for like two weeks I was like I'm done like what am I doing now Olympics is in another four years like what am I gonna do like next Olympics is in 2024 um I'm not gonna get a contract now I'm 27 at this point so I was like I don't know what to do like what do I get out of bed for like that was it that that's the last like that's the last six months training now I don't know what what am I meant to do like I don't want to just pick up and go okay like I'll go do a park run or I'll go do a 5k somewhere like that was my goal that's what I was working for um and that's all I could think about for six months and so when that happened I was like I I don't know what I'm gonna do like do I go back to work so yeah I went back to work and it was awful um I remember just feeling really lost um like good I'm good but not good enough you know like I did all of that and I think that was the most like hardest part was I'm really really good but not good enough because I couldn't have done anything more like I knew I was doing the altitude I was putting the work in I was eating right I did all the races I was keeping on top of everything and maybe I just didn't have it and like all these other girls have it so at that point I was like there's nothing more I can do and then the group that I was training with that whole time in January to April May was Under Armour out um in Flagstaff and I just got on with all of them there and like made some friends would train with them all the sessions meeting for long runs go get brunch afterwards it was just really nice and they they signed me so so I was with Under Armour for two years after that wow yeah so what when was that so that was 2021 october to 2023 october did you live out there yeah mostly yeah so i lived out there they required you based on the contract to be based there but obviously we're from the uk and with the visa situation you had to go back every three months to make sure you wasn't overstaying your welcome but they were putting the visa um they will it takes like six months to apply for it um and it's expensive so they were doing that but i'd go for three months come back but i had to anyway because i'd race indoor season which would be in the uk track seasons in the uk so i'd just do training camps for three months and then come back so mostly out there we were chatting before um about altitude yeah i just want kind of like your opinion on it do you think it is genuinely worth it yeah i do because i massively made benefits but I made benefits at the right time so I was fit I was eating right I wasn't under fueled I wouldn't say I was like burnt out I was right at the beginning um and then I went out there and I topped it up if that makes sense so um and that's when I saw all of this massive gains so with altitude you want to be there for at least three weeks and the first week you need to keep it really really controlled because your body's like in a shock and if you just send it your body's just gonna like go whoa and it's gonna work really really hard and get like they call it you'll get yourself in a hole um and so you want to use week one just to like kind of ease yourself into it get used to it and then week two you'll start feeling like yourself and week three you should be norm like acclimatized as they call it so you're still doing like speed sessions within these weeks not the first week i'd say maybe week two you start introducing it strides you can speed sessions kind of start maybe week two and then week three and four would be your like hard normal weeks where you should be feeling all right because the issue is is you'll go back and you'll go to an interval session and you'll be like oh i'll run i'll run eight by k at 320 but that's like running eight by k at 310 but then you're going to affect your bloods and then your body's going to be you can't recover from it because there's 20 less oxygen at flagstaff or 18 or less or whatever it is but that's also your recovery so you're not going to sleep as well and then the next day you start from here instead of here the next day you start from here instead of here and it just dwindles right so like if you go too hard on day three you're going to suffer for the whole next three weeks and it'll be a lot quicker than what you'd do if you were to like really send it in a session and then you know sometimes I'll do a session I'm like oof three days that's taken me to recover it'll be like double that if not more in altitude and then you've wasted your trip because you've put yourself back so they if you know what you're doing and you're with a group of people they will probably say do your easy runs like normal put strides in there and keep your threshold really really controlled um on week one and two and then by week three and four you can start really getting into it and that's why like a three to five week camp i think is perfect anything after six weeks i think that's when you start like really struggling like six weeks of grinding is is hard um but if your bloods aren't right when you go out there if you like if you have red s or if without even knowing it so a lot of females right now are probably overtraining under fueling um probably i think there's a study on it on endurance i did a podcast the other day with um rennie mcgregor and she was so insightful on like women's sport and i'm like i need to do more with her to learn more about that because i think well even with guys endurance guys right now pros the stat is like 70 of us are actually under fueled so your micronutrients are an issue and if your micronutrients aren't where they need to be you're going to then not be able to produce red blood cells and and what you need and you're just going to produce cortisol and you're not going to be able to recover so the harder you train it's not the fitter you'll get you just you're just going to stay where you are so i think Like if you go to altitude and you're not in a good place, like you're under fueled or you're over trained, you just you won't improve.

31:24And I think I did that. I think I over trained. I did do that. I over trained and I was out there for three months and I just didn't improve. And that's because there was probably a balance not right with my bloods. So I should have had a little bit more expert help there and monitored my bloods a lot more and got on top of like the cortisol and got on top of that kind of thing. because if that's too high then you can't produce more red blood cells and you actually can't run so yeah there's a lot of mistakes i made and i probably shouldn't have as i was a professional athlete i shouldn't have been making those mistakes but it just shows like not all of us professionals are equipped or no until until we've done it so yeah yeah no that's a that's really interesting my next question would be do you think altitude would work for a high rocks athlete i do yeah i think that's the next thing yeah do you think that's the next level that people yeah uh within the elite 15 are gonna take because right now currently i don't think there's anyone that either lives or trains at altitude and does that altitude camps no not properly i've seen i've seen a couple people dabble with altitude i think um oh alex ronk went to kenya didn't he for a bit last year but then yeah just started training camp i think 10 days it's not enough it's just going to tire you out and not because you're just going to start producing the red blood cells and then you've left so um yeah i don't think anyone does it at the moment but you look at every single like professional olympian getting ready for or like getting ready for the world champs right now they'll all be at an out of two camp or they'll have gone to an out of two camp to get them that boost um so yeah there are options i don't know for hyrox right now what the best options would be but i am thinking about doing one definitely this year like october time in font or going to flagstaff next year because there are there's a lot of gyms for high rocks yeah that's the thing like flagstaff um from the places that i've been i don't want sure i've gone to flagstaff for a couple of days yeah and um speaking to all the runners as well like they say it's the best place in the world you can drop down right to camp verde which is 50 minutes and it's less altitude so you can get a really really good track session in because if you train up up all the time you just like you can't run like the mile reps like you just can't but you drop down but it's only like a 50 minute drive but then you can go to phoenix in two hours as well yeah i've got the gyms they've got everything there and it and you lock in there there's no distraction like you're in the mountains so yeah i think yeah myself andy and alfie are you gonna go yeah oh i might tag along yeah so that we're gonna go and um potentially October time obviously depends first major of the season keeps changing chopping and changing I know apparently it's on a cruise at the moment yeah interesting yeah interesting but that's the end of October so we were teetering with the idea of potentially doing it before London so between that because they'd be prepping for Valencia are they doing a marathon or half?

34:23so they'd be doing the marathon but it's the same weekend as London I know so it kind of works because I was going to do Valencia so I'm torn as well yeah yeah and i want to move on to that yeah a little while like your uh your crazy achievements recently yeah i feel like i've copied you no you're definitely not coffee i feel like a male version very very impressive but um yeah in regards to like you say the the underarm thing yeah um obviously you spent two years with them yeah did you one did you enjoy it and two like did you get the success that you thought that you'd get with like being part of a professional team as opposed to kind of doing it all on your own yeah yeah interesting one so at first I was so excited you know when you get a first contract like after having it's been it was my dream right as a kid always wanted to go pro and I went pro at 27 so when I signed with Under Armour I was so excited and I just said yes to the first option looking back now you always make you always have regrets looking back like if I was to do it again would I have done it and I'd probably say no because I took the first option on the table there are other options that I could have now taken like um I could have gone with other groups in the UK uh like Trevor um M11 yeah oh back then it wasn't M11 like it was just starting and Jenny Meadows and like I didn't because it was working it worked I got a European silver medal so I went back to what I thought was working um but yeah it was two really really good years but did I improve no so you'd think you're not working full-time you've got a contract you've got a pro group I surely you're going to improve but also the cons were I what was the fire in my belly because the fire in my belly was like before was I'm working full time I've got nothing to lose I've got no pressure I'm doing this on my own because I want to do it and like I'm going to make it work to you're in a group you're one of many your training isn't about you it's about a group now and your training and races are set up around what the group's doing so you lose a little bit of that individuality so also I moved away from home I moved away from all my support um and then I was just kind of one of many and like I lost what am I doing like what am I fighting for um and it was weird did the two-year contracts have an effect as well how do you feel like that was maybe like a bit too long like you kind of got comfortable with like I'm for two years it was actually three and i didn't take the third year okay i i didn't take it um i came back to the uk and and called it and was a bit lost um but you see that quite often you see like you know people take three four year contracts and although it's great security for the athlete yeah like it sends people either one or two ways like either that they have the security so then they perform better because they're not less stressed or they just kind of relax exactly it was opposite as well like that i signed a contract for not much money as well that wasn't enough to live so also i think i was stressed on it was a performance contract whereas now i'm not on a performance contract i'm on a contract that's completely different which i'm loving it but before it was based upon coming top three at british champs making europeans making olympics like you know big bonuses a little bit like hyrox if you get a british record or if you get a world record like you get these huge bonuses it's the same with running it's a performance bonus but if you're injured for a bit or whatever was happening to me at altitude like obviously I wasn't at the healthiest state I was probably under fueled you know I was like the lightest I've ever been um and I wasn't performing I wasn't making money from like times as well like I had to run like 15 40 in the 15 fight in the 5k and stuff like that which was like the the c standard so you had a b and c standard that you can make so if you raced four times you could actually make a lot of money on your bonuses but I wasn't racing good enough to make money on the bonuses so I was just living off of this like base salary and I think that was eating me up as well because I didn't think I was good enough um because I got a bit injured and didn't enjoy it so yeah the pressure of that made me think but I just need to keep then I just trained harder and harder and got myself in a bigger and bigger hole um whereas I just forgot to enjoy it and kind of take a step back and yeah I just trained too hard to try and get more money on do my job basically so yeah it has it has some negative effects that people don't really think about um because the pressure of that performing living up to the standard is like it eats away at you um especially when other people are still doing the sport that don't have that and they they beat you in a race you're like I'm not doing my job and it just you just feel like everyone notices although they don't you just feel like you're not doing good enough um so I think I had a lot of that and I was like I'm not performing I'm not enjoying it I'm away from home enough's enough um so two years was probably enough but yeah it would have been I should in hindsight maybe I should have signed a year um but I didn't get offered the year I got the off two years plus one um so what happened that did you come back to the UK did you uh did you still run yeah I got like so under armour like don't have to like chew them out or anything like that but that was the first year that they had their first super shoe so also super shoes only really came into play what 2019 um so under armor brought out their first super shoe in like 2020 2021 so we were like the trial with the guinea pigs and their easy shoes like i'd gone from wearing nike all the time in college like at university never had an issue never been injured never had a bone injury um and then i had my first ever injury which was hip tendonitis and it was like that one that lingers you know eight months of it and I just kept running because it's my job so yes I was seeing physio and yes I was doing everything I could but I was also racing on it training on it and getting through but I knew I was like kind of limping and just trying to do my job and I could have sworn it was the shoes just because they just hadn't been in the game long enough and some companies are learning as they go and they're not going to get it right but the shoe just had no cushion and no support they're easy shoes and their super shoe wasn't that great but you're not training that much in the super shoes it didn't really matter um but as soon as I come off the shoe I started wearing nikes again I was fine and back in the gym for a few months it cleared up so yeah I came back to the UK um and then December of 2023 they're like you either come back to the US or or you don't I was like well I'm not going to and I just died from the bottom again and tried to re-figure out what I was going to do in 2024 and then that was when I was like right I'm gonna train for a year see how it goes and then I signed up for London London London Marathon in 2025 which is my first ever marathon as a 1500 meter girl like that was kind of big it's kind of a different sport almost um and trained trained for that and then yeah just started being me so whatever I wanted to do I did I dabbled in high rocks I dabbled in London Marathon it wasn't like you have to do 1500 meters in this time and make these races um and just started being me and started from scratch and then yeah I started working with brands that like enjoyed what I was doing and approached me rather than going to an agent and being like well this brand wants you for this price so it was more I was in more control um and I've been my own agent up until last month so everything think I've done every every contract I've signed like I've done it myself um and I think that's really really important as well because then the brands really really know me know how I work and I know how they work um and I've learned so much by doing that and like understanding boundaries of like posting and like being an athlete and and not an influencer um because there's a weird one as well like I'm in that phase as well I don't know how you feel about it but like 2020 I feel like this is where the rise of influencers came versus athletes and I know you are with a lot of like pro athletes as well and it's difficult because influencers get paid a hell of a lot more than a professional athlete and a professional athlete is doing their job correctly and an influencer isn't and I was between I'd come from pro athlete and I'm kind of thinking I need to do what influence are doing in order to get paid to be a pro athlete still so yeah it's an interesting way of kind of approaching it but i just did what i wanted to do and just use the money i was getting from brands to put back in like to like photography videography races um to be myself and to still compete and that's kind of snowballed to the point where i am now really um it's good that you've done that and you've like seen that and you're almost like ahead of the curve that athletes have to start doing that like that's so hard yeah especially within running in running in high rocks like unless you're at the top you've got to document your journey you've got to have nice looking photos for yeah you've got to be sellable as a person yeah and like you say you invest in in professional photography and everything else like it's helped you do that yeah and and for that like there's either one way there's one or two ways looking at it you can be this athlete that just says no i'm not doing that i'm an athlete i'm not an influencer yeah or you can just lean into it a little bit and just accept this is like the new athlete the new athlete has to be sellable yeah at the end of the day um and athletes like they should approach their brands and just say i need more budget for like bring people down to the track because it is hard i do get it like you don't want to bring your phone out and start doing vlogs like in the middle of a really hard training session and i mean like as a pro if we had our phone out like slapped on the wrist like get out you know you can't have your phone at the track so it's a really different environment for them and I totally get it but at the top there is ways that they could then approach their like whatever brand they're with you know Puma or New Balance to say hey I want can I have some budget can you come down the track and document my race for me or my training session so I can put it on my socials I think that's a way people can now negotiate into contracts especially for pros to protect them not to help them get paid more than influencers but to help them tell the story on how actually you do train because they hold such a valuable like they know what they're doing we not like I've seen influencers train versus I don't have a problem with influencers but they don't always tell the training how it should be and if it will frustrate you if you you're a professional athlete and you see something being done very wrong and they're paid to talk about it or their brand are paying them and backing them to do it very wrong and then you see professional athletes struggling and they're doing it right and it would just be like great for brands to like learn actually let's put a bit more behind them they might be introverted and they might not be good in front of the camera but their training their threshold training their double t's like how they do that how they recover from it is worth like understanding correctly for for the likes of us because I know so many people in high rocks that haven't got a scooby-doo about running but are doing okay still but I see like they'd benefit so much more if they had real factual training in front of them from pro runners i mean you're you've probably learned so much from alfie and and butchie i mean they've done it 10 15 20 years for butchie so he knows all the ins and outs but professional hierarchies probably don't because they don't see it no yeah yeah and uh i'm still learning every single day yeah every day is a school day um with them guys um are they coaching years uh yeah so so alfie coach smith yeah running um and then it's been great um just like listening and being around the mindset like of them guys say for example the other day it was um the manchester 10k yeah it was british qualifiers 10k champs yeah um so the best people in the uk were there uh andy was uh he was actually going to be paid for an appearance fee as well and he was like a favorite to win uh and he he basically was ill on the friday and by the sunday he just he said basically i'm at i'm at 85 percent and when i yeah when i race i'm at 100 or nothing like that's that's how i race and just like him having the confidence to pull out like i'd never do that but i'd never do that because i think i've got some insecurities that like i just have to race and just man up and just do all these things where like he's just got this like aura and confidence that he can pull out and credit to him yeah for doing that because why would you race if you know that you're not like 100 no one knows that you're ill you can't come out with the excuse after you've racing that you've been poorly yeah so the fact that he can like just have the confidence in himself and trust that you know his time will come yeah later in the year and he's going to save himself like i just thought was such an amazing thing and i need to do that more because I feel like that's one of the reasons why I've had hiccups in the past where I potentially have over trained over raced got injured um and that's because I've just said yes to too many things and then even when I'm not feeling my best still like gone out there and done it I think as well like at at that level and at the level that you want to be at like the margin of difference is so important so yeah 85 % is still he could still go and put out a phenomenal performance but at what cost the cost of maybe getting beaten which means mentally you take a step back because them guys have beaten him once and then they get confidence and fuel from that and he wouldn't and also that'll put him back in training where he can just like rest up get some good training put banked and then go again and yeah it's a hard thing to do especially when when you know money's dangled in front of you and your brands are putting pressure on you but yeah you've just got to think would you enjoy getting on a start line with a bit of a cold and like knowing and in running there's it's like hyrox it's like no let up like hyrox you get a bit of a let up like you you can kind of like go through the lunges and it's not your lungs burning like with running you get dropped you're done like getting dropped is like five seconds isn't it you're with a pack and then you're not and you can't claw your way back whereas with hyrox i feel like people come back and forward to you based upon the stations and and like you're all in the same area with running like you have that really really really small moment of time to like make the decision and if your body can't do it your body can't do it whereas in high rocks like you might be feeling bad and then you might get a bit of a rest on the rower and like get back on it but obviously with running you can't i think i think that both both high rocks i'm running like they're a test of fitness and with fitness unfortunately like health is and how you are feeling on that start line yeah uh has a massive role into play you just can't you can't just try harder if you're poorly no and i feel like that's what some people don't understand like that like some people say oh just just try harder yeah you can knock 30 seconds off by trying harder but like when you're at that level like it's as simple as you cannot do it's interesting as well because in running i know my body so well now that i know what i'm gonna do like if you was to ask me okay what you're going to do for a 5k right now or a 10k right now I could probably tell you based upon my training right from like doing threshold work and doing intervals and doing my long runs but like right I'm kind of in this kind of nick with high rocks though I really struggle to have any understanding on what kind of shape I am because you don't really know what pace you're running inside or because everything's a little bit different and then you might feel I find the sleds really really heavy and in running if I find myself really really heavy or like struggling at 2k I know I'm kind of not as fit as I've gone out too hot I'm not as fit as I should be and I'm running too quick whereas in high rocks it's really hard to measure like am I fit or is this this sled heavier today like you don't I can't tell I couldn't tell you what I'm going to go and do for a high rocks because it's just really hard to measure whereas running I don't know I find that quite easy like right this is what I'm doing my thresholds at this is what I'm doing my intervals at I feel good at two three k into a 10k I'm going to push on I'm in kind of this nick like high rocks like i just don't think i ever know what shape i am directly if that makes sense it's very hard to track yeah the courses with the friction of the carpets and stuff like that yeah yeah you're better off probably doing something potentially in the gym where you've not got any of them factors where it's like a specific workout say for example like repeat it yeah like uh you know just a test and i have a simple one like uh some people got like a mucos triangle you might have run into there but where you you do um a certain number of calories on a ski row bike and then you might run yeah at a certain pace and then see you know if you can hit a certain amount of rounds and you know like right i'm fit enough yeah that'd be kind of like your check box yeah where it has because let's be honest like when you get to a high rocks like obviously there's heat and and kind of humidity of the room or whatever yeah but the biggest factors are the sleds and probably distances as well unless warsaw the biggest factor was the climate i think like yeah all the condition like those times were ridiculous and i've done some studying recently as well with high rocks and i'm adamant that they sometimes probably don't measure the burpees right go on because sometimes like burpees like 20 on average like 20 seconds quicker per course i'm like puppy unless the judging is so off that yeah yeah also like the corners and stuff like that depending on how many times you have a turn um and stuff like that so it's uh but hopefully next season they mentioned that they would do it this season they didn't do it this season but next season they're gonna have this uh the grid format but with the exact same layout so they're gonna have uh the five or six laps what it was like in hamburg yeah what it was like in melbourne but they're gonna have that for each one hopefully yeah um so hopefully they standardize it and that's hope so yeah talk to us about your high rocks journey yeah i can't it's been up and down hasn't it um well to be honest i did it for a bit of fun come rewind this time last year just done london marathon not really a massive interest in high rocks but i met you in cape town right yeah when was that so i'd just done a half marathon for england in copenhagen and i think that was in 2024 so i hadn't done london yet my first london so i was still very much an endurance runner and just enjoying it and that was my first ever one in cape town first one um and yeah i loved it and it was really it was really fun um really liked the whole challenge of it and like the strength i just did not have like i couldn't do one wall ball at four kilo when i first started um and then last year obviously i took it a bit more seriously because we did a few races really enjoyed it went to world champs in chicago still did well though right did well what time do you get i did a 66 open but like six open but was it enough to win yeah one by like eight minutes but that was also the first time they changed women from 75 to 100 because oh women used to have 75 yeah i remember like that um so like i was ranked like third in the world at that point or something like that um but yeah i couldn't do the burpees surprised me how hard they were and the war balls obviously i took six minutes to do the war balls or something like that but yeah no i really really loved it and then after london marathon i did we made chicago world champs mixed doubles um and me and my boyfriend at the time and then yeah it was really good really enjoyed it and then i remember finishing Chicago and talking to um it's a guy called Dan Lambert who's um the CFO at um SIS and I was like I don't know what to do because I'm only at that point I was only sponsored by SIS I was only getting financial help from them no other was that through the running yeah yeah so primarily you were sponsored for running yeah yeah and I was only I was doing coaching for running and I was getting I was getting sponsored SIS were the first people to help me out financially and they so that pretty much dictates where you go because I can't just be like oh I'm ditching the running now guys and I'm gonna go do high rocks but I remember just really enjoying the whole experience of it and like meeting new people and like I really quite like doing it but I just didn't know how didn't know I just didn't what decision to make so the best step for me I thought was to try I saw the watch the elite 15s and I just thought I remember watching you and like I know you didn't have the best solos race but the doubles race and the relays and like I just think I just I can't see myself in the solos next year but I can see myself in the elite 15 doubles so I was like right I went away and I talked to a couple people and I actually started off with a partner called Sophia um and we made it to Melbourne and I did Melbourne with her and I finished Melbourne and like love Sophia she's brilliant but she's one of those like one-paced ponies like she's really really strong at like burpees and running at a certain pace and that doubles is a completely different sport in not it's not completely different but you know what i mean it is and um the people that probably do the best at it are track athletes middle lactic shunting yourself jay williamson like that yeah people that are great at going into that anaerobic zone but then but we need rest yeah because you don't need to do the lunges and the burpees as fast in a solo but you do in a doubles I mean it's like being a 400 meter runner versus like a 5k runner like they're two different things um so yeah I kind of figured that out after Melbourne we came 12 and like I still had so much in the tank with the running so I was at a wedding as well last summer and that's where I met like Saskia she said she was like a fangirl of me so like she was really scared to come up to me at this wedding it was like a runner's wedding like some runners got married and I was there and I'd never really spoke to Saskia and then she was just like chatting in my ear all night and we were both like really drunk and I was like yeah do a high rocks with me and she was like I thought she was giving it all that and she did her first high rocks at London in December and I saw her I put like a 65 pro down and I looked at her running and I looked at her stations and I was like she could be really good so I said right Saskia you're doing a doubles with me manchester january um at the end of january we did one together and she dropped me she dropped me on the running i was like who is this girl like i was not expecting it so i kind of went into the race really kind of tired thinking like she's gonna struggle um and she was terrible at the stations but on the run she would just drop me and i'm like oh um but then we did a 57 11 for our first one then three weeks later we went to poland and we did a 55-02 which nearly and had we not got a penalty for the lunge on that day we would have got a British record second time out and like we were awful at the stations like sled pull we're doing like in four minutes still so like or slower four and a half minutes or something absolutely terrible um so there was so much potential there but yeah I think I wanted to make it in doubles and then I saw Saskia and me being like right I kind of need to switch headspace here and after we did what we did in Poland I had I was doing London Marathon this year um and the goal was for like me to enjoy doubles do doubles as fun maybe make the elite 15 um but not be like really really good um and obviously focus on London Marathon and then as soon as we did what we did in Poland and we got to the um London major I was like right I need to put all my eggs in this basket now switch get rid of the long runs because I went I was doing all of this racing with like 18 21 miles was in my legs like from the week before and then five days later trying to hit hard high rocks and I was really struggling just I was just fatigued so like I'm not ever doing these fresh this whole year and so then I tried with three weeks before like London major to try and just kind of sharpen up a little bit and we did like what we did in like that major was like okay we we've got a taste of this now like uh nearly one ran across ran across the uh sled pull line and got a one minute penalty still came I think we came fifth or seventh and put like a 55 30 down with like a 90 second penalty so I was like well that could have been a 54 minute uh which would have been another British record so I was like okay we we we got iron this out and then we've been working on it since and then obviously heartbreaking Warsaw again over something stupid and not really about performance like it was about not knowing the rules or just not just not being like head space within it yet I think we're still learning and just kind of trying to iron out those things but I wouldn't say that was down to performance like still in terms of getting A to B we did put a very fast time down we did put a 53 10 or something whatever it was down minus the two and a half minute penalty but I think my head switched as soon as I went to Saskia because it was there's so much potential there which is exciting um but yeah that that's kind of where my head's at so I was kind of never committed early on with this high rock thing it's just kind of I fell into it this year and I think a lot of people including maybe you we chase times with the high rocks right now so it was like chase chase chase it was never like in running we have like a four five six week training block to hit a race to hit a standard to then go to a championship whereas right now it was like go to Warsaw get through we didn't three week two week block go to go to another race try and get through and there's no like structure it's really hard to to you're like just chasing and you're you know it's quite a difficult mental place as an athlete to be like mentally prepared for physically prepared for so I think I've struggled with that a little bit just to be like oh I'm just like getting on a flight and hoping for the best and I don't think that's the best way to go so going into next year I think it's all gonna it's going to be all about being mindful on your own path not chasing time not doing every single race having a strategy um because burnout i think is just happening left right and center and especially next year with like the point system the amount of races i think you've got to like stick to a plan and like be ahead of it because we just weren't ahead of it this year just because that's how it was um we only had two options and we we were under pressure on both of them so yeah the you kind of unfortunately just ran out of time i think given more time this year uh and you'd be in there like if you was say for example it's a shame just because of how the system works and when your relationship kind of like bonded like at the end of the day you've only had two races yeah but But if you was, we could all sit here and agree that if you was at World Champs, you two would be a strong competitor for some of the top places.

1:01:18Yeah. We're not saying that you go into that Elite 15. If you was in that Elite 15, you wouldn't be coming 15th. No. Like, you'd be strong. So. So that's just something, one, for you to look at for next season, but then two, everyone else watching, you two as a pair, whether that's sponsors, whether that's thing, there's just so much potential there, which I think is good. One thing that is a shame about High Rocks, but one way that I've tried to look at it, because again, I'm in a similar position with the solos. I've had great luck with the doubles, but with the solos, not as good luck. yeah now i need i think i need like i've got one win so i probably need four more wins yeah to get into the next elite 15 and i had a chat with my coach was like oh well we could fly to asia and try and get some easy wins as it said there's no easy races anymore because everyone's doing the same but we could play the system a little bit say and go to these places where the field may not be as strong uh try and get first place but what happens yes you're in the elite 15 and you made it and sponsors potentially happy but you get to that first elite 15 of the season and you've been traveling everywhere yeah you're a little bit burnt out like do you want to show up to an elite 15 race with the hope of coming 10th yeah or do you want to be in the elite 15 when you're ready yeah and when you deserve it yeah and then like be able to actually compete for like the top five for example exactly yeah that's what i think everyone every athlete should look at and like you say so at the moment like it feels like everyone's chasing and everyone's like trying to race every single week which yes you've got the most chance of getting into the elite 15 if you do that yeah but then you're just going to embarrass yourself when you get into the elite 15 because you come 15 yeah yeah and you come last so so like it's probably best to still have an off season or have specific training blocks not race for 10 weeks yeah then maybe go do two race weeks back to back when you're in fit and you're in shape you're in form and then rinse and repeat that i agree i think that's the way to do it like it's a long year how i would want to split it up i mean i don't know where the races are at the moment so it's really hard to plan but obviously we know the first two but then we don't know where the other three are which is very dependent as well like what is one in australia like but i think the way to do it is you know you race hard for two weeks you go do all the races you do a major at the end of it sorry not two weeks two months and get as many races you can and then i think you're gonna have to i want to take a down point where and i need to rest for a month like this is the only sport that just seems to cycle and cycle and cycle like you know tennis like they're they're they're like getting ready to put their biggest output out in the in three months same with track like you're using all the winter to get winter miles you or the threshold work the longer runs the half marathons and then in track season that's where you put your speed down because you can't carry it through all the way yet all the way through and you know where are we going to have our downtime like I can't go from October to June so the way I would do it or the way I'm thinking of doing it is like doing racing for two months hard get two really good races under your belt like win them get a major under your belt try and do well there then take two three months off one month of kind of you know resting your body one month for them building your body back up one month of then fine tuning and then race again for two months but that means missing certain majors um maybe missing required points I don't know it's really it's really hard to know what to do but if you're in this sport for the long run um you've got to be thinking about next year and the year after as well and how are you going to best approach it because people are just going to get injured left right and center and burnout is going to happen and it's just not fun um you can always see it happening to some people so it's just because I've done it with running as well like i just know that you're better off getting a block back and off let it absorb do a block back off let it absorb race and then feel confident um but we tend to get oh this race went bad i'm gonna race again next week this race went bad i'm gonna race again next week and then genuinely i don't know how um the top guys and girls are doing it like i don't like for me at the moment like and i'll be completely honest and this isn't this is like i'm trying to keep up with everyone yeah And I'm having to have forced rest periods because I get injured.

1:05:50And that's like my forced downtime. Whereas like you say, when my training is absorbed is when I get injured. And then I go again. And that's just not healthy. For some reason, I don't know how, but these other guys are just not getting injured. For now. Yeah, for now. And like you say, they might just be a little bit more resilient than me. But that's kind of how I look at it. So we're going to try and structure moving forward. Like you say, having more rest. yeah i say this on this press is not an enemy like i i think i me and saskia probably do the least amount of volume out of everybody for sure half of probably most people i think we do between seven and ten hours a week yeah and everybody else is doing 24 hours but if i was to do 24 hours my sessions would be half-assed like i wouldn't be able to do the session at the quality that i do it now so like yeah i'd say i do three running sessions a week like an interval session like two k's then i might do like some speedier work like 800s 500s you know at like a quicker than 5k pace then i might do a track session now but maybe pre warsaw it'd be more of a marathon session on the sunday but that is enough are you doing any easy running yeah easy easy running and again my easy running is easier than most other girls that I know so my zone my easy running is a lot but that's just because I I just go easy on my easy days um otherwise I won't be able to hit my hard paces the day after but that takes like a long time to get used to and get your like ego in check when you was um when you was back training with a group with Under Armour did you do your easy runs together we did but we went off heart rate a lot of the time and also so say when you are doing easy runs like uh the the girls and lads going super easy as well yeah yeah and they'd give you give you a hard time if you were like i'd run with the guys sometimes and then they'll be like why are you running with the guys like back off like run slower and like it took me a few months to like understand like i work in miles so i'd be running like seven to seven thirty miles at altitude and i was like yeah yeah i'm fine but actually you're just taking out the next day and And then you want to, if I did eight minute miles or five minute Ks, like you're still getting exactly the same benefit because you're not required to race at 7.30 minute miles or eight minute miles.

1:08:09So what's the point? But you're just preserving yourself so you can hit your session so much harder the next day. And it just takes a long time for me to get used to that. But yeah, when I do my easy runs now, they're easy. They're really, really, really easy. And my hard days are really, really, really hard. because if you start like oh I just want to run my easy run but I want to feel good and I want to pick it up you're just taking out the next day and then the next day the last two reps won't be as good and I'll be like oh why they're not as good like if you want to hit that three tens and quicker I've got to be ready to go and that's weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of doing it as well so when you think about these people that have been training for three months if you slightly go over on all those easy runs for three months like it has a knock-on effect on your hard days and then your like ceiling and floor just start going like this so your easies is literally same as your hard and what you want is like the biggest gap as possible um so yeah it's took me a long time to like realize that but I have found it hard to add the add the high rocks in like I found that really difficult um because for the first six months of doing high rocks training like was probably come October time I remember doing great self-run and then after that around October last year started really adding like two gym sessions a week and it really impacted my easy runs even worse and my intervals training just felt heavy and sluggish for a long time so it's been really hard to figure out when to push and when to pull back um and what and how to handle it and i still i think i'm still working it out like it's still really really hard i remember talking to john in melbourne actually i'd be like i just don't know how to how to split this up like it is because there's some people that like doing threshold old session on a monday and a track session on a tuesday and a high rock session on a wednesday and like i couldn't do it i mean i could but it would all be very average in my opinion and each week i think i'd get worse so no definitely i think there are a lot of people that are doing that as well yeah i mean i'm not saying it's wrong because i don't know like we don't have any studies or we haven't been in the sport long enough to know but that's what's interesting about me and saski are coming into it as well like two females runners based i'd say me and saski are probably the top 15 or 20 as a 1500 meter runner and a 5k runner in the uk right now like if we were to go and put a time down would be up there so it's really really interesting to see how that's come over and like training dynamic because neither of us do much in the gym we do and we do do a bit like because we're at we're actually we're still hybrid aren't we if you're 1500 meter running you're still hybrid like jakob ingebritsen is almost hybrid he's doing a 1500 he's in a 5k he can do a 10k he's in the gym three times a week he's technically his hybrid yeah like we could argue anyone that like is in the olympics anyone any any professional sports team whether it's football whether it's rugby like they're all hybrid yeah because like you say you you you're training for performance you're not and you're doing whatever is necessary to get you as good as an athlete as you can be yeah we just we just needed to learn the technical side and i'm still trying to learn those key sessions for high rocks like that will help with the running now and not over kill yourself for the next week of like running training because you know if i do a really big session in the gym that's like an hour of high rocks and then impact your run your long run or your easy run and then impact your like interval session on tuesday so it's like it's really hard to figure it out um i look at most people and they say they do you know they've taken the no agent training method and made it so they have hard days easy days double special days but you look at the easy days and it's not easy no and it's yeah and sometimes i'm i'm the same like um i just don't think uh it's hard to fit everything into a week where you have your your hard days and you have your easy days yeah you can recover yeah um but yeah i want to i want to move on yeah sorry no no don't say sorry at all but i want to move on to the incredible thing that you did it was after warsaw not the gel drop no no no after warsaw okay yeah yeah after warsaw yeah um was it two weeks later one one one week later yeah so warsaw was in the start of april yep and then a week later you ran the london marathon right well so when was warsaw warsaw was the 19th yep and then london marathon was 26th april so literally seven days later yeah no I was on the Friday night and then nine days like nine days yeah um obviously what happened in Warsaw was a massive shame and we'll touch we won't go into that but yeah obviously I dropped the gel two minute penalty do I agree with it no have I verbally said I don't agree with it yes I stick by it at first I said sorry for the way I reacted um but I'm not I'm not sorry I do agree that I don't think any two minute penalty should be in an elite 15 race going forward like and I'd like to be more part of the conversation in elite 15 and we'll move on to london because i know you want to talk about that but i just wanted to say like as well with this cruise thing you know some people can't get five days off work or like i just think that we need to all know a bit more they're seasick or anything like like some people might be seasick yeah or you can't leave your animals at home like for that long or like it's just saski i don't she was like i don't know if and get five working days that's five annual days leave um you know what the maddest thing is as well so and it might change so we can't like it's time too much but it's time to rile but i quite like that but yeah yeah no that's cool but it's docked up so say for example i think uh for the doubles race it's docked up in barcelona yeah yeah so why can't we not just travel to barcelona get on the cruise do the race and then leave yeah and then that's like surely they should make that a rule rather than us just having to stay it's not even that right it's just bring us in in the conversation like we're the ones doing the race like bring us in and no one knew about it no no one we were just shocked but also that's how i feel about this two minute penalty like if you've got a hundred meter runner what's the point in giving them a 10 second penalty like there's no point like it's the same in an elite 15 race if you're going to give us if you're going to disqualify them yeah i was just like well this what's the point like obviously yeah slap on the wrist don't leave your gel on the floor like I get it I understand rules and also I didn't litter I purposely put it down there was intention to pick it up we were distracted because we got a penalty and it was a mistake it wasn't like I littered on purpose and did chucked it on the floor because I'm lazy that was not the intention but it would just be nice to be brought into the conversation a little bit more because we are defining this sport and I have done a professional sport for for 10 years and i understand how to make it how to abide by the rules how to get the qualifying criteria how to listen to it and like navigate what's the best for the athlete and like we're running we made breaking two for elliot kipchoge we literally cemented around the road and they used engineers to like put cement and concrete on every single curve so it was like like an 18 degree inclined to help him smoothly run we are doing those steps to help an athlete achieve and it just feels a little bit like we are not doing that process yet in high rocks to help the athlete achieve so by putting us on a cruise by giving us two minute penalties by not putting bins by the by like not even considering let's just give penalties after the fact and like you know a day later we can consider do you know what i mean there's just not doesn't feel like it's athlete centric at the moment like it's not done what will help the athlete the best like how can we make this course fast and good for everybody and yeah that's what I'm going to say on that because I think we need to be brought in more to define in the sport to be better for the athlete not a business model I think that's the only thing I have with Hyrox which is why like I was like and then going into London that's why I was so angry and I like finished that race me and Saskia like cried we like did two laps around warsaw we like sat on the steps we cried and yeah i was just like i don't know if i want to do this because i've never been in a sport where i've tried so hard and felt like i've let so many people down like you don't finish a marathon try really really hard and then cry about it because you've made an awful mistake that like wasn't implementing like it's not getting you faster it's not like cutting a corner um so it's like the first sport i've been in where I was like I've really really really tried and I feel like people were really angry at us for like not knowing and I think that was really hard to like want to get back up and do it and I went into London I had nine days and I'll be honest with you like you actually inspired me a little bit because I remember what you did in Cape Town and I don't know if you remember but I remember going you're not gonna break 2 30 like I was like no way I remember you actually saying you said uh have you got any more runs planned before this marathon uh if you need a partner yeah if you got any more long runs because do you need a partner do you need a running partner because i'll come run with you that's what you said yeah because you were like in cape town i was like if you need a long run i'll come do one you're like no i haven't done any i was like i was like yeah this hierox is my last long run and i was like oh that's not gonna go down well and then that's kind of you know two years on i was just happened to be in that situation again not by plan but by default and like because I'd switched from Warsaw and then training so switch from London major trained until Warsaw I just took out all the long runs so I was still doing the threshold but I just did way more speed work I was in a 1500 meter session with Saskia like I wasn't doing like any marathon work really um and I didn't know I think the hardest part of London marathon was like I was on the start line and like my coach was like just go at 240 like go through an 80 or like 79 I was like but I want a PB I know I can run a PB which is 239 so why don't I go like 78 79 and then push on and then was with the championships and like you go out so hot in the first bit and I felt so good and I think I had so much anger in me because I didn't feel like an athlete after Warsaw I felt like a failure I felt like I'd let a lot of people down I'd let Saskia down and I felt like you know no one actually considered what we did as good it was it was bad including myself I was like oh I'm you know I'm not this athlete and I was like oh I'm gonna show you like actually I'm tough I am fit I am good and like I went out really hot and then I was like I actually feel good so I'm like running like 540s or like 332s 333s for the first like 10 10k and then yeah I just was like okay I'm gonna wait for this to hurt in a minute it's gonna hurt in minutes probably gonna get to mile 18 I'm gonna hurt I didn't so I'm not sure if that's the strength of the high rocks helping me um I nailed my fueling I made sure to stay on top of that and give myself as much help as I could and I did some work from the previous one like and learned my fueling and learned about how much water I lost and stuff like that so I tried to stay on top of that and then I got to mile 18 I did throw up but I just stopped for like 20 seconds I could see on my course it was like 22 seconds I was like that's pretty good for throwing up twice um got back going and then yeah 233 48 I think was my official time and like yeah no long runs in the five week like build up fourth in the masses I think and like yeah I was not expecting that I think I would I would been happy with 236 or 237 I thought that would be a really really good day so to come away with that um and I just felt like I was myself again and I felt like I needed it it was like a release as well and it just shows you what you mentally can do if you just let yourself um just like kind of let yourself go and don't worry because I just didn't care if I blew up I did high rocks last week like there was no pressure if I dropped and did a 244 like doesn't matter I did a high rock so I didn't have that pressure so it was a chance for me just to be like just send it with no pressures and that's one thing I struggle with in high rocks I feel like you can never send it because your brain has to work as well whereas in running your brain can switch off well you know you just it's just like you're in your flow state yeah you can't really do that i think i feel that with high rocks there's so many things to think about yeah there's a lot more skill involved not that there isn't skill in running but like yeah you practice running so much that the skill just becomes second nature exactly whereas with the high rocks like you've actually just got to know the rules stick to the rules yeah and like i said like just to comment on what you mentioned you about the the drop in the gel like the rules do change all the time like that rule has only come in recently i know and that's the bit i struggle with because there's no other sport right where the rules change in the middle of the season if you've got a championship race in my opinion whatever starts in september has to remain for the rest of the year now if you don't like the rules and in that year then you change it in september but now we've got a world champs and somebody's going who had their own chalk someone's going who doused the self of water somebody else is going who chucked a gel on the floor and we're not because we left the gel on the floor and like it's not fair so it's like yeah I'd read the rules and the rules change but they shouldn't like if you start in September with a certain set of rules that has to remain and then you evaluate the year and go this wasn't good this was good this wasn't good and we change from September onwards because let's say you miss a briefing and we're not in a briefing because we're changing I might do two majors and then take a rest and then do one major and they change a rule on the third major and we weren't there you just you don't know about it so yeah I think I struggle with that side of things and like they could have helped us out there and they didn't penalty anybody else that made a mistake that was two minute penalty worthy but they penaltyed us on the last possible major which I think it was a little bit harsh but that's where it is and that's what it that's we'll we'll learn and grow from it but it was frustrating because I just I've just watched other people make similar mistakes and not get the scolding we got so i was like oh all right is this you know you just got to accept it and walk on but let's say it's all kind of like motivation for next season it is yeah yeah unfortunately obviously you're not in the elite 15 for let's get a roll down but i don't understand i don't understand how that would work but we did come seventh in london okay so who either and ellie got that so if they anyone gets injured we i think connects and same as warsaw so i don't know i don't know how well downs work if someone pulls out yeah i don't really i've not got a clue no we'll just be there in case yeah it's more motivation for next season though yeah i say at least like if any positive come out of that full situation the whole hyrox world knows who you are true yeah good any peter's good peter right do you know what i mean yeah i know it's true which is like great going into next season like so you're strong um you're very and this is what i wanted to ask like i feel like with everything that you do you've kind of got this confidence and this kind of like aura that you can you believe in yourself like where did that come from and it's a good thing by the way it's a really good I think coming from the UK, people would rather be quiet.

1:23:26And if they achieve it, then they're like, oh, yeah, I did that. Yeah, it's hard, isn't it? Because being an elite sport, obviously I've been around it a lot. And I think by not speaking up and not being confident and not backing yourself, it's not going to help you because inside you're just telling yourself, oh, I'm not going to say anything. I don't think I'm going to achieve it. But there's nothing wrong with standing there saying, we're going to make the Elite 15. because it's not arrogance it's it's confidence and if you have a process and you have you know how you're training like you've got to kind of just not worry about what everybody else thinks about you but it's a really really hard thing especially if you've got a following on social media you're putting you out yourself out there to be targeted but yeah I've always had a bit of a confidence I don't know where it's come from I just think I know what I'm doing in training and I know that also like how hard I can push myself and I think it's inspiring for everybody else as well like other young girls other females to be like you can have a voice you can go out there you can be strong you can put on muscle you can do a marathon like it's not going to make you slower um and I don't know I've always just had this this confident side to me that I don't think it is arrogance because I would never say something that I can't do so you won't hear me talking about like high rocks movements or gym movements because I'm just not confident in that area I don't know enough but I do know what I know in running I do know what I'm gonna do in a performance based on how I'm performing in training and I don't know I just get excited and passionate about something that I'm good at especially like with Sascha I'm like let's go like you know we'll get up there we'll take the lead like we'll get to the ski first it doesn't matter I think that confidence just comes from just knowing how hard we train and where we're at and other people can have their opinions on it some people might like it some people won't but yeah you're right the americans have strong you know they they say exactly where they're at and they back themselves and i mean you should do it to a certain extent but you know don't do it too much as well to put yourself back as well so you've got if you do it don't like bullshit all right yeah some people like you you they make a comment and you some people might think that they're deluded a little bit correct yeah whereas like you're basing you're stating things based off your training your training yeah where you're at and like you know you went out for a two sub 220 marathon yeah failed yeah but you didn't because failing is not trying and you try to do that you put the process out and you put the work in now if you'd done if you'd said i'm running two sub 220 marathon and like half asked the training and like your half marathon wasn't like on the same page of it then maybe you could adjust your goals and be like look based upon this half marathon probably going to be a little bit hard so I'm going to adjust it to 221 or whatever but I think that's what I'm very good at doing is like yeah not going to run a 1620 at the moment 5k not quite there but I'm going to do a 1630 I think it's about just being honest transparent and with yourself and everybody else and I think that isn't you know that's not confidence that's just like seeing it for what it is and accepting it um you can't go and say you're going to break a sub 60 if you're not like in a hierarchy you've got to have that evidence in training and there are markers like you said like the mucos triangle and you can then be like okay Holly you're probably not going to do a sub 60 but we're on for a 62 be proud of that like go after it and see what happens and I think Like that isn't confidence.

1:26:52That's just being realistic with goals and the process of the goal and like reading yourself and what's required and then just saying it for what it is. So I think I've always been like that because of running. Running is like if you can't run a 62, then you're not going to run a 204, 800, you know. So it's the same. If you can't run a 305, 5K, then you're going to struggle to run, you know, 1540. Like it's got to match. and I think that's where I get it from is like if I'm saying it it's because I can do it because I've done it in training um but yeah it is it's hard because women don't back themselves as much as they should either do they like um so I know I speak out as a woman but I'm glad I do because I want other women to like if they don't like the system they don't agree with the penalty or if they want to say they want to go after a marathon or they want to do gym and they want to get bigger and race a marathon like you can do it you can talk about it like be proud of it um don't worry about everybody else's opinion because it's just gonna get you nowhere like it's a hard thing to do but i was about to ask have you got any advice for like women especially that suffer with like confidence with like you know stating the goals or yeah after things you know what like a lot of people i don't know if it's because i've done it for so long or or if it's the fact that i don't care enough about everybody else's opinion anymore because I've just done this for so long that at the end of the day the race is going to happen whether you like your performance or not if you're setting out for a race have you got a race targeted and you've done the training behind it the race is going to happen so if you're not confident and not going to back yourself you don't have to say it out loud you can write in your journal or you can write it to yourself or you can write it to your friend or whoever but if you're not going to back yourself mentally then no one's going to do it so and also most people think by saying something out loud saying something on social media is like oh I couldn't do that why why because if you say it out loud somebody the first thing I do is go fair play I go fair play because that's so much harder to go I'm going to do a 220 marathon because everybody's going to have an opinion and it's so hard to do but actually everyone will follow that everyone will respect it some people might be like you didn't do it but they respect it they can't you can't deny that so I'd rather have respect go after something and also for females realize like actually any other female doing the same thing as you will give you respect like I have never got onto a start line and looked at my competitors and gone I think I'm better than any of them I think fair play because I'm just as nervous as they are like I'm just as worried I'm just as concerned about the outcome I'm worried about what other people think i'm worried about what other people think of my like body like there's i worry about all of those things as well so when they stand on the start line i just go fair play and i don't think anybody else has judged another woman in the race doing the same race because we are all so nervous like you wouldn't get on your start line and go oof like i'm better than these and maybe in a performance aspect but in terms of like you wouldn't put them down for showing up because showing up is the hardest thing so yeah is that mutual respect yeah it's mutual exactly because we're about to do the same level of like task whether it's a marathon or a 5k or a high rocks we've all showed up we've put the work in we've paid for the flights we've played for the hotels we've we stand on the start line at the same time no matter who you are how much work you are how good you are it's a hard thing to get to the end and i have mutual respect for everybody that races or is in the same race as me every single time I think fair play and I think that takes a lot to get used to as well because I think other girls worry about how they look or how they feel or how they perform but if you're pb in like it's just as relative as me pb in so it's mutual respect and I think yeah I think it's just you realizing that we're all the same really just in different little brains but um yeah no I think women should just they've just got a hard one because it as a female in a male dominant like like hyrox it is hard to feel strong and confident um but I think they're doing a good job I think the girls in the elite 15 and the girls up the top there like I feel like they're all doing a really really good job to be inspiring be strong you know put that put goals out there they're all doing a really good good work and like that's going to help future generations and the young girls um coming into the sport and i do like that about hyrox versus running is hyrox is very much strong advocate whereas running can be very thin under fueling advocate so i do like that this world is a lot healthier in my opinion except for the overtraining side of things but like it's still it's still probably a little bit better than the running world so it's really nice for the youngsters to kind of see what body type should be like and strive for that um but yeah that's my long-winded way of saying that yeah like mutual respect we're all the same there's no difference i love that and it's um like just touch another point there that you mentioned with with the running and um do not under fueling yeah it's so easy to kind of get into that mindset because yeah the less you weigh the better your power to weight ratio and that's the easiest way to improve that yeah uh the more efficient you get the faster times you run by just being lighter unfortunately which can be toxic to a point obviously to a point yeah and then obviously but you've got to think injuries occur um especially if you're a woman as well and i wanted to touch on that i think you're better to to explain it but you know loss of menstrual cycle and stuff like that like have you either if you have you experienced other people like get to that point where like women are like actually unhealthy because they're pushing the body too much i think yeah so obviously i was on a podcast with um reene mcgregor recently who specializes in in this and gets hundreds and hundreds like looks at hundreds and hundreds of blood samples and women are so interesting because obviously we have like to put it bluntly we have like four seasons in a month so like emily will will you'll probably know with emily like literally two weeks we're fine then obviously it's the luteal phase where things get like dragon dragon dragon no comment but that's the phase but like during that phase obviously what i learned from reene which was really interesting i said does that luteal phase mean you perform at a worse level because one of the other girls we were on the panel she's um olympic she was an ex olympic long jumper and she said on that phase of her period she didn't even go to training she didn't turn up with her coach and i was like what because i've just trained through it but reene said actually you're during the phase of your whole period nothing changes in terms of because a lot of girls go i'm on my period so i'm not going to race very well that's there is no factual evidence there is not enough evidence and research but there is actually no factual evidence that your period will make your performance worse but the side effects of the period do and we all have such different side effects which is why we can't out bluntly say you know bloating causes so your period do you know i mean because some people won't bloat or you could get really bad cramps or you can get sweats and one of the worst things i get is i don't sleep very well because my body temperature goes up like two or three um which means i know during that phase of my period i try and like the night like have a cold shower so i can get to sleep better and call my body temperature down so there's it's understanding and tracking your period but yes if you lose your period what you're doing is you're losing the blood cells that then go into your bone marrow that keep your bone strong and that's when stress fractures happen so stretch flat stress fractures usually are an occurrence of two things overtraining just hammering the concrete over and over again and not taking a down period or under fueling because you're not getting the micronutrients back into your bones because you're not releasing and you're not having you know a healthy balanced enough fat in you as well and yeah it was really interesting having that chat because she also said not even women even men but in endurance sports I think 73 % of all of us are under fueling without knowing it we're just not having enough because we get stuck in this cycle of like I need to do this and eat this amount um and yeah especially as a woman we we have different needs and like in that week we might be more fatigued so in training if you're trying to do like gym you're gonna just be a little bit wobbly because you're tired because you might have not slept well you might I've lost more salt you might be bloated like you're fatigued so it's more of the side effects that are going to cause but it's just knowing it and adjusting things accordingly but also like women should be less lean than men and no women is so like well like when we race right we're pinned up usually against other men especially in the running world like mostly elite running coaches are male so they see us really fit lean guy absolutely shredded you know not an ounce of fat on him but women can't and shouldn't be like that because we need extra to help fuel you know we have menstrual cycle and we we have different you know we have different needs so it's just drilled in us what we see for men should be what we need for women as well so like for a long time I'm like oh I need to look like that I need to be shredded I need to not have an ounce of fat on me because I'm not fit um so it was really interesting and yeah from what I've seen and what I've done myself I have under fueled I have got really really lean and like I said when I did that in Flagstaff I got no better so the evidence I think we all need is just trial and error sometimes because you're not going to do it unless you try it I mean I know I shouldn't say that but as any athlete I think we like to learn ourselves because if we don't know we're not trying I don't follow what everybody else is doing I like to learn the hard way because I like to see so yeah I got really really light to see because what if it really worked for me but it didn't um and you have to find what works for you and I know Sean Noble doesn't really like he plays around with his weight a lot to see like to see what fits him but it can be dangerous when it comes to under fueling over a long period of time because it's the micronutrients that you're lacking and then when you try and do something like altitude or you know three months that you might be getting ill all the time and that's down to like just not having enough fuel and as a female we're just judged like a male like we train like men we do the same hours as men um we eat like try and eat less the men and do more work the men so I just think all of that adds up and we could be hindering our own performance to just but by trying to do the right thing we're trying to be better we're actually making it worse and yeah it's a tough one I've I've lost my period for the weeks that I did run 1500 meters and I kind of just brushed it off and was like I'm still my heart's still beating and I'm still running so it's not a problem but it's a problem six months later when you're training and it's just really average and you're just not getting better you know you might not be getting worse and then the stress fractures will happen and then an injury will happen and then you'll realize it's just not worth it so you have to learn the hard way sometimes um now I eat so much more i weigh six to seven kilos more and i ran six minutes quicker on a marathon so that shows me where power to a weight ratio matters most exactly yeah so far yeah so it's an interesting one isn't it because it's like i understand like for a performance and a high performer like in a 1500 like i did whatever i needed to do to win and like that was like yeah i need to be lighter i need to be like like the kenyans and stuff they were like four kilos lighter than me so you know I was trying to be like that but it can have problems down the road if you don't get it right in terms of like eat again straight away after you've done your racing and that's why an off season is so important to like make sure you're healthy to go again for the next year and come back stronger otherwise you'll just come back each year the same so yeah I mean it is interesting and I do want to do more in female sport and female understanding all of that um There just needs to be more research and more people talking about it.

1:39:04But hopefully I can do more work with Rooney because I learned so much just by learning like small facts like that. Like your period actually doesn't affect your performance. All the bits around your side effects. Everyone has such different ones because a 16 year old girl is going to have different side effects from like a 40 year old woman. So in different stages of like their life with a period. So like that's going to have different effects on how you train and how you. and and yeah that kind of thing i learned a lot to track to realize what actually hinders you and how to deal with it um and my my my what would i say i would tell most girls to just get their bloods checked like well and guys like know where your cortisol is know where your micronutrients are and make sure your blood's good because that is the first thing that someone would check to see if you have red s how often do you get yours checked every three months but you know i have a kit and i just know that i know what to look for but like you can book yourself in with somebody like reeney or or somebody that understands what you need because what's the point in putting a three-month block together going to altitude going to world champs and putting all of this in if you haven't even looked at where your bloods are at and if you think you're in red ass and guys do have it i don't know if you know a guy called jake smith he's really good at talking about it and he suffered from it he was really really good like welsh guy yeah yeah Yeah.

1:40:24And he was running for NN and he still is. And, you know, incredible like runner. And he's really, really open about talking about it because he was like had an eating disorder and bulimia in order to hit weight of everybody else. And yeah, he was flying until he wasn't. And then he had to spend two years getting back to where he is. And he's learned the hard way. But now he knows he can be heavier and still perform the times he did when he was really, really light. um but get your blood first thing he did was speak to somebody that understands what bloods you need what micronutrients you need and get on top of it and if your micronutrients are constantly down you're not eating enough you're under fueling and you're asking your body of far too much so i think just doing that even every three months you're going to help yourself as well because where your bloods were at christmas might not be the same after a marathon and i know okay maybe i need to take an extra week off really let my body reset really get the micronutrients back up and then get into training whereas no one doesn't they just get straight back into training and you don't know what you're low on and you're asking your body to then go do another high rocks and you might be like the lowest ever hemoglobin you've got so yeah it's if you're worried that you're under fueling and you don't know get your bloods done speak to somebody understands it and that's their profession and then once you know what to look for you can do your own bloods um and go from there is a ever like a period like that you've had your bloods done and you've just taken some downtime if they're not where they're at do you ever or within like a season do you ever take some downtime where you completely just stop the sport that you're doing and like don't do it for a couple of weeks so yeah usually it was required like absolutely nothing for three weeks almost like gain weight because like you rejuvenate yourself right so like you almost want to gain the weight you always want to top up it's like like literally completely filling up your car and then like using the next six weeks to just get back to where you were and a lot of people will see that as a time wasting process but your body will be completely recovered and you've got all the micronutrients and you're you're fresh whereas this that's why this culture at the moment we're living in in social media and you know with how the hierarchic system is being set out like not that I'm against it I'm just saying you have to be aware of it to train correctly is you know you're constantly racing that you can't have this downtime so you've got to schedule it in um but yeah every year I would have after track season which is like late June there'll be nothing that happens in September October it would just be then going into road races and you don't need to be fit until the following January really for indoor season so you've got that period to take time off or down if you need it um but i have found it hard in the last two years with hyrox and running to balance to where to take time down after london marathon i only took two weeks to get myself ready for berlin probably should have taken more because it takes four four weeks for all of your bones like to actually recover from that pounding um so i probably am a little bit on the line with that but i know that and afterwards i will take two or three so will you take like two or three weeks where you don't do i'll try not to i'll do like after london i did take one week nothing but then i will get on the bike and do some easy running um but i think a healthiest way and a lot of like track runners professional runners olympians will take a complete month off and their coach will be like i don't want you to do anything i do not do anything we but then you come back in october and you start fresh but the pressure isn't on because they're not racing until january right so they no i like that and i think a lot of people need to hear that including myself yeah i'm i'm on that obviously we're what we're 16 17 days up from world champs yeah something like that at the moment um i'm feeling that i'm feeling on that that kind of that line it's really hard to do because even when i go on holiday i like to run i don't like to be stagnant but you don't have to be stagnant but like gain weight and get out of shape like and embrace it and like that's a really really hard thing to do but i remember every year coming back from university from from when i went to america the first practice like always the coach was like oof you're out of shape and as you should be like you should be because you've done it right but the culture and the world we live in like it's not glamorous it's not fun and it's not enjoyable to be about our shape especially when you're you're on social media all the time and like you say yeah but within high rocks you know you're competing all the time you do yeah uh you've got posts to do you've got you've got stuff so you've almost got to like plan it in advance and celebrate it celebrate like i've taken two weeks off i've gained this way i'm out of shape but we're going to enjoy the process back and actually you'll find because olympians take a month off and professionals take that long off they're never off their game the next year like it doesn't take out of them ever like actually it catches up to you if you don't the only thing happens if you don't do it is you're probably just on the line earlier in the season but that's such a hard mental thing to overcome like if you could if i could turn around to you now and say like if you had a whole month off in september last year you would have just felt so much more rejuvenated let's say you maybe would have gone yeah we should have just taken the whole month off and you wouldn't have had this injury would have felt fresher but like doing it in the moment is a really really hard thing to do because it actually wouldn't affect your performance now like if you had a whole month off like you'll catch it up slowly because we when you take a week off it takes it's only like two weeks and you're back to where you were and it shows me I learned so much from doing London Marathon because I was like I haven't done a long run I'm not going to be able to do it I was absolutely fine if anything because I'd done lower mileage I'd only done 40 to 50 miles per week for the last five weeks I flew at London whereas the previous year I'd done 75 to 80 miles per week maybe I'd done too much so I wasn't as fresh on the start line so you know that taught me a lot was like oh I don't need all these miles I don't need all this work actually maybe that helped me um but but yeah it is hard most pros will take a very take their off season very seriously um game way no but they know they haven't got the races coming so that's why it's important to like plan your season and just be like yeah I'm gonna have three weeks off you know get my body back fighting and then go again I don't have another race till 10 weeks but most of us aren't aren't in that privilege we always have a race coming up and that's where burnout happens so yeah i could learn to do better at that as well i mean i know do you know what i mean it's still a very hard thing to do yeah no no so i want to finish on this yep what is next for holly archer oh good question so yeah i don't know whether i want to do valencia marathon in december or send it with hyrox doubles um what is say like the next two years like are you gonna dabble in are you gonna keep you know both hands in running and hyrox yeah is that is that yeah yeah definitely i do think they go hand in hand maybe i'll stick to more 5k 10k um instead of going into the marathon as much i do want to break 230 but it depends when the time's right um i proved to my i didn't think that it would be possible at london and actually maybe it could have been especially when everyone bonked like everyone like london was for the past couple of years it's been such a tough yeah it's not fastest course either so i know with valencia and maybe berlin like or chicago seville um i've got options there but it needs to fit around hyrox and i would like to do a solo pro i haven't done one yet so a lot of people are like why haven't you done one yet and the reason is because couldn't do it before london i was training for london haven't done it after london because we've crammed like my recovery in and trying to get a ticket for berlin um but yeah i would like to reset after world champs i'd like to break 230 in the marathon focus on five in 10ks and then maybe get get my first solo pro race done alongside being maybe a world champion with saskia in in doubles would be be pretty cool well that's uh that's some list just a few things yeah yeah if there's anyone that can do it i think it's you i definitely believe that like you say every um since the first time we we bumped into you in cape town yeah yeah a long time ago it feels like age is going now but you said you said it on that start line you was like i'm gonna i'm gonna win yeah and that kind of and you backed it up there and you backed up everything since yeah so like there's no doubt in my mind that you're going to achieve them things it's just knowing how to get there knowing how to get there can i ask you a question as well what do you what do you think with solos and doubles like do you want to do solos more do you think it affects the doubles time do you have to train more specifically for if i want to do solos i obviously want to do it well like i i want to be very very good but is that going to be at the expense of my running and doubles because i think running in doubles goes really well yeah solos can be slightly different i think it's definitely more of an aerobic sport like it's you you're going 90 all the way yeah not these peaks and troughs that you're kind of like used to like even if you look at like your typical track workout your intervals you might do eight by k you've got 60 seconds rest yeah that's mimicking similar to what you'd be doing in a doubles like you've got kind of like four minutes on a couple of seconds rest yeah then you're going again then you're going again um where with i've had an experience with with the solos that it's the people that are having more success are the ones that have built up this huge engine over years and years and years and uh in like the mid 30s and they're the ones that are training like 12 to 14 hours a week yeah everyone else that's in the elite 15 is training 25 hours a week but they're younger so they're building that base yeah as we go and they're recovering quicker and they're recovering quicker they might be doing more easy volume and stuff like that and i think you personally have just got to ask yourself what suits you better yeah because if you don't enjoy training 25 hours a week no then you you might be more suited for the doubles in my opinion because i think you can get away with i think you can be a better double athlete training you know anywhere between like like you say seven and 12 hours a week yeah and that sits well with the running as well yeah and 10k but did you like similar training time do you did you enjoy when you went and did that marathon block like more than a high rocks block right now i loved the simplicity of it so when you do high rocks yeah there's so many things to think about basically it's like nine different sports all in one like you're trying to perfect your technique on all eight stations plus running and then you've got to manage like the the balance and i don't think many people have got the balance right including myself no you're always kind of like suffering whether you uh over training teacher in that line or like just you feel like you're not doing enough if you're going underneath whereas running it's very simple and proven what works yeah you're running in the morning you run at night yeah you do yeah you get your two or three hard runs a week or hard days a week and and people i know uh i know mitch ammons uh he's a 214 marathoner and he does one hard session a week yeah and everything else is easy so the fact that you can get that good by doing everything easy and just going hard once a week like for me it's so much more simple and it's kind of that's what i loved about the simplest yeah whereas hyrox is a little bit more complex especially because there's you could train a certain way and the outcome you still don't know the only thing i'd say about you like looking at like your high-rex performance is like there's probably so much free fitness you can gain when i say free fitness you've got the fitness but technique wise yeah yeah and that's just because of the exposure that you've had you've not in reality like you look at anyone on either the female start line or the male start line and especially with the doubles no one's got perfect technique the closest is probably alexander ronkovic he's got perfect technique for most things but you could still say his running form isn't the best yeah so for me that's all free fitness that we can all work on yeah and if you if you kind of like spend time doing that and worry less about like the fitness side which i think everyone like focuses on yeah everyone's like we need to train for 25 hours a week yeah but no one's like we need to practice burpees like the actual burpee form and how fast we do them and how how how we can do a burpee with the less least amount of energy yeah like economic like yeah yeah so so i think i think that's where everyone needs to go with high rocks in my opinion uh including myself it's just uh very hard to focus on that because you feel like you're not you are working and you are practicing but you feel i don't know i think it's not as measurable as running yeah and the high rocks is like it's this work hard culture it's this overtraining culture it's this because we all think that it's low skill we think oh all you need is fitness and you'll be all right and that gets you to a certain point yeah but when you actually look at it there's so much skill yeah within high rocks how much skill goes into rowing or ski erging yeah and things like that you've got to do that for everything yeah component so it's like doing i think that's why i don't enjoy high rocks at my like i don't know if it's because we have a bit of bad luck like the two majors we got stung both of them like for not doing it correctly and i think maybe that's got a little bit of like i don't know if i like enjoy this because the outcome of like we could do a really really good performance but like feel bad about it afterwards whereas running like you just don't really feel bad about the outcome ever i think that's because you've not been like penalized i I feel like once you get that great time in high rocks, which you will get, obviously.

1:54:29Once it clicks. Yeah, once it clicks or you, you know, the next one, you get no penalties. Like the next high rocks, you get no penalties. I guarantee you'll like it a lot more. And I'll start to like lean into it a bit more. I'm just really, I've just got a block with it. I think at the moment, that's why I'm just like, oh, yeah. And I've had that. I'll stick to it and like, until we get it right. But you'll smash it. I guarantee you're in that Elite 15 next season. Yeah. I guarantee that. I think you can do really well with the marathon stuff if you choose to do the marathon like have you got any 5 or 10k goals yes so I've got well I'm meant to be doing one in a couple of weeks but it depends like like Butchie has said with his session with illness mine is more I did a key session on Saturday and it wasn't quite where I want it so 3xk 3x800 3x400 um closing speed was really good but like the 1ks weren't strong enough so I wanted like 307s 306s it's got like 309s through 10s it's just that in a 5k so i've got one in two weeks one before high rocks world champs go to sas go with saski i'll hopefully do a doubles there at stockholm hopefully win age category get enough points maybe go on this cruise to get the easy points potentially and then we're done we're locked in for 2027 hopefully would be the dream it's not always going to work like that but that would be the goal for that and then i can focus on maybe um valencia and just not do the London major or do the London major get a really big good block in and then do Seville and then focus on higher like focus on high rocks and training hard from October to December do Seville then take my break so like split it up a different way but as long as I can get either I get my break in September and yeah it depends on what we want to do there but it is hard to figure it out but um I've got to pick and choose based on what we want to do but I'd quite like to get knocked out with Saskia very early so that it's done and the pressure's off.

1:56:23I think there is a benefit for the people that got their ticket to world champs in October last year and the pressure was off. They're smart for doing it in Hamburg and they can train and do a block if they wanted to and race as and when. So hopefully I'll do that on this cruise ship. I don't know. Whatever's going on with this cruise ship. Well, that sounds like a plan. Thank you so much for today, Holly. Yes, thank you. I feel like we could chat all day. Yeah, I know. I don't know how long that's been. How long have we been chatting for? Oh, it's not too bad. Could be worse. Two hours? Something like that, yeah.

1:56:57Oh, my God. We'll love it, though. Bloody hell. That just means that you'll have to come on again. It's like a marathon. We could have done that in a marathon. But, yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Good luck at World Chance for the AFC. Yeah, well, see you there, hopefully. And then, yeah, we'll catch up after that. Yeah, we will. Thank you so much.