Jake Wightman - #40

0:00Jake Wightman, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. For the people that may not know who you are, would you just be able to introduce yourself? So I'm Jake Wightman, I'm a professional 500m runner. In 2022 I was world champion over that distance. Last year in 2025 I was silver medalist over that distance at world champs. And yeah, that's pretty much my story so far. Yeah, no, it's incredible. I've been watching your journey for the last few years on YouTube. yeah for anyone out there that's looking for someone to watch on youtube by the way because i know there's not that many great runners doing youtube i know there's more and more people are getting people are getting big into it i think i was probably nearer the start of it but if people can get on there and give me some views especially but yeah no no sick it is really cool we tried like a lot of it is i guess trying to give yourself the platform to showcase like we're not just runners right i feel like i've got a bit more to add potentially with what i could say so then that's a nice place to do it isn't it yeah no it's incredible um i want to take it back to kind of like the start like how did you get into running uh if i was to describe how it would be i didn't really have too much of a choice both my parents ran so my mom went to olympics in 1988 for the marathon and then my dad went to commonwealth games europeans for the marathon also so that who knows what i'm doing running about one mile when they're both 26 milers um so yeah we were like bred into the sport so our holidays sometimes would revolve around getting taken to watch that athletics event so we went to watch like when I was nine years old the world champs for example in Paris and just loved it so I got into it when I was probably like nine we started doing cross-country which is the route that a lot of kids get into like through school and then I think by 13 I was racing on the track and I was never the best or anything like that but I just loved racing and I still love like the competitive side of it so if you give a competitive 13 year kid um the chance to do a sport they could potentially like win races or do well at it's like perfect i love that element of it and if i could have been that level at football maybe i would have rather have done that but running happened to be what i'm calling that so yeah it's um it's been since probably yeah 10 years old i've been doing this and still going 20 years later has like athletics been like your only sporting background or did you double in football and other things along the way so probably what helped me as a kid is that i played other sports I played a bit of football just within school.

2:23Like at school, we had to play like a bit of rugby and stuff like that. And they probably have like helped me. One, like running can be very lonely and it's a very isolating sport, even when you're young. So it gave me that team element. It's a game, like running and athletics isn't really a game. It's like a very competitive sport that is like physical rather than skill based. So I enjoyed team sports a lot. But then also there's so many different movements, like you're jumping, you're moving side to side, you're accelerating more. So I feel like long term they've helped. and I would love, the one thing I crave about retiring whenever that comes is like playing other sports because I love a lot of sports but I've had to just do this for a very long time so I can't wait to get involved in like five a side, like some paddle tennis, just being able to do as many things as possible.

3:06That's class. When did it start getting kind of like really serious? When did you realise that you've actually got potential in this to be one of the best in the world? I always hoped I could. So I remember saying when I was a teenager, I would just love to get a GB vest and be able to run for my country one day. And then when I was first year of uni, I lived like a student still. So I went out a few times a week. I lived with my mates, didn't look after myself too much. And then we had that summer was the European Junior Championship. So for under 20s, got selected for Great Britain, my first vest.

3:41And then I won it. So I came away European Junior Champion. And then from that, I met the Nike rep and then I signed a deal with Nike. And that was the first time I was like, right, someone's now paying me to do this. And then somebody believes that I'm going to have a future in the sport. So that was the first time I was like, right, well, generally, like if you've got to this point as a junior, you're close enough to then being a senior athlete and then making these senior teams as well. So I've always believed that deep down I could do this. But then that was the first time where I'm like 19 years old where I was like, actually, now this is like a real good opportunity.

4:13so hard to like switch your mindset living with your mates at uni who are going out and like enjoying their final year whereas I just had to knuckle down because you can't have somebody paying you like x amount of money to be doing the sport and then go and just piss about and waste it all so yeah I feel like from there it kind of just was the start of me being like a professional if you if you were to call it that so you're still at uni how did the relationships change like when you got that Nike contract like did you like you said you had to get more serious did you have to like explain to your mates all like look I can't go out with you like two three times a week anymore I've got to buckle down and like take this seriously so I was lucky that within Loughborough where I went my mates were from the athletics club and a lot of them weren't taking it that seriously anymore but all of them would love to be in the situation I was in um so they respected that a lot and my thing would be I'd show my face at pre-drinks uh probably not have anything to drink and then when everyone else went out I'd go home um but I needed that it's like I still need that now like you need social interaction that isn't within the sport you need mates that you can have a laugh about anything else or just chat like crap about stuff not to do your running but my best mates still like really respect and appreciate what I do and they're like probably my biggest fans so it's a great little balance but I knew when I finished uni I had to get myself in like a setup where your whole life is like revolved around everything that is good for your running rather than having stuff that potentially is like a distraction or not great um so then I finished uni and I moved to a place called Tennington in London where there were a lot of professional athletes living just because I felt like that was the right sort of surroundings I needed to try and progress in the sport so you made the active choice to move there so my dad was my coach from 15 uh maybe 14 I don't know it's blurred because my mum was my coach before but I think there was like a bit of control yeah my mum was a teacher a peer teacher at my school so then it made more sense that she was doing that and my dad probably was a bit more of an intense coach my mum so my mum made it so fun and then my dad was a little bit more serious with it so I think it was the right time but yeah it's a challenging dynamic being coached by a parent at that age because there's days like I remember once I slept in beyond when we were men to leave for training and like your coach shouldn't be able to walk in your bedroom and just like bollock you for still being in bed and stuff like that and there's just a bit of a power dynamic but at that point when I was young it was like perfect because my dad could like long-term and I planned my progression from being a kid all the way through.

6:37So it was cool. And then that's why I moved down to London because it was close to him. So then I could be coached with my dad and then have people around to be able to train with as well. Did that ever, like, get so serious, you know, being coached by your dad? Especially because, like you said, he's a little bit more serious than your mum. Did it ever kind of, like, ruin the relationship between you and your dad? Did you ever, like, have some major fallouts? Like, to fast forward, I'm not coaching my dad anymore until 2024. I was coached by him and probably like it wasn't necessarily the intensity of being coached my dad but it was like the stress of how much it meant to like both us with it so I wanted to succeed real bad he wanted to succeed real bad so then when you're getting these injuries which is what I had it becomes very stressful and stuff and there's some athletes that have been coached by parents and they like separate two different personalities where it would be like like Seb Coe who's like a hero of our sport for example would have Peter would be his coach and then dad would be his dad and they were like different names for different people whereas my dad like lives and breathes the sport so for me it's always been a bit more blurred um and it's just the reality of it it's like he he got me so far and to get to that point this had to be like butting heads and had to be periods where I was so good at doing what I was told when I was young but then I felt like I had my own opinions when I got a bit older so then I'd voice them more and then that creates a bit more conflict and not necessarily being a parent or non-parent like you still have those conflicts but you definitely say more knowing that you feel like you can say that to your dad rather than a coach who is just yeah like coaching like professionally rather than being a family member yeah no it's interesting they say um having like that pressure from your parents as well like what did that feel like uh i genuinely not pressure but yeah i mean like they want you to do so well and obviously you do as well you don't want to let them down must come across as a bit of pressure yeah there's i don't know that they've i think my my dad would never say my mom wouldn't be like this my dad would never say that this but i he would always love for someone a kid of his to be in the sport and my brother and sister were out of it pretty quick so i was always the one that was going to be that and i loved it so it was like great for me as well um yeah there's points where like if you have a bad race for example um you're disappointed but because they're your like it's my dad he was like as disappointed and then that's where it's tough because you don't need somebody telling you that they're disappointed when you already feel disappointed in yourself so i remember there was a race once i my dad used to film all my races on like a camcorder and um he'd put it into like home video at the end of the year and his races would go on it as well which is pretty boring for everyone else but he liked it and i sometimes like watching him back but we were re-watching it uh around chris my grandma was sat there as well in this race i'd had a stinker and um he was filming it with 200 to go he just like shouts like like don't fucking give up and then the camera just goes off and it's because I had a stinker and then we all sat there just in silence like watching this but like stuff like that it's just there's a lot of emotion involved in it and I think every coach would have that but yeah you feel like you want to do well because it's like for your family like when they're so invested in it as well it's like means a lot more to them but at the same time when you don't do well it feels a lot more disappointing for everybody so there's definitely bigger highs but also bigger lows having family involved in the setup as well yeah no it's really cool it's uh it's amazing and I could tell like you say you've got kind of like pros and cons to having like your family being so invested and there's I think there's a lot more pros to cons yeah definitely I think it's it's the reason I'm the athlete I am um and I would never have got to the point if it wasn't for both my mum and dad having such a big involvement throughout my whole career is even like making decisions around agents which is like a big thing about like sponsors it's like my dad my dad had been an agent he'd worked for puma in sports marketing he'd coached he was ceo of scottish athletics he'd done every job within the sport he's also like an announcer and commentator but it like best person you could have making you like helping you through these decisions that are pretty overwhelming it's like a kid when there's a lot of different people like trying to tell you different things yeah especially um especially when you come to them contracts yeah because everyone's trying to get the most out of you yeah and uh sometimes it's not all for the the best of the athlete no you need to protect yourself yeah there's a lot of things especially when you're a kid it's like your eyes can light up at things that in the long term aren't the best but like short term are like flexes or like stuff that look great um so yeah having someone that had been an agent was great and it's like i've been with my agent my pretty much my whole career and my dad was the one who like set me up with him and stuff so it's like even that it's like knowing who the good guys are and the bad guys for example like there's a lot of people that are in that side of the sport for the wrong reasons whereas I was guided to a pretty good one pretty early yeah that's good what did it feel to be taken on by one of the biggest brands in the world Nike uh I didn't have the best experience with them so but like the initial kind of yeah it was such a buzz like when I first got my first drop of shoes and stuff um I was like man this is sick like even if it was like four pairs of shoes like this is amazing and my thing was that I was a developing athlete and then within that brand I was like one of a lot so I didn't probably get uh I didn't have the best experience I wasn't running as well as I should have done so then for me like when that contract came up for example I then signed with new balance so i'm with now and i've had like an amazing time so just that period in my career it was very exciting and i i really like enjoyed how i was treated at the start and then i was treated well at the end but i just didn't deserve any more than i was getting because i wasn't running quite as well but just like having a brand like head to toe and knowing that especially at uni when there's people that are wearing just like hand-me-downs or like kit they've had for years and years and you're getting like a new pair of shoes every month it's like pretty cool cool thing you take for granted like even now it's like when I get a drop from New Balance it's like sometimes like not sure about that I don't like the color or I'm not sure if I'd wear that and you're like what a dickhead like he's getting like free stuff and I'm saying I don't know if I'll wear this whereas like you ask eight-year-old me like about that and you'd be buzzing just to get one t-shirt wouldn't you yeah no it's it's incredible and do do you have to like pinch yourself sometimes and like I don't know obviously you work hard and you deserve everything that you've got but like you're in a pretty privileged position yeah it's it's cool like I think at the end of my career I look back I'm like man that is sick that I've got to even the point of like having a brand that trusts me and like especially like new bands have been so good to me with like how I've looked after me and like valued me so I take it and I had years where a couple years where I didn't race and I was still getting paid by my sponsor and it's like that's a funny one because you're like ah like you feel a bit of like a fraud almost you're you've got this brand in your corner that's like treating you so well still but then you're not doing what they're in theory signing you to do um so that was a tough one where you almost feel like you're like robbing from them a little bit so you've got to add value in other ways but yeah it's definitely like one that we take for granted um and it's the one thing when you go and speak to kids it's like the one thing that they're obsessed with almost is like being sponsored and you're like oh like whatever it is what it is but that's just because we've had it for a long time but when i was that age i was like how cool to have a brand that will give you an unlimited amount of kit um and i remember there was like when i when i was with nike when i was younger and i was i think i was 20 i did a race in the us in eugene called like the pre-classic and it's the home of nike and we went to the nike outlet store like the staff store and they gave us this mad budget and we were walking around with these trolleys and you could literally just get anything from all these shelves put them in and you would not even come close and there was all these athletes i'd watched growing up like doing exactly the same thing because I was like that is just like a fever dream that like at 20 years old I was in a position where you can literally just have like what you want from this this brand that you probably would have like given anything to to be able to do at any point yeah what made you uh pick the 1500 uh I'd say if you ask like most people in athletics they'd say the event picks them but like what's Harry Potter's one shot probably like that where at some point it's like it chooses you so I was never going to be a shot par um I was never going to be a sprinter my mum and dad probably would have expected me to be a bit of a longer distance athlete but I was fortunate that potentially from playing other sports that I had this natural speed and my mum and dad would argue that they had more speed than they showed but their marathon just like took it out of them a little bit so I just had a few races when I was growing at like 16 or 17 where I had this change of pace that meant I could like close well in these races so I had most success over that when I was a kid like you race I raced like a few 100s 200s 400s 800s 1500s 3ks cross country and like the 1500 has always been the one where I felt like I had the most ability in and also like the most confidence when I raced which is a big thing so for me I love the fact that my tension span isn't the best so like three and a half minutes of running it's like you can lock in and concentrate and i would say if you haven't watched much athletics but you're watching any event like the 1500 is probably one of the most exciting there's a bit of like it's almost like chess where there's so many different ways this race can be ran and there's so many different athletes on the start and out of the 12 people who want the race to be run a certain way and you're all trying to influence it to have that same outcome um so i just i just think it's class i love it and what is your time what's your pb so mine's 329 um and then 347 for the mile is my pb but it's moved on a lot we were saying it earlier it's like the four minute time from roger bannister was like really really like i don't know like hard to reach for a long long time and then especially with new technology the last few years there's so many people have gone under that and then it's probably in the men's event become 350 so then if you run under 350 now it's like like you're like one of the top like certain percent within the professional side or elite side of the sport so it's like any sport he just moves on well if he was racing roger bannister back in the day what time do you think you get wearing what he was wearing oh because obviously like you say you've got super shoes now um like everything's become more serious like say you focus a lot more on your recovery nutrition you've got i suppose like you know sort of ice bath uh normal tech boots whatever like all these things weren't really readily available then yeah yeah it's like maybe sauna but uh yeah they do something they do something i think it's like like roger banister couldn't go on an outreach training camp to flagstaff or ego for example or like if you took those things away it'd be different like we've learned so much since he ran that um four minute or like sub four minutes but i don't know you you've you've got to think that you're a good athlete with talent that could have done well in any era um I train on a cinder track even now and it is so slow compared to what we have now with the tartan tracks and like there's even different types of the tartan tracks so the orange stuff you'd see that's even quicker um so I wouldn't be the best time trial is what I'd say that's not my strength I'm like a championship racer so I think I'd have to like latch on to the back of him and try and kick past but I don't think people realize like how mad those lap splits are like even now like the average runner like to run 60 second laps is so tough of a 400 meter track and he was doing quicker than that back in what was it 19 I don't want to get it wrong but I think it was 1950 something um it's so hard to comprehend so I think he would have had me yeah no I uh I I kind of I don't know I don't know like you say you've got to believe in yourself and you've got to think uh but um that's the funny thing with even like world records you can't compare like era to era there's so many things like if you took i know like uh max verstappen in his peak of f1 against airton center of his peak in f1 like verstappen is going to absolutely like spank him and even like if you took fred perry in tennis like from back in the day against a prime like roger federer like there's just so many different variables with how we train probably more than the technology even that just makes them incomparable for like different eras what does a typical like week of training look like for you how many miles are hitting so i i run like quality over quantity probably so in the winter i'd get probably between 60 and 70 um and that'd be made up of three session days so in the winter it'd be like a steady run on a monday which is like i work in miles not case that's just what i've grown up doing so the translation is a bit tough for me but it'd be like uh around 5 45 550 milen which i'm not even sure it'd be sub four minute k's or something um for like up to seven miles we do like drills and then we'll do on a tuesday like hills and tempo gym in the tuesday evening wednesday i always cross train in the morning just because that's one thing the older i get i've learned i need a bit of recovery from these session days and that is that literally a cross trainer yeah so i think if if you're looking to either supplement or replicate if you're injured running uh like the elliptical trainer for cross training is like as close as you'll get like i don't even use the arms because if i can use my arms if i'm running it feels like it replicates it even more and you want to keep your cadence high and then you can also because you're not got the impact like bring your heart rate a little bit higher than you would for just an easy run because you want to get like a bit more stimulus from it um so do that twice a week on a wednesday and a friday so you're saying when you do it you hold the middle bit just run my arms so like run with your arms yeah so you don't hold anything and you it's a funny feeling started with the balance but if you're like on the high enough resistance you'll have enough to be able to control it and stuff and i think it's it's it's so undervalued cross training you see a lot of athletes in our sport now going out on a bike it's just a free hit of aerobic training without having the impact that running is like running is so bad for you like joints and bones and tendons just get strained so much and especially when we're running hard on session days if you can have a day where you're still working the heart and lungs you're still getting a sweat on but you're giving that skeleton and your your body a rest like that's a great thing it's something I've learned over the years is that by doing that I can get more intensity out of my harder days because I'm taking my easier days like a lot easier for myself interesting so uh so that's monday tuesday onto wednesday cross training in the morning cross train a little prehab routine and then a run in the evening thursday we double with a speed session in the morning so that'll be in the winter it will be like 60 meters broken up like up to 90s of like getting close to top end speed with a lot of drills and then in the summer that'll be more like 150s 200s or for long recovery so for my event you have to be a really good balance of speed and endurance so that's the thing all year round that keeps your speed so that if you don't keep that in the winter then you end up hurting yourself in the summer because it's just too big a jump for your body for your muscles and your tendons to survive and then accompany that with a threshold session in the evening so that'll be case of like varying uh volume so maybe up to like eight or ten in the winter time um friday either rest every few weeks or cross train and then Saturday will be a longer session so that'll be uh potentially like something on the track or like something on the roads like longer reps of short recovery another gym session a long one Sunday and then like a bit of active recovery in the evening like a swim or bike and the only thing that changes in summer is those running volumes will like drop so we'll run a couple miles shorter the sessions will be shorter but a bit quicker and they'll both be probably track sessions by the time the summer comes so you're building the big base in the winter and then keeping like speed on maintenance yep and then you're kind of switching that when it comes to summer yeah you're doing the winter is just about it's like baking the cake really if you were to use an analogy for it and then the spring and the summer but I would say like spring is probably icing that cake and the summer is decorating it if I was to put it in even further terms just the hardest point in the year is spring when you're transitioning from this like slower big volume stuff to then doing faster intensity stuff it's just a big shock for your body but yeah there's there's not really many secrets to it it's the average person who say even it's like training for a marathon there's a lot of the weeks that will replicate what we do as middle distance runners it's just that we have the top end of it as well that is I think fun that it's a lot funner than just going out and doing like tempo or threshold stuff and I hope that with the amount of people that have taken up running and taken up half marathons like 10ks like I also think there's like a gap in the market for people to hit like hard 1ks or hard miles and 1500s it's just a very different system like you're trying to buffer lactic is what we have to do so we're in say a lot of like the training you do a threshold or like longer training you're trying to keep your lactate as low as possible um ours is all about having it as high as possible being able to like manage it that high so you're keeping it there but you're buffering that the feeling of it almost so we get up to like 15 millimoles of lactate but we still have to look like we're running as if we start the session and just be able to control that so there's a very different game how do you even manage that like it must be painful like 15 millimoles must feel like hell yeah i've hit 25 is my biggest 25 that's like that's a coma that's like you're not moving for a while after that so they're like proper speed endurance sessions so you'll be running what session was that that you hit 25 on uh so i think i did that off of like four 400s off of five minutes at like it'd be hard if you don't understand uh the paces but it'd be like 50 second roughly like 400 meter pace which yeah it's like I can't even put it into case it's like our first lap of an 800 um and then five minutes later you'll come and do that again four times so then you're just by the end of it you're just like heavy legged and numb and then you're still trying to come out and be able to run it and then you're just swimming by the end of it with not much control and it's not even when you finish straight away it's like a few minutes after where it slowly just creeps up and up and up and then the worst you can do is like lie down right and then that's all you want to do so I think it's for me I love that feeling like when it's gone well and you're crippled by lactic and you're feeling sick or you're like dizzy and light-headed like I love that feeling because it's like so satisfying I find that a much easier thing to do than try and like keep my lactate down at I don't know like three millimoles over like a long period like for me spanking reps and putting your lactate as hard as possible is is a much easier thing to do yeah no is that one of the hardest sessions that you've done or what was the hardest session of the week for you so in the wintertime hills is tough because hills is almost like a similar feeling with but with more volume so then you've got a feeling like that not to that extreme but you've got feeling like that and you've still got five hill reps for example whereas you can break it down mentally in your head when you have these four rep sessions or five rep sessions but I really don't like longer reps so I would find uh sell it hard 1200s like we do 1200s on the track so three laps of track where each lap might get a bit quicker or we do broken up broken up sessions where you'll run like uh I don't know like a 500 and then you'll run 100 uh meters at like three minute k's is like a recovery and then you'll go straight into like a 300 and then you do another three minute 100 uh three minute pace 100 and you do a 200 at the end of it like stuff like that where it's just aerobic that's my weakness because i come from like very anaerobic side of the sport so yeah there's i think that'd be anyone's weakness when uh you're running recovery pace at three minute k's yeah it's it's enough to like feel like you've got a little bit back but still feels like you have to force the recovery so it's really good for you like it's really good to be in that position for our event because it helps you like buffer like you're clearing a little bit of lactate but you're still keeping it high enough that you're teaching your body to withstand these high levels of lactate and I find it really hard to do the opposite where we'll only last couple years I've started doing threshold and my ability is just to like push it as hard as possible and like that feels good for me so for me to really keep it low I have to properly back off and it's taken a couple years to finally build up to a point where it stays around two or three millimoles and i'm running the pace i want to i had to like swallow a lot of pride and just teach my body to get used to that what pace is that for you roughly like two or three millimoles uh so we'll be like around like average probably 305 k's on like a cinder track like doing that and that's probably where i can keep it yeah yeah just just if this sport is full of different beasts and no i have a lot of respect for people that can keep their minimal down at one for example and be running quicker than i'm like that is just like infathomable for me because my body just doesn't work that way yeah for for someone that's like wanting to get into uh like track and field and especially like the distances that you run like for say for example if i tried it if i just went out and did your week of training like you just said there i'd i'd be injured within a week like literally probably because of like all the sprint work and all the um like i say if i was to do that session uh like the you know four by four hundreds with five minutes rest yeah like my my legs would just i don't know my hamstrings would just fall off i think yeah the the reality of it would probably be because you haven't run at those paces you'd struggle to run hard enough to get that feeling so if we were to do that in winter when we haven't touched much speed work you wouldn't actually get that feeling because the only reason you get is because you're running able to run these paces but if you can't run those paces you actually probably would feel better doing it so it's like only a certain part of the year to try that and a lot of it is like um like speed work feels good so i think a lot of people would actually enjoy like 1500 meter training better than they would enjoy 5k training it would be about how would you start it though right you would go down uh like hills is a great way to start it so short 30 second hills jog back recovery you would start with maybe eight of them just taking the pace like so that it feels like you're working hard but you're feeling fully recovered by the time you're getting back and then the hard bit of it wouldn't be you wouldn't be out of breath it would be your legs starting to like wobble and they're starting to feel heavy so that's the feeling that we have to train is like lactic like building in your legs so that is that is like what a hill rep would do and then you can progress that into going down your local track and doing a 200 and then jogging a 200 back to the start slowly like that that's like simple speed work and you have to just not reset yourself any time goals with it just like feel it out so it's hard for me to say like these are the pace you should be doing because everyone's speed is so different um it's just working out for yourself and even taking lactates you wouldn't get it because it could be so different on different days like only if you're really really maxing it out and there's a lot of opportunities i don't think people probably realize if they've gotten into running later there's a lot of opportunities to test over these distances like every track in the country probably at some point has an open graded meeting where you could just go up put your name down sign up and they'll put you with people that have run or aiming to run similar times you go out and race and that could be teenagers in the same race as like fully grown adults like both male and female and I think there's like a market for for people that maybe don't feel like they're necessarily an endurance athlete but they feel like they might enjoy the speed stuff more to find those sort of opportunities and your local athletics club has groups that provide those sessions so that you don't even have to think about it and i think there'll be more coaches popping up that provide sessions and weeks that revolve more around middle distance training it's like even like the high rock stuff like that probably would condition people to be better middle distance athletes than 5k 10k runners i think um there's a lot of people if you like the gym if you like being strong you can actually benefit from being like that by doing our events rather than five and ten case it is interesting you say that like you said it's great that there are clubs out there that are doing these open days where you can go down and you can test but they're not advertised anywhere no it's a one of my biggest problems with the sport at the moment is there's it's the same sport running running is running that's the end of the day and there's no I don't believe anyway that a lot of the people who are competing in the profession there's no like elitism about it it's just the fact that it's our jobs and it's still the same week that people would go out and do and it'd be great if people found their local athletics clubs and realized that that was an option and it's a bit of a struggling setup at the moment because there's probably not as many kids for example that are doing it and staying in the sports it's hard but there's got to be the option for people to find these sessions so whether that's the run clubs uh that people are part of within cities are like doing track nights that catered more towards speed i'm a big advocate for that i would love to help people almost do that because i think there's a there's so many people that would enjoy middle distance training and that anaerobic side of the sport rather than the aerobic so you can go to if you wanted to find an athletics club you can go to like england athletics website and you can search for a club near you and they're very welcoming there's a lot of opportunities even to compete in leagues if you enjoy the racing side but if you just wanted to rock up once or twice a week and find like a little community that is doing the same sort of speed training there's there's loads of them out there yeah that's good do you think you'll uh ever like make your own or like later down the line kind of would that be your way of giving back maybe opening up some form of like coaching for the 1500 meter i think so if there if there was like a market for people to want to do that and like if there isn't that if i can be one to create that i think it'd be sad to have been the sport this long and done what I've been able to do in it which I'm like obviously very lucky but and not give back and like share what I've learned so yeah if there's coaching platforms down the line that at the moment I probably can't give enough time to it just because I'm still selfishly focused on my own running but if I can be able to at the end of it like give back to others and you want to see your event like thrive and that doesn't mean people making Olympic games necessarily and like compete at the top of sport that also means people like appreciating the event and enjoying the event themselves at whatever level that is then that'd be great and imagine like we have like road miles for example in this country like there's one in london called the westminster mile that is a mass mass participation road mile um if more of them could pop up and you give people a chance to go out and have a hard hit out over like less than 10 minutes of running and that's great because for me that's like a different part of the sport that a lot of people really really would enjoy getting into yeah no i'd love to say i've just never seen any about and um obviously you mentioned there that um most clubs are really welcoming my experience has been a little bit different okay i've um like when you try and like go down to these athletic clubs um they've got like a middle distance group yeah yeah but like i don't know i don't know if it's just the running scene at the moment but like they're not eager to be like advertising it or eager to be like having people come down yes when you go down and like you force your way in there everyone's really nice yeah but i don't think i think it should be easier than that and i think there should be a little bit more out there for and like ease for people to actually get into the sport yeah because i i don't know about you but like anyone that goes to these athletics meets they've been doing athletics since they're a kid not or for teenage years they might have come in but there's nobody like that is 25 years old that has just suddenly got into athletics or there's very few people i don't know have you seen many people that have i would say like i'm i have a different like experience because i grew up with that setup and then for example now if i went down to a club um a lot of them would like love the fact that like we would be down there for example and it would be very welcoming for other reasons um i do think that's the impression that most people get and whether or not that is just because they're a bit closed doors and like whether they're not as welcoming to like people into the sport as much as they should be like that could be the case a little bit but i think that's what i think genuinely that's one of the reasons that run clubs and brands are doing so many run clubs and they're so successful because people are wanting to run yeah and people are wanting to get together and but there's there's nothing really out there yeah so brands came in and and there's a run club every single week or every single day if in a big city like manchester london yeah i think i think it needs to be it needs to be taken away from a lot of especially like like i'm saying athletics is very much like people do it when they're kids and then not that many people carry on beyond uni and stuff like that and they almost formed their little cliques by that point um and a lot of it doesn't have to always be around racing like racing is great that that's what the athletics clubs are there for is like the competing side but i'd love it if it was seen as just like an open invite for people that if they don't necessarily want to race but they want to do that sort of training which even people within athletics probably like that but they race because they feel like they have to but they actually probably enjoy the training more like that should be a space that welcomes everybody i would love to be a bridge between that because i love the fact that everyone is like finding this like joy and running and realizing that it's actually like a very good sport both for you like physically and mentally like i would love to be a bridge that if anyone wants to come down i could if i could host nights where we actually do a bit more like speed endurance work and middle distance work and that helps the clubs realize that people just want to run but there's not there's no real like there's no real ulterior motives people just enjoy running and want to get better so therefore I hope that the clubs are more welcoming to that um I can't comment too much because I just haven't haven't seen it from my side but I'd hope my club Edinburgh AC for example I'd hope if people went down there and hadn't done the sport but asked about joining in and being able to link in with groups I hope they would be welcoming but I'm sure the nature of some sports is that and some clubs is maybe they're a little bit scared of what they're going to bring or like scared of change as itself like it's quite an introverted sport yeah the average person that does running they're quite introverted yeah would you say i would say that obviously you're not but that's one of my biggest things is that i train on my own quite a lot and i i don't enjoy that because i i love the sport from when i was a kid because i was with my mates training for example and like that's the same reason why people love a run club like anyway it's like you just want to meet your mates and just work hard but also have a good time sharing that hard work with people and then afterwards if that means you have to go home or you can still hang out like that's class um but yeah running is like an individual sport and like it's probably a funny spot where like you're a kid and it's like about being with your mates doing it as like a group and the social side and then on our side on the professional side it's about being with a group that you can chat about anything but running when you're away from the track you drag yourself through hard sessions and you like go through these seasons and make teams and champs with people and then there's this bit in the middle probably where people work hard jobs and i don't know whether it's they just want a sport where they can just crack on with it on their own and not have to like worry about small talk necessarily it's like it attracts people from like who just don't necessarily want to speak to anyone but also love people it's a very mixed bag um it's what i would say so it's just making so it's definitely an interesting um time i think within athletics and i think uh it's getting a lot more popular yeah i get frustrated by it because it's like it's like even people that don't watch athletics i'm like it's running it's like the same thing and we're we're all doing the same sport different distances like different speeds that's the only thing that changes with it and there is no like us and them it should all just be like if you want to get better at certain distances like you go to these places or whatever it should just be one big thing but there's definitely athletics and then there's running at the moment it feels like there there's like not enough probably cohesion between the two which we're trying to like improve that we started shameless plug with this but we started a coffee brand to try and bring that together where I'm a professional athlete that might seem like you're from that side of sport where it's like a bit elitist and like might not be as welcoming but I want to show people that if we can come and bring our coffee to like a run club or an event like we're just the same people like that enjoy like seeing others do the sport and like can go for a run with like anybody like just I just hope that that and like other ways of like doing it like bring a community together that comes from like every single part of the sport within the running bubble I guess or the running sphere how is the coffee brand doing it's good it's it's exciting to have something else that is not just running like it's so all-consuming so like you need a lot of space uh in your head for the sport to think about like being the best athlete you can be but there's also a lot of downtime and a lot of uh spare thinking time to be able to like work towards other things so part of it is like preparing for the afterlife with not being a professional and having to do another job and earn an income from somewhere else so it's that but then genuinely the reason I I started it and with Zach said and who's another athlete and like a good mate like we just felt like yeah it's like a training tool for running like coffee like a lot of athletes will have it before because it gets you up and it just gets you ready but more than anything it brings people together after like if you can go and sit and have a coffee like after you've ran like that's the best thing like connect over the running through like the social element when you're actually not training is the main reason we wanted to get this going have you have you had any struggles along the way so you actually started that like what like a year ago now it was like three years ago in the planning but it took a while yeah it was hard a year ago made the fact it took two years to between planning and launching shows that we had a bit of struggle along that way but we're proud of it and it's it's you want to you want to give people something that they enjoy which is good coffee but also like i love when people see like the brand and like the branding and they're like oh that's cool because it's got a personality which again it's like if a runner feels like they can relate themselves to our brand because the person on the packaging is a runner or that we've got like a cyclist and we're having like a weight lift if you can relate to that and you can feel like there's a community associated with that within it that's the main thing so if I can be the figurehead of that I'd like to I'd like to try and bring a few people together that's cool have you uh done any cool things with the brand so far so we're we're partnering with team scotland for commonwealth games so that's pretty cool like within the first year um so then every athlete within commonwealths would have received like a custom team scotland bag and a cup and then we launched with alex yi um a decaf or yi caf it's branded as or called because he doesn't drink caffeine so we wanted to show that like alex for example has his own coffee story about not drinking caffeine but also like bring an athlete in that can give their own personality towards it so we're like using it with his charity like we're uh using a roastery from where he's from like just just give your own like story to it and then if somebody's actually fan they can be part of that story as well by getting involved with our coffee and we just want to bring it to as many people as possible so we hope that if there's run clubs out there that want to do something with the brand like we're so open to that and if there's events like that want to do something with us we'd love to just be part of it and like we want to be a brand like a event enhancer i would say like if we can come to an event we can make it better by not only just bringing good coffee but like bringing ourselves and like a a bit of like a presence would be cool just a good time hopefully that's what we're all here for in this world in a short life we're all here for that way yeah let's see um moving on to kind of like uh your recent years of competing how's it been like like you said you've you've achieved some great things talk to us about that yeah i've had and up until 2022 i had a very very uneventful like journey in the sport i made my first olympics in tokyo uh i every year got better and better um didn't have a great olympic experience um because of covid like multiple reasons like it was like you think of a kid like what the olympic games is like it's stadium just full of people like a village that is popping like all this like amazing amazing like i guess like a spectacle and a show and we just didn't get that at all like I arrived in the village and half it was shut because it was so near the end and as soon as you competed you had to leave the next day the stadium was empty it was just my dad's voice in there and like a few members of staff and I also just didn't have the best outcome I was 10th in a final where I'd hoped to get a medal for example and that really like made me go away and look on it and think wow there's a few things that I need to do here and we have a guy in our sport called Jakub Ingebrigtsen who if you followed athletics tour you'll know who he is and he was just like the dominant figure and was winning every race so then the way he would run because he's a 5k guy rather than an 800 guy like me and the 15 like meets in the middle for that um he would just take out hard and like three rounds in a row of that hard um and I knew I needed to get better at that so I went over through my winter after the Olympics and just got better aerobically did more endurance um and then came back out in 22 and two at a world champs and believe that I've done everything I possibly could to be the best athlete I could um went to the final said to myself or said to my dad like if I had a chance here to try and take the lead and try and win a world champs final is that the right thing to do and my doubt was that I didn't even get a medal last year in the Olympics so like why would I not try and just run safe to get a medal but you just don't know how many opportunities like that you get so I had an opportunity in the final of the world champs to hit the front and I took that and then as a result I became world champion in 2022 which that still is something that I think I take for granted now it's like you've reached the very top of the sport and you had a title that is so cool isn't it like to say something in the street like you're world champion of anything um it's pretty cool yeah well that is the pinnacle like you say uh year on year that is the pinnacle like what else would there be obviously Olympic jumper it comes around every four years like um you were the best in that year that's the thing if and if it was the year later or the year before sorry i would have been olympic champion it was the same people and i thought that was the following years was going to be just coming back doing the same thing over and over again and i always like use the analogy of our sport it's like if i was in football i'd have been signing for real madrid that season that would have been i'd have signed for real madrid that would have been like wow like this is like your career sorted and i'd be three years four years playing the champions league like winning la liga um but our sport is it resets every year and you have to work so hard every single winter to get back to that point and for me like working hard meant getting even better than the year before like other people were getting better um the bar was moving higher and higher so i ended up getting injured in that 2023 year and i didn't race at all so there's a lot of impact on that like financially it's the biggest earning year you probably have is the year after you win a title because every race will pay you a good bit of money to appear um you just paid to race at like dano league and stuff like that or yeah yeah like or is it just like prize money so the way our sport works is there's multiple income streams and the first one that people would get probably is like uh national national lottery funding so like from your governing body so that will be the base amount to live off so if you're on a certain level in your event they will put you on funding and then they'll give you enough to make sure you survive and then on top of that you then get your sponsor which is your shoe sponsor will be your biggest earner by far um and then if you earn a certain amount you then lose that lottery funding because it's like well you earn enough in your own right so then you lose that funding to live which is fair enough fair enough because it's like means tested it's whatever and then if you then get good enough you'll then on top of that you'll race and you get prize money finish finish in a certain position and then your sponsor will also pay you a bonus for finishing certain positions as well and achieving certain times so you get bonuses and then if you eventually get to the point where you're a name in the sport then the diamond league or like even smaller meets than that will then pay for you to race so you'll get an appearance fee and that's regardless of how you perform it's like the only criteria is that you finish the race but obviously if you don't run well then your value of appearance fees will go down and we'll get bigger appearance fees at certain locations so like london you get a bigger fee because it's a home uh home diamond league and you're a bigger name than london and if it's an event where they're trying to push it you might get a bigger one so that's how we earn in theory the sport and then you'll have other sponsors on top of that that'll add to it um because a lot of people ask that when you're like what do you do for a living you're like i run it's like well how do you get paid to run and like you get paid so many ways now you could be a like run an influencer and you could earn an income from it but as is all just from performance based so it's like my contract probably wouldn't change much regardless of how many followers i had on social media it's all about do i go on the start line at championships and do i get a medal in new balance spikes for example no it's completely different to high rocks yeah high rocks is completely different at the moment um my question would be do you get do you have to pay for your own travel and accommodation to these big events or is it all covered it's actually changed a little bit now so the governing bodies don't have as much money so every now and then people do have to pay but for us when we go to a world champs olympics like everything's covered uh medical is all covered so if we need a scan and you're on funding or if you need to see the doctor or anything like that like those appointments are all covered um we have travel budgets within our sponsors as well that cover training camp costs or like if fortunately for me like every meet probably i go to will cover my travel costs to and from but if a meet didn't like my travel budget within my sponsor would probably pay for that and then this is all managed by an agent so then I have for example like a commercial agent who does away from the running side like my other stuff like if that's appearances that like with companies or other sponsors they sort that and then my race agent will sort my appearance fees my shoe contract and then they'll take like a percentage every time you get paid for that stuff so it's quite a simple sport like the i don't know how in hyrox it works whether an agent does that for you you do it yourself but for us we don't have to think about much we just do as we're told and then we get paid every so often yeah no uh in hyrox it works a little bit different we've got to pay for every event so if you're in the elite field you get given five free tickets a year but we have to race up to up to maybe 10 15 times um so you've got to pay for some of your tickets if that makes sense so you pay for your tickets and then um you will also have to pay for your travel accommodation everything like that to every event so i feel like a lot of people in the elite 15 like they they invest so much to get into the elite 15 that they've either got to make that money up by working coaching or like say through sponsorships so like a shoe brand or clothing brand or something like that so there would never be like a champs hotel or like a meeting hotel for people so so for example this world champs that's next week puma have put up some athletes in a hotel and given them like a free accommodation yeah for the actual athlete um but that's uh just puma athletes yeah that's mad like because that's the bare minimum probably in our sport is you go to meet and they'll have a hotel for you like and whether that hotel is awful it's like a and like the food's terrible but there's like the basic yeah requirement is you we have people coming from like eastern african countries that are coming from nothing so i think that's probably plays into it as well it's just like that there's a lot of people that wouldn't be able to like do this sport if they didn't get a hotel room and like food and their travel paid for but i thought high rocks had moved towards that more no yeah it's interesting it is really interesting yeah and then uh obviously you get prize money if you if you win yeah uh but it's like top three and then yeah would your top five bonuses be from the sponsor based on like finish positions and stuff obviously every i can't talk for anyone else in the sport but you you will get uh some competition bonuses like that that's generally like how brands work because at the end of the day for a brand if I'm if I've got a pot of money that I have for all my athletes if I say if I can reduce how much I pay them monthly yeah but increase how much they get for winning then that's a no-brainer because only a certain amount of people can win yeah yeah so they can take on more people yeah um so and I know that happens in running a lot as well like people like the bigger brands they pay less per month so like for a retainer yeah and then they have more bonuses for kind of like winning and stuff like that so um but obviously if you're the argument that i have when i go to kind of like brands and and try and negotiate um and i have a manager like you but i've had to do that myself like you have so it's very similar in that way like you don't have to have a manager if you don't want to um but obviously they take a cut yeah there's also there's a few different reasons why I think like I would never not like a lot of it is they know the market don't they and they know like what people are worth a bit better than you potentially but it's hard to sell yourself yeah it's just also like if you burn a bridge because you fall out over a communication or like a negotiation it's like are they gonna then like begrudge you and is that gonna come around to bite whereas if an agent falls out with them like there's no hard feelings towards you is there it's like the the hard conversations if they're done by somebody else protects your reputation in the sport amongst others a bit yeah no it definitely makes sense in my eyes and uh but you've just got to get the right agent do you know um so i feel like with with athletics and especially like the the people that are making teams and like compete on the diamond league there is probably not much taken into account beyond like the performance and it's just the nature of it is like you're a big name in the sport and you're competing and therefore you have a bigger following from that and then you're more marketable because you're a bigger name to compete.

53:12Whereas I feel like in High Rocks, is it still there's people that would be getting good contracts at the Elite 15 who are just a bigger personality rather than a better performer? Is it like a lot more driven by what's being seen online as well? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. At the end of the day, like you've got to be sellable. Yeah. If you look at a brand, say Puma, I go to Puma because they're the footwear sponsor for High Rocks and clothing sponsor as well. so um if they're looking at taking on athletes like for me like the number one thing is are they going to be a good return on investment uh is someone going to look at them and say i want a pair of pumas because they're racing in pumas and if they're if they don't like shoot the picture and if they're not a good role model or sellable or aspire aspiring for other people or inspiring then they're they're not going to get the return on investment so they're probably paying less compared to someone else.

54:09So there's a lot of people in the sport that probably get paid more because they've got followers. Yeah. And they've got a big... It's not followers, but they have more influence. Yeah. There's definitely... Athletics is going more like that, I feel. But there's still probably a way to go where it's the names that win in our sport. What would you prefer it be? I'd prefer it to be performance-based because then I can just focus on being the best athlete I can be. And it's almost like your responsibility when you get to that point though, to then be more accessible to people is how I would say it feels.

54:46So it's like, because you are competing at the top of your sport, it feels like you should give people the access in. And it's like our duty as a job to do that. But I never feel like, like Nubank's been great. Like when I got injured and I wasn't competing, they didn't reduce me or anything like that. They still kept me on the same contract, which wasn't in the terms. like in theory they should have reduced me and um for me it's like that's the problem is that you feel worthless when that happens because I feel like all my value is based upon stepping on the track and racing well and maybe that's because we see ourselves differently to how others do like you forget sometimes that we're so used to the sport and there's kids that watching it who think it's like the coolest thing we do and then maybe do a bit of youtube and like a bit of social media and people like actually value that a lot more than you realize but I still think that within athletics at like the the top end of it is the the people that are winning are the ones that are still getting everything uh towards it for sure i definitely agree with that i think the people that are winning should be paid the most yeah i think that's definitely because that's they deserve that but And similarly, yourself, you're not having a good year in 2023.

55:55Yeah. If you decide, and you can go one or two ways about this, you could get, you know, not have a good year and not make up for any of, like, not competing or whatever. Or you could think of, right, okay, I'm having a bad time here, but I'm going to document my journey back to the top. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to document my struggles and how shit I feel right now and how shit it is, the reality of it, and that I am human. And then you can then get back to the top, hopefully. And if you can document that, you're going to inspire so many more people than someone just winning it year after year after year after year.

56:29Yeah, I do think that's probably when I, so I came back, I had two years of injuries in 23 and 24. so I got picked for the Olympic Games in 2024 and then I got injured the week before in my last session I tore my hamstring yeah so I didn't go to Paris Olympics no way and you just tore so there's a bit more like to it I just got you get in this merry-go-round of injuries and I tore my calf before the trials for the Olympics so then for 1500 which is my main event I couldn't go but then they could pick me in a spot for the 800 and then I had a few weeks off with this calf that I tore and then by getting back and trying to get ready for an 800 I just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed so my body was on the edge and then it was my last session before going in I injured myself but I had those two years and then I came back last year and I came within two hundreds of a second of winning world champs again and then the biggest overwhelming like messages of like congrats and like story was what I'd been through the previous years and that was because like it meant a lot more didn't it it was like the story of being injured for two years having won Worlds and then had two years of no competing pretty much to then nearly winning Worlds again was like a much better story so there is a lot of storytelling that will add to your value and you see now like in the running space especially it's like people are just they're not necessarily fans of the performance they're fans of the people in the journey now which I think that's great it's like everyone's got a lot of stories to tell but there is still a lot of pressure on us to like perform at a certain level and you feel that pressure every single year like not to the point where it's crippling, but to the point where you feel like you have to almost earn your value when you compete.

58:08And that's the overriding feeling of where we're getting paid for. But at the end of the day, that keeps you on your game. It keeps the sport getting better and better and better. If them athletes at the top weren't rewarded, then the top athletes would let off. They'd be like, oh, well, okay. I don't think, honestly, in any sport, I think people take for granted that these dominant athletes that win every single time like that is so hard like both mentally and physically to always be at your best and then even on a bad day still perform like that i was going to ask that with the 1500 meter like how like if you're one percent off how far down the pack say if you're the best in the world if you're one percent off how far down the pack are you like it's like fitness and health and everything like that like the the most important thing or can you just like mentally pushed through it no you've got you've got to be fit it's like it's so physical and you can't really like hide from that and in the 1500 now it is so competitive that we've had since uh 2021 every single year has been a different global champion in our events so there's been five different uh champions from like and you couldn't predict who it's going to be every single time and jacqueline britson who was dominating our sport for a long time would win every single week of the diamond league but then he hasn't won a global champ since 2021 which shows like the edge is mental almost when it comes to champs as well and it's just like different assets with it so if you can a lot of it is like you're all able to run within a couple seconds of each other so then if you're feeling a bit bad or there's a problem that you've had going into it if if you lose like a week or two like that could be enough just to like drop you down a few places but it's a really really tough sport because you're standing on a start line with 11 other people and you've got to believe that you can beat every single one of these people on the start line and every single person on the start line is thinking exactly the same thing about everybody else so you're just all going on this on the starting of a race going out trying to win and like trying to do what you can to beat these other people so there is a very much a mental side to it and especially when you get to a championship so a diamond league which is like the premier league of our athletics it's a pace race where you're normally running like close to your limit and close to people's pbs and that's probably more about how physically fit you are because it's like you don't have to think you just get on a train and you just run behind and then maybe if people are tiring you can come through and take a win or you can run off the front and take a win whereas a championship is run a lot slower and you've got to have so there's no paces in the no paces in the championship so it's all about tactics and like you don't really have many things chances to make a mistake.

1:00:51If you make a mistake, you're either going to get knocked out in a round or you're not going to medal or win a race. So it becomes very, very intense and high pressure. But the response to that is being as relaxed as possible to be able to make calculated decisions, to be able to maximize that. So I think at different points of the year, the physicality shows, the fittest wins the races. And then when it comes to the actual championships where there's more decision-making, there's definitely a mental edge that is more important. Would you be able to explain why in a championship race, when there is no pacer, that the pace is slower?

1:01:25I assume it's due to kind of like drafting and the whole being in a pack. Yeah, I was actually thinking about this the other day that it's hard for people to understand it if you don't see it or if you haven't been in that situation. So if you're leading a race, you're one, you're taking all the elements. You're like, if it's, there's often some win somewhere, but you're like taking that and then you're working harder because of it but there's also just you have to concentrate harder it just feels much harder to be on the front being the one dictating the pace and controlling it and gradually you will just like weigh yourself down and then when it comes to the final lap like you'll probably not have much left and you won't be able to accelerate ground when other people are or be able to react to it so the way we normally run is uh I like to like sit in and just kick so like I'm one of the faster athletes like top end speed wise so I would always rather it was slower and come around and there's some people like Ingebrigtsen I was speaking about doesn't necessarily have that so he would get on the front and try and grind it down but the reason he was losing champs is because it's so hard to do that without a pacemaker to set this pace so these pacemakers will take that wind and they'll do all the thinking and you just have to run in behind them.

1:02:38So then a championship takes that away. But we also have... With the pacemaker, obviously, like you said, they're running, what pace are, like, who are they, like, whose PB are they going off, if that makes sense? See, even we don't know sometimes, right? Because you'll just get told, and there's a new technology in athletics called WaveLight. So if you ever watch a Diamond League, there'll be multi-coloured lights that will go on a bar on the inside the track, and that's for the pacemaker and the people in the field to know what pace they're actually going at. so it's made the pacemaker's life easy because there's a little so they've just got to keep up with it up yeah normally it's the fastest or like the biggest name in the field would dictate that or if there's a record attempt it will like be whatever paces you need and normally races will gather towards the end they'll always be a bit quicker in the last lap so you generally they'll go out a little bit slower than tiny bit slower like less than half a second slower than you maybe would need to go and assume that people will gather towards the end and yeah it's it's a funny one that in a champs for example like in anadamon league basic physics is like you don't want to run in lane two or like out of lane one because you're going to run further around the bend because the bend is longer if you're in lane two so a lot of racing is about running the shortest line so you want to finish a race of 1500 meters and have ran 1500 meters but moving in and out like passing people like you're always going to run different distances so a lot of it is about making the right decisions at the right time so we would want to pass on a straight for example because if you come out on a straight you're not actually running longer you're running like one step longer to get out and that's it so there's a lot more like nuance to it um then you realize which is why like the 1500 i think it's class because you see this big blob of people at a championship all having these different thoughts in their head all getting in a bad spot and then putting themselves back in a good spot not getting boxed in because if somebody comes around you and you can't get out and you want to make a move you're trapped there's there's loads of different things that you have to think about when you're running yeah so moving on to 2025 you get back how how do you feel like after two years of injury so i made quite a lot of big changes before 2025 so the the week that i hurt my hamstring and didn't go to paris i knew i i probably needed to move where i lived so we lived in a place called tenington in london for seven years and it was at home um But the physios I'd had previously all lived in Manchester.

1:05:03And for me, it was like, right, well, the obvious thing here is to drag my girlfriend with me up to Manchester, which, bless her, she just was like, yeah, well, that's what we need to do. So therefore, we moved for 2025 up to the north, which I never thought I'd live up here. But it's been the best thing I could have done. And then at the start of 2025, I got injured again. I hurt my knee, which was like a long term problem that I had in my meniscus. and I knew at some point it would potentially go bad again and it just happened to go bad then. So I got a surgery on my knee up in Manchester, 400 metres from my house at the Spire Hospital.

1:05:38So that was like - Yeah, I've actually been there to be fair for an MRI. Have you? It's the thing is that everyone has to go and it's like not ideal, but one of the reasons was like being close to that is like if you do need something, it's so close and so easy to do. So I've spent more time there than I thought I would, but it's amazing. like it's probably the the best medical center in the country for sport especially um and then that was the same sort of period when I knew I needed like a coaching change just because me and my dad had done like everything in the sport to get to the point of being a world champion but it was just becoming a bit too too much like intensity and I was just breaking down still so I then moved coaches to it's actually my future father-in-law um so he was helping my dad with coaching and I just didn't want to change too much because I knew the training worked but I just needed this intensity backed off and that's the thing is that I still have a blueprint that my dad formed but then there's been a few changes that John has made to be able to just bring the best out of me still but keep me in one piece which that was the big thing going into 25.

1:06:39Still in the family though? Yeah it's a funny one because we go around in like I think if you saw him with me everyone would assume it was like my dad but it's not and it's like I've not replaced to my dad or anything like that my dad's to my dad and it's just a continuation of what my dad was doing but just with a slightly different approach to it and it's it's it's hard when you've been coached by one person your whole career to then have a new person in charge so it's like just getting used to that and I think there was a lot of apprehension whether I made those sort of changes and I lost like what made me the athlete I am um so then to go into 20 2025 season I've never been more nervous than the first year racing that where I was like am I literally gonna race here and just be absolute shy compared to that how I used to be because I've made like too many changes that weren't the right ones but I knew what were the changes uh backing off intensity of like sessions they weren't they weren't as far um as a result I put in another session down a Thursday where I used to do probably once every two weeks like a hard tempo with my dad where it was like very very hard effort like almost like almost felt flat out sometimes whereas now brought in the lactate like monitoring where I now keep it under a certain level so that I know I'm not exerting myself so much that on a Thursday that my Saturday session will be impacted by it don't run as much so I have those cross trains within it like real real simple things but what my body needed at that point um and it was also like just a change of a change of scenery as well I feel like was good for me like moving to Manchester just meant it was new locations like new people that I linked in with that I hadn't trained for a while so like Butchie for example who like your mates with like I hadn't lived near Butchie ever and I let you just go on camp but hadn't been for a while and it was like unreal being back with him going for runs and sessions so just like a new kind of like Lisa life with it and it still was like daunting when I came to the racing and even all the way up until world champs in 2025 I still wasn't sure whether or not I was going to be able to find this like end point that was where I wanted to get to because the worst thing about winning a world title is that's your bar then that's what you got to get back to so I look back on it and I'm like a bit of a brat because to come 200th within a world title again it's like it's like that much over three and a half minutes of running um and I would love to have won that but at the same time if you'd have told me before those champs that you'd get back to getting a medal I'd be like that is mad so I've got to be grateful for like everything i got from those champs who are the main competitors this season for you so the big one a few big names within the 1500 right yeah so ours is very competitive so josh kerr who's from my club and who i've raced for a very long time now is uh probably like the big name still older than you or younger than me younger than me so josh won the world champs the following year in 2023 and then he's medaled at uh the olympics as well so he's like probably the big one there's cole hawker in the us uh who is the olympic champion from paris uh isaac nada who beat me last year in tokyo is the defending world champion for the next couple years so there's even people like there's a different diamond league final winner for example it's just it's such an intense event that you can't look at one person there's like eight people potentially that can win any champs now which is the respect you have to give them but not enough respect that you don't think you could beat them it's pretty stacked i've seen recently you've been doing dabbling in a couple of the 800s how's that been going uh i enjoy it more than 15 because there's like less pressure yeah it's like so it's two laps of a track it's over in uh less than two minutes so i love it and i pride myself on being able to like go over different distances as well and the 800 is one that in another life maybe i could have done that um as a career like as my full like focus but if i can still compete well over it that gives me a lot of confidence in my 1500 but also just it's fun it's nice having a change of scenery and stuff so they get out very fast because they're they're running like times that are two seconds probably quicker than they were running a couple years ago so then I've got to move with that as well so it's more stress on my body to get ready for the 800 so it's almost like a mild age now like getting the confidence to run these fast paces and trusting that you're in a good spot and nothing's going to go wrong so it took probably a year last year to like find like I can get to these top end speeds again which I feel like now I can show that off in hopefully a few 800s has um has the training changed at all like have you uh reduced volume even more going to the 800 or I know you're still training for the 1500 as well but like so yeah the way the way like it probably works is your 1500 helps your 800 and your 800 helps your 1500 so it's just you have to do a few key 800 sessions which are the ones where your lactate is going sky high you have to do a few more of them where you're running quicker than 800 pace which if you can feel good doing that like your 1500 comes on as well so there's not too much to it it's the eight is also like it's so powerful and like fast that you almost want to be better in the gym as well just feel like you're explosive so that you can handle these high forces that go through your body so I try and just every year like be a little bit better in the gym like lift a little bit more weight than I was doing previous years so there's just a slight focus but nothing more like drastic than any other year probably this year what's the the key lifts within your gym session you said that you hit the gym three times a week yeah i'd be interested to know like you'll be a lot better than me but like i don't know how this would rank within people that are in like the high rock circuit but i would like hand clean a lot so i would hand clean like up to like 80 probably uh back squat like we would do probably to like a half squat i think i could probably get like 130 maybe 100 maybe a little bit more um we always deadlift with a trap bar yep um just to protect the back and like keep the form good um and there's a lot of plyometric stuff so genuinely i think in any sport and also even just in life like plyometrics help keep you feeling like you're moving well and your body's uh young mate i didn't want to say it but like honestly it makes you feel young because it's like you've got like a spring and it's like that feels like you're not like an old man hobbling around doesn't it yeah so you're doing that three times a week twice a week for those combinations of like yeah compound and then the third one is like a bit more just movement based with lighter weight that is a bit more specific to keeping like what i need um to stay injury free that's the secret session it's boring session i hate it it's like the boring stuff works all right yeah you have to that's that's the probably the difference between what we do is like full-time job and maybe people have to work around it is we have time to do the boring stuff and it just it's probably what leads to the end results being being like a long career and also like fully maximizing the most out yourself yeah no i'll be keen to uh actually join you on one of them what are you doing for your lifts for my lifts so i'm a really bad example because i've had a couple of back injuries so i don't squat i don't buy my squat and i don't deadlift okay so uh i do a lot of like single leg uh squatting so like bulgarian split squats horrible that's that's that's not a good trade-off is it no it's not um walking lunges um and then uh yeah like reverse lunges and things like that so um yeah we build up quite heavy but again i think people put too much emphasis on the strength training within high rocks maybe because if you look at the weights that you've got to actually lift like they're not that heavy like we've got a walking lunge with 30 kg or something like it's more like muscular endurance rather than a muscular fitness rather than like top end strength would you do a lot of um like reps on the minute and stuff like that yeah so recovery's like sure so So a nice little workout I like to do is either 20 or 25 meters walking lunge, minute one.

1:14:36And then as soon as minute two hits, you'll do 15 to 20 wall balls. And they'll be like heavier wall balls than you would do. And then you just go back and forth. And you do that for like either six rounds or eight rounds. So that would be like 16 minutes worth of work. So you're kind of doing 30 to 35 seconds on and then 25 seconds rest. so it's really short rest where i suppose you you're having a little bit longer rest yeah but there's still the the element of like keeping keeping like a aerobic stimulus to it almost as well and like not giving yourself because that you don't have the recovery when the race so it's like there's bits of a session msc coach will set me where it is like like a couple hand cleans and you might have like 15 seconds within the minute to then go again and like that's hard because it's replicating a little bit of that fatigue i guess that you're getting towards the end of competition in either like hyrox or like whatever you're doing like races for us do you do a lot of ankle and calf work yeah like there's i guess one of my old physios uh he had like general rule that like the minimum like a single leg calf on like a metronome of like a second up second down should be 30 that should be like the minimum so you you doing bodyweight calf raises single leg yeah like fully full depth up and down like that's that was like the standard that like you should be getting and it's 30 and that is that up hold a second down no it's like so it'd be on like like metronome like do the up down right up down and then just literally fingers for balance um and then there's a point where like you'd be watching it but like if you're not reaching the same point with your heel like you're done like is that your foot or is that with shoes on uh you do with shoes on as long as you're not slipping out of the back but i would say generally that's probably quite a good rule is to have like have a number like that that you want to be hitting and then i know you're standing on a plate for that you're standing on a plate so you're raised so you're dropping through as well so you're dropping your heel all the way down raising your heel all the way up with uh like the ball of your foot on the plate like try it it's like it's mad 30s a lot like i'll i'll get to kind of like 15 reps and it'll start digging you yeah but you can push through that ache you can like that's that's the thing is you can you almost like numb it up after a bit don't you and then there's yeah you can squeeze a bit more out but the the calf is so powerful that it actually like can keep going with not much recovery so if you ever needed to like improve your calf work and your soleus is just like an absolute powerhouse you can actually put a lot of weight through it and then like go again really soon after it's like real real strong yeah do you do any like foot health or anything like that like any foot drills or do you uh yeah so we do say if it was like again like calf stuff with like a scrunched up toe by a towel so then that engages like your foot with it we do stuff which is like a pro perception stuff so like bozu ball bits um you would do like i've done stuff where you like between two boxes you have your like toes and your heel and then your midfoot is like exposed and then you have to like pass a kettlebell around it's there's so many little muscles in your feet that like can be strengthened and like if you ever get foot problems the majority of time it might be something that's either locked up or weak and then the gym is a very good solution to that and the best thing for feet is just like probably not even gym but like the right choice of footwear and like if you haven't got the right choice of footwear like an orthotic that will help provide any shoe with being the right choice um i think there's a lot of people i reckon that are running in the wrong shoes for what they would need so it's even like just finding a rotation so like we have a rotation of different shoes that mean your feet get conditioned in different different like stack heights like uh different like firmness just so that you're not always used to the same movement within your feet yeah i i realized that uh i always used to just wear the same pair of shoes all the time yeah yeah it's real bad for you yeah it is because if you think about it like a shoe is a brace like with the cushioning and every different type of shoe like it's just putting load on different muscles um so it just spreads the load through throughout you so you if you go for an easy run in the morning say if you've got a double easy day whatever if you even if you just change the shoes that you have the morning you're running one pair of shoes and then evening like a slightly different variation it's the same with um we're in like a position where we we like don't have to pay for them we can get them whenever we want but like recycling your shoes so you've always got an old pair and a new pair in quick succession and that old pair is never getting too old because it's like if you're running on like a worn down no one's got a perfect gates so then like everyone's wearing down a certain part and then it's just exposing your vulnerabilities even more um do you ever do any banded like toe stuff um not really what like uh pulling apart or no it's like yeah it's like you can do it on like any of your toes but with like a really light thera band like pulling up against it and then resisting it it's the most humbling stuff because it's so hard but it's pathetic you just sat there with a little band but you're gradually resisting it but that is like the root of most feet problems it's like how your toes are functioning within it as well yeah i think i think your big toe like obviously it equates to a lot of like balance problems yeah stuff like that but if your big toe is not working then your arch isn't working yeah there's so many dropped arches and then your knees start hurting your hips start hurting if you don't work it's all down my um my big toe like i'll save you the the horror of it but if you saw the state of it it shows how much force that goes through your big toe when you're running it's just battered mine because it's just like controlling so much of my my motion yeah no interesting do you ever like use toe spaces or anything no i i've not actually had too much problem with it like i get a lot of problems with foot health for me is like more skin and we go to like hot places where you're sweating a lot and like you can blister more like blisters i've had like infected blisters quite a lot which that's like a battle with it where it's just like your feet are going through like a lot with we wear like pretty tight shoes and we want to wear socks with spikes for example so you're having to like stay on top of your foot health with that respect as well working feet these are so they've got to be well loved oh that's class i've actually seen that that um when people wear spikes now that people don't wear socks with them i think it's always been the case most people don't i don't think you should because it's like you want to feel your lightest and they're made so that they just like fit like as part of your foot almost is it just with spikes or just with spikes yeah i think some people maybe would try and wear like road racing shoes without socks but man i would be blistered like hell after that but um yeah i think it's like horrible when people put socks in spikes but then people think it's horrible to not wear socks um it just feels like you're at your like freest and you're like lightest i would say yeah just feels like you got your shoe with spikes on the bottom or your foot with spikes on the bottom and a bit of a plate on the bottom of your foot it's the class what's uh recovery recovery looking like uh so i have a lot of therapy um i'm lucky that i have like a very good soft tissue therapist and good physio that i can see like once a week um we've got a happy that have like a lot of flexibility with physio where like if you need something like that needs like nipping the bud straight away or you're worried about something it's like you need something that you can see straight away so i've been fortunate to have that um i ice bath in summers that around big races and champs um not in winter because like i'm under belief still that it like blunts your adaptation and you want to break yourself down a little bit so so only when like you've got your competition back to back to back like week yeah when you want to like freshen up for races or like a little bit when you've done a hard session where you feel like you might be a bit vulnerable the next few days um i would use it and i started doing a bit of it for like well-being as well so i would like sauna and ice bath more for like a mental health side i guess a bit of just feeling like after i had my surgery i had like a real stress that nervous system for a while i just my like resting heart rate was a bit higher my um hrv and stuff so then i started using ice a little bit just to try and like control myself um whereas now it's like back to just being purely just because physically i feel like my body gets that recovery um supplement wise like cherry juice is big so we have that after like hard sessions and between rounds at races like uh you can get like cherry active gels that you can mix the water or you can just shot if you're tough enough which is like it's fine it's nice um and then yeah like boots for example like getting in them after hard stuff it's just like there's always bits that you could be doing more but the number one for sure is sleep and staying off your feet are the two that i would say like is the big focus of the summer so like no unnecessary like walking if you don't need to because they've got one job at that point in the season how uh how many hours of sleep you're getting night uh so this is the thing i don't do you wear like a wearable at night yeah so i would i would be so gaslit by what i thought i had like i would tell myself because i thought i was in bed from 11 till 8 30 i was getting nine and a half hours but that actually probably looks like eight hours just because there's a lot more like disturbance than you think you do yeah it's crazy before wearables like you'd go to bed like you say at like 10 10 p.m get up at six and you think that you get eight hours sleep yeah yeah yeah no way is it no no it's like seven it's um it's been great for me because i i've struggled with sleep in the past especially around champs that my mind is just like i probably have undiagnosed adhd to be fair where it's just like ticking along a lot of the time um so i've had a bit of insomnia and like you'd always be like ah like i've not slept at all i've slept like i always say to like georgie and my other half like i've slept like 10 minutes when reality is you probably slept a lot longer than you think and you're oh I wear an aura ring but like your wearable will tell you you actually slept more than you realize and like good sleep as well so it's helped me with that um but I'll also nap in the day uh like most days I'll try and sleep for probably about like at least half an hour um but it's like just put a timer on that oh nah because like naturally it's like the theory is you want to be either ideally would be like half an hour or an hour and a half and then that window in between is when you wake up between cycles and you have that like brain fog which is not nice eh um but yeah i'll just go like actually go to bed and like sleep rather than just like landing the sofa and napping it's like a conscious effort to actually have a good bit of sleep and but no alarm so so you just naturally wake up an hour after normally i would probably be like max i probably get it's like 45 minutes but for me that like then what would you like set an alarm or you just naturally your body only if i've got a point i need to actually get out and train but otherwise i let my body just dictate it um when you tell people that it makes sound like you're a toddler like you have to have a nap like most days does it not affect you sleep at night that's what the one thing that i find like if i nap in the day like i cannot get to bed yeah you probably just haven't tried it enough so the same way you feel tired at the same time every night like you then feel tired at like two o 'clock it's routine so like if you have the chance to nap at a certain time it's like you have to stick to that time because then that window will you'll feel sleepy so then it's that hard now if i'm about like two o 'clock not to feel like i want to be asleep and stuff um it's also like just lying there and properly like trying to go to sleep like not going on your phone waiting to feel like you want to nap it's like give yourself the chance and if you fall asleep you do if you don't whatever just get up yeah yeah but uh to be fair with the napping i have no problem i fall asleep like that yeah it's like night yeah but at night i really struggle i don't know why i don't know if it's like um even psychologically you know that you've like had that nap maybe but i don't know it's sleep is one that everyone like almost obsesses too much over it and i feel like your body is good at dictating how much it needs so like because you took a bit longer that night to get sleep it probably needed like less that night anyway so then i always just think it ends up being the right amount for you either way that's why i don't really like the sleep debt scores that you get from these wearables because you could overthink that real bad can you yeah yeah it does stress you out what do you get a night then about eight uh yeah i try between like eight and nine yeah i try like if if i don't get eight then i'm struggling yeah i sometimes i saw a thing where it was like you feel better having no sleep than five hours for example like sometimes if you hit those short like hours it's like worse than even if you had an all-nighter in it you just feel like so bad the next day yeah no anything else that you do uh what's your nutrition like so it changes in winter and summer um and that's not like drastically or anything but winter i'll be a bit more relaxed about it and if i wanted to go and have like i know if you went out and had like a coffee and there was a pastry or something i wouldn't even think about it whereas like this time of year when you're racing you're like a bit more on it and not because of weight or anything mainly because of like just discipline like you want to be like feel like you're in season therefore everything is just like a bit more controlled um my thing is like just don't you don't feel hungry really in a day so like big meals but also if you're hungry just snack um like don't go for a period where you feel like that um is that all year round that yeah yeah it's like it's just not it's just that's when you get ill and hurt is when you're feeling hungry so the reality is when we get to somewhere we're not training as much or as big volume so you don't feel as hungry anyway so you probably are eating a bit less um i don't feel that much before i just run so I'll have like a coffee and a cereal bar before I just go for a run um just because normally for me it's like the night before it's like the big dictator of that and it's just a little bit of sugar and then I'll have my full breakfast afterwards and then for a session I would have a bigger breakfast like longer before um but also like just be prepared is the main thing with training so if you're going to the gym or if you're going for a session and it's going to be hard like prep for that so either bring something that you've made with you or like know that there's some way you can go quickly afterwards and at the bare minimum like bring a shake that's going to be able to give you something quick because you don't really feel the effects of that until later down the line it'll be like the next day you might feel fine but you might get ill like the next week or you might start breaking down towards the end of the week and stuff it's just it's not it's not too serious like eating and fueling it's just about making sure that you have a routine and like you're just ticking all the boxes with like the different food groups and like fruit and veg just yeah I don't think there's like any special thing that we do different to the average adult I would say do you ever have to diet down because obviously weight must matter and like you say you are doing a lot of work within like a week but it's not crazy amounts if that makes sense like obviously you are training a lot, but you said in summer, miles are down.

1:29:21So do you have to kind of like stop yourself from eating? Not stop yourself, but is there any time where like you've been, you've been thinking, oh, I'm a little bit overweight here? No, like I'm fortunate that my genetics are like, I'm naturally just very lean. So like I struggle to put weight on almost. So then the weight I put on in winter, it's not fat. It's like muscle, just from like gyming a bit more and then speed work like brings your muscle mass down and altitude brings your muscle mass down which is all where we've been before track season um so yeah for me i'm lucky with that it just naturally will come off because of what you're doing and we're also i'm guessing similar to you for example it's like there is like an element of power to our event so then power is like lost if you're going to lose too much muscle mass so for us we want to maintain like a weight where we're still strong and we're not like weak or like low on energy or feeling like we've compromised anything so I'm fortunate enough to worry about it I know that some athletes in my event would probably concentrate a bit more on it there's like certain things you could do with like residue inside you for example you can strip that out and then like clear all the weight but for our event we're only running three and three quarter laps whereas if you're doing a 10k and 25 laps it's a bit more weight to carry around but generally it's it's about being like the strongest version of yourself which is a combination of both weight and still maintain that power and naturally that will happen i guess like you guys it happens right before comps whether you're like consciously doing it or not like you will lose a couple kg potentially yeah we kind of i think it's like especially me i really really obsess over the nutrition the week of yeah um one because you're deloading like naturally doing less throughout the week and i can't stop myself from eating yeah so normally i end up putting on a little bit the week of um yeah i i it sounds weird but i train probably anywhere between like 15 and top end like 22 hours a week or whatever um so and a lot of that's aerobic so but i never ever struggle eating 5 000 calories or whatever it is like i i could eat so much more yeah that so that that i have to stop myself i have to physically stop myself i've got no i'm always hungry have you not got any subs that you would use say towards the like the week of like competing do you not have anything that you sub in that would be like you still get that fix that isn't like probably as bad yeah but i feel like my body knows i'm still it's not stupid is it i don't know yeah like uh you know some people like use like uh jelly for example yeah they'll fill themselves up on like 10 calorie jelly yeah um or like increase their amount of greens within a salad or whatever yeah but uh yeah i still feel hungry i i just think like on genuinely i do think like hyrox and middle distance running is so similar with like a lot of like both the training and like the mentalities and like the approach towards it so like i just think your body has like a like a sweet spot yeah that it will find itself at and if you mess about with that too much either being too heavy or too light you'll just like miss that spot so for me it's like it's it's more like calculated than you think and like getting yourself ready and like a lot of that is like what you're doing constantly but I just think like subconsciously the little habits you're having on the day of uh or the week of a like comp just end up bringing you to the right point and it's about hitting that point at the like very very like most appropriate time because you can't you can't hit it for like weeks and weeks and weeks so for us like now I'm not the lightest I'll be for example in the whole season because the champs aren't for six seven weeks and you aim to be light then do you aim to be light at the jump just naturally i will be my lightest then because just the approach i've had in the next few weeks will like just end up that happening and it's like it's so it's so subconscious like there's not loads of active things i do but it's just the environment like it gets hotter you ramp up the training so it's more intense like for those actual sessions and both of them contribute to it a little bit so yeah it just happens a lot more than you think do you have any kind of like rituals race day rituals or anything uh we a lot of race day is like routine so talking through that typical day hey boring man that's what if i was describing my race day is boy you you would think it's just what a tragic existence this is so i wake up normally racing at night or in the evening so i wake up as late as i can um i'd always have the same breakfast which would be i take those like quaker oats that porridge pots this is so dull and then add a bit of peanut butter to them for a bit of bit more protein and like a banana and then we always shake out so we'll do like a 10 minute jog in the morning to like flush your body and just get it moving a little bit come back have lunch then have a nap and then three hours before or like I would always have my last like bit of food or like last meal so it'd be like normally a bagel or some bread with like peanut butter and then uh a beetroot shot and then an hour and a half before I'd have a little cereal bar and then we warm up like 75 minutes before and genuinely like you say about rituals like I think it would like cripple me to have too many things I would do because I would just be like you have to do this you have to do this and like you don't I'm pretty like I'm pretty um good at knowing that those things don't matter I would always do that I do a little jump on the start line I feel like I have to do that and I have done since I was a kid um but that's more just because it makes you feel like you're there to race um other than that like i don't know what you have but i just i think if i thought about like putting the certain socks on the right way it's i race in the same thing like i race in split shorts um but i never train in them like that's the one probably thing i have well like training tights training tights yeah because like they're not many people anymore probably because they're a bit tragic still but i just feel like for me that's racing is like wearing these skimpy little little shorts just feels like that's where i feel like real like light again and just feel like i'm ready to race so yeah i don't know what have you got so it is the shots that's the ritual the shots the shots people have asked for my shorts like signing stuff and i'm like you don't want that you don't washed or dirty this is the thing i've not asked i don't want to hear the answer to that but yeah there's not many people that wear them anymore so i think it's cool that i can do it for the old school wearing them and racing about but yeah you can get you can get in your own head so bad with little things that you think matter right but don't really yeah do you enjoy that that race day experience like you say doing not much all day like do you enjoy it no i don't know if anyone who says they enjoy race day is like an absolute liar you're just kicking about and you're also just like mulling over in your head like what you're about to do um i was so naive when i was a kid i was like if i do this sport for a long time i will not be nervous by the time i'm like in my 20s mate that is not a thing like you still cack yourself like every single time you race because it matters doesn't it so a lot of racing is just like and the day before it's just chilling out to distract yourself to not think about am i gonna be that all right tonight and you will be fine but it's just chilling out we have it's funny i don't know if anyone else has said about it but the reality of our hotels is that you're always pretty much rooming with somebody and a lot of the time it can be someone you've never met that is madness that you were that you stay in the same room as someone else well it could be like sometimes in the meet just gone people sharing beds and sharing beds yeah with someone they've never met before and it's like you just like whatever that's what you have to do but we had like that big a gap between the beds in oslo on the weekend and it was like someone i get on with well so it was good but it could be somebody that doesn't even speak the same language as you and you've got to spend three days in a hotel room together it's a weird experience yeah you get lucky with it sometimes but you also have some absolute stinkers there's some there's some horror stories come on have you got any i could say my worst one my worst one was uh i was racing to be fair like back to back like two days apart so i was like dead keen to just get settled down and get to bed like and sleep as quick as i could and my roommate was a high jumper not from the uk before anyone if anyone knows high jumpers to like try and debunk it and he came back really late and he had a girl with him and we're sharing we're sharing rooms and i was like brought him brought her to the bed and I was like nah like what's going on here like come on and then he took her out somewhere else they were going for an hour he came back straight away in the room he FaceTimed his wife and kids for like checking on them as soon as he got back in and I was like man that is just like yeah horrible horrible and there's there's other stories people have but everyone's got one where it's like yeah just just some weird like some weird people from all walks of life you get yeah and all you want to do is sleep literally all you want and this guy's having an affair but there's people that will like people like play music out loud or like watch films out loud not even think about you and stuff like that so it's like battles with the air con as well right you'll be like fighting to keep it too hot or too cold and they're not your mates a lot of these people they just you might never speak to them again but you just got to cooperate with each other for a while and i will try and make conversation have a good time but you know within the first five minutes whether somebody's going to be a good roommate or not do you ever just think fuck it i'm just going by my own room yeah you could but then it's like you're then like i don't know you're it's not easy being in the not being in the hotel so you have your meals you have your transport you have everything there and you have your mates there don't you you're competing with so i'm not a diva like i'm so relaxed so like i would always um be like that the only time was at world champs in tokyo this year the whole champs was in one hotel so there was like a thousand odd people in a hotel that all to do with this champs and it was carnage we were in tiny rooms the food was terrible and the like whole place was just so overwhelming that that's the only time i was like i should like pull my card out here and just try and get my own thing but part of it is like you feel like i guess like a monk it's like a monk isn't it where it's like you don't want to spoil yourself you want to like kind of like just survive in like these basic conditions because you're there for a reason not a holiday like a specific purpose to compete i love that that's uh that's funny that's crazy that's the good thing about for you guys having to sort your own stuff out a lot of the time is at least you don't get stuck with that you can have your own space to chill out and enjoy yeah normally my videographer is with us um so you've had some bad roommates as well have you yeah to be fair i'm probably the bad roommate i'm the one that uh says lights out uh now that's your if you're a show though that's it's your time to be able to dictate that isn't it is a cool thing some people uh who are like going out like they might both be at the meet and they get their roommates like their other half like that's pretty sick if you can just go around as that couple and like travel i think yeah like butch and lindsey probably had that points and stuff yeah no that that is good um and do you have you ever room with someone that is in the same event as you yeah like even the other day like they're your mates as well so yeah so that's like the best result you're not bothered about that you're not phased some people don't the funny one was before tokyo like josh ker like me and him were in the same room in the village and like you're both trying to get an olympic medal and i was i was cool with it and he was cool with it but the people cleared their rooms out like when they got sent home whatever like the next day after they competed so i moved in different ones like it's just you don't if you don't have to share like that but there's a lot of people would like kick off if there were certain people in their rooms like whether it's from the same event the same country just the same event it's like fair enough like you've got your own attitude towards it and you don't have to be mates with people you compete against but I am so like if I'm with them I can come home if one of you's had a bad bad race or like you've been beaten by the other I can still come and have a good time with them afterwards it's not like you hate them because they they were just trying to do the same thing you were moving forward onto what's next what is next for you so we have for most of the world in athletics there's no global champs they actually don't have anything whereas in the uk we have commonwealth games and european champs and both of them are in the uk so the commonwealth games are in glasgow and then the european champs are in birmingham so they're end of july for the commonwealths and then the start of all was for europeans so we have that to focus on so that is that week after week two weeks apart yeah it's quite hard um so yeah i've been picked for conwell's and then you've also got london diamond league yeah so london diamond league is less than july yeah yeah just july you know july 18th it is yeah yeah mate good good knowledge i think it's uh yeah so we have that which is so sick being in that stadium because i went to watch in 2012 so that every time i'm in there i'm like it's so cool like you forget it's west ham's now sometimes because they make it look pretty good for the athletics.

1:42:09So what will you be running? I'm doing the 800 at London Diamond League. I'm doing the 800. And then at Commonwealth Games, it's the mile for the first time. Oh, nice. Oh, like first time in like a long time. And then... Would you prefer the mile or 1500? 1500, mate. I don't have the extra 109 metres. I'd rather it was 109 metres less. Does everyone race it like 1500 and then just hold on to an extra 100? Yeah, it's like the way you start is that on a 1500 you start at the start of the back straight so you have a whole straight mark yeah 300 mark so you have a whole straight to get in position um a mile starts in the bend so it's a bit more chaotic because everyone's trying to file in straight away to not run wider um so that's the only difference there's no cutting on a mile yeah they're cutting straight away so that's why it's a bit more chaotic so it's not after like 100 meters yeah so well a mile you just yeah both of them you cut in straight away but at 1500 you have the whole straight without losing any running any further to cut in whereas a mile you want to cut in straight away so yeah we have that and then Europeans I'll do probably 15 but I might try and see if I can do the 8 yeah no essentially we'll see are you going to be at any?

1:43:20I think we're going to be at the Commonwealth Games hopefully Diamond League as well I think the Diamond League if you want to watch any athletics meeting in the UK it's so good it's like the best athletes in the world it's all their favourite meets so that everyone will come to London Diamond League. Yeah, now that, I'm about to say, go up to Glasgow. We've actually already booked our tickets. Yeah, you and me for that one. Oh, yeah, it'll be good. Yeah, the games are good because it's like multi-sport. So I feel like people get behind it a lot more. If people haven't watched athletics before, the only way I could describe it, it's like the circus almost where there's loads of stuff going on at once.

1:43:52So like you'll have a race on a track, you'll have the long jump going on. You might have like people throwing stuff in the middle. There's like so many things that keep you busy. So for a couple of hours it's on, it's actually like you get good value for money you get to see so many things and like you don't really appreciate how superhuman a lot of what people are doing are until you actually see it in the flesh yeah no that's good and then european champs that's uh birmingham right birmingham yeah so that's going to be a real cool one i think they're going to put a lot of a lot of like money and effort into like making that a real good spectacle so part of it is like we look forward to traveling to these cool destinations but then if you have your friends and family in the stadiums at these home champs that's pretty special to do well yeah no that's good it's convenient summer for you for you right you don't really need to travel boring summer yeah i know so then i would like to travel and stuff but it's also nice spending time at home in it yeah yeah no uh and then what's kind of like the bigger picture what what you're thinking about what's uh in the horizon so we have the i probably would have been done this year if i'd have ran paris and done well my aim was to finish in 2026 and cornwall's originally meant to be australia as well so that i was like that'd be sick get a nice trip to us and then finish at a birmingham home europeans but uh i owe it to myself to carry on for another game so we have la in 2028 and then that might be my last year but then london are bidding for the world champs for 2029 i bet it never ends so i'm like i might as well do another year after that but I also look forward to what's to come after running so I think that's good because I feel like I'm not a lot of athletes are like so fixated on what they're doing right now and then they feel lost after yeah I look forward to it like as well it's exciting to be able to just relax that it's hard it's real hard what we do so I look forward to not having that and being able to like have have drinks with friends like go travel a little bit and actually see places rather than just hotel rooms and tracks or play play like these other sports like get into golf and stuff so yeah i look forward to it and the lucky thing for me is that i've done well enough in a sport that i hope i can get a job like within it easy enough like i hope that i can do something that i i like people as well so i hope i can do something that involves like speaking or like i don't know just just doing something that isn't just sat behind a desk because like we're not the personalities like that could do that right it's like if you've lived your life like competing in sports at a high level like you can't then just go and sit at a desk nine to five i just think you go mad yeah no i think you've uh like you say you you've already got a couple of things in the works with the coffee stuff and i hope so well it's like even like for like coaching stuff right it's like that'd be sick like doing some form of coaching there's so much potential especially like say in manchester like imagine if we kind of like made manchester the hope of running i think it's like got the it's got the facilities to be there yeah all that hybrid training as well or whatever like there's so many tracks as well right yeah so many tracks so many cool gyms like we've got a lot up here like it's it's a lot of it is like um it's knowing the right people in it it's like knowing the brands knowing the like companies that can make every little event you do like cool that's that's what you want people to come away from it and don't feel like you've done like a training session feel like you've just been to like a social event i think is a cool thing i'll linking with you if you fancy that mate yeah no for sure for sure like i say i love it i genuinely i love the community stuff more than anything and like getting involved with um just getting people together to run it's rewarding it's also like you learn so much from them as well and like you hear so many good stories of just like normal folk yeah and you kind of live through them as well because like you say our lifestyle is a little bit dry yeah like what was having the conversation before i was like oh do you want nando's and he was like no i'm not risking it i can only eat at home because i don't want to risk getting food poisoning or anything oh mate it's like or illness it makes you realize though do you not think it puts in perspective what we do when you speak to people like that though because people have busy lives and they're doing very important things and then running is their like release or they're like yeah fun and it's like it is these are sports they are like hobbies for most people but we've just taken it so far that we like we compete in them but it makes you realize like there is like a lot more serious things and it means a lot to us but in the grand scheme of things it's like it is a very fun thing to be doing in it no it's definitely fun and um especially when you're running some 50 second uh 400s mate and the time it's not fun but like i'll do it again that's the problem what is your pb 400 uh i've ran i've split like 47 in a relay i can run like 47 so uh mate the world record was 40 is it 42 or 43 yeah but so yeah still rapid but what's that like over 100 meters what are you over 100 meters 100 i could roll so like yeah running running in i could roll like sub 11 like 10 something um but yeah it's i don't know this it's it's hard when people you speak to people about it because it's like you've put so many years and so many hours into being able to do these things right everything that you said though is like so impressive i'm gonna keep going until like something's not impressive so watch obviously your 5k that's super impressive as well it's not that impressive right in my world this isn't impressive but uh i've run 13 40 something i think on the roads yeah yeah yeah right okay 10k uh not that impressive 30 oh something okay mate to put that into perspective there's there's women in the sport that have ran quicker which like in in my event like they shouldn't there won't be many 1500 meter men that will be slower than the women's world record for example but i am yeah what about have you ever done a half marathon uh no but i could probably run under just under 70 maybe no i think it'd be quicker than that not much mate i may i'm not i'm not that good at the long stuff but again it's perspective like even that 10k will sound good to most people but like the the amount of people that can do that as the distance goes up gets obviously bigger and bigger so yeah i wouldn't even be i wouldn't even win the i don't think like the british 10k champs for for female i don't think with my 10k pb no i don't think so i think uh what did they they just did it manchester right i think did they i don't know if it was british chance but it was something it's just that for the magic 10k i think she went sub 30 yeah i haven't done that honestly it shows how like how quick they're running now it's like both like the men the men are running quick but like the women's times are so good now you see that one the other day i know it was net downhill course but it was like 26 12 yeah yeah it's 26 minutes it's even like that for a fucking 10k people can't run 26 minutes for a five game well i always like most people i was in london with new balance for the marathon and i had to do my own run what's how selfish i did my own run on the morning of the marathon and i missed the world record the sub two but i was like there is no way that we would ever have seen a sub two on that course and then now it's even then it puts into perspective for the women's world record is much quicker than my dad ran for the marathon and he ran an Olympic standard back in like 1980s so 1990s what did he hit he's 213 so that's now like that's very good obviously both like men and women but it's like both have moved on beyond that now yeah which just shows how far the sport's come yeah and the development of everything like you say it's cool though it's cool mate it's good like people people shouldn't ever complain about it because like you want to see people doing incredible things however like as long as it's the rules right as long as they're getting um getting to those points like fairly that's the only thing yeah that's good thank you for today no it's been good mate thank you for having me appreciate it i'm sure uh we'll link up and run again definitely i know i'd love to come and do a high rock session with you yeah i think that would be class like that's that's uh so what we should do we should do a relay me you butchie and alfie i'll be down mate i'll be down we have to we have to designate the disciplines pretty well there don't we who would you have on what because i feel like you know high rocks more than them too so i'm gonna say you just have to pick out the pieces with this right like you're not choosing what you're doing you're just having to do the ones that we might not be great at so i would say alfie i would do both alfie and butch are similar you've got to have them on skier and row don't you probably whoever's both quite small like you're a big lad aren't you but I know then you need to be on the sleds because you're a little bit more powerful so I would do I would do when I was speaking with my mates I think I was going to do wall balls and then I spoke to you earlier I do not have the depth I don't think you'd be good at wall balls because like if you you can't do wall balls slow if you're fucked yeah like you're either doing them or it's down on the floor you're on to pick up wall balls for us I think just for like getting the target I think I'd have to do wall balls I would give Butchie the farmer's carry yeah because I think his grip strength would be alright and he would be fine with that so just by like walking around the traffic centre do you think he'd be fine he always carries his kids like bikes and stuff half the time so I think he'd be good with that what else have we got burpees I'll take that you're taking that yeah because I think I've got a bit more like plyo yeah so maybe I'll take that what else are we missing so you've got a ski you've got a sled push sled pull give Alfie a sled push what do you think he's actually who's got the bigger legs Andy or Alfie probably whoever's got the bigger legs probably Butchie but I think Alfie's moved quicker top end potentially I think Butchie was saying that he thought that the other day sweet I'd love to see Alfie on a sled we can make it happen we can make it happen put a lot of glue on the sled before mate that's what we'd have to we'd have to think about the upper body and then row I think you've got to put probably Alfie on the row right as well yeah lunges I think you'd be sweet with lunges but then again it's not a very explosive thing it's just like a grindy thing my knees mate I've already had them up to on points I'd take the lunges I'd take the lunges as well and then mate there's so many events there's so many disciplines we've got sled pull still sled pull you have to give that to Bunchy and we've got a ski erg as well the first thing you're not going to set us out no I'll set out the ski erg because I think I think that's those guys are aerobic enough for that yeah it's too long for you what are you picking up then what am I doing you're doing the wall balls I think I need to do one set I probably said pull because I don't think they could move it okay yeah but you're pathetic that you're doing the ones that we'd be like we'd be so terrible at that you have to come in and save us wouldn't you if we could just have Alfie and Butchie doing all the running and then I'll do one and then you can do everything else that would be class in it yeah i wish you could like yeah you could literally split it up like different i originally when we spoke about i thought that but honestly i have this i have this great hope that one day i'll do one um but i think it'll humble me do you have a proper enough yeah yeah so we were looking at doing one on genuinely i was looking at doing one uh in there's one in poland in september somewhere and i was like i could actually do that like at some point but i'd have to do a relay because could we not just do like Manchester in October or is that altitude I'm getting married but I think she'd understand if I sacked her off for a high rocks I think that's a fair trade or we could like have the wedding at the high rocks mate I'll tell you what even we would do that would be good it's not going to be number four she would love that she would love that I think if you took me for a session could have like a little like after party and like everyone from high rocks could be invited yeah even better she'd love she'd have all those people she'd love like all the all the like big high rocks bags like just like slamming into each other get married in your gear as well I'd get married with my top off wouldn't I I'd have to and then yeah she could be in a full outfit like coordinated outfit so you'd have like you'd have some semi-permanent tattoos on so you could have like new balance there yeah is that it may be fine exactly so I keep saying that when I see my friends doing high rocks would you have matching outfits though probably have to be like white outfits couldn't you I could have white shorts she could have white or would you or would you just have like like black like chino pants like like jorts jorts black jorts yeah and then like a bow dicky tie or you could yeah with nothing no top no top yeah I think that would be classy wouldn't it some would say I think I think it would be done in the next few years I think somebody would do that but yeah I'd be down I'd have to try and convince her yeah I think she's watching this oh you could just send her this piece she's not gonna watch this let's just show this piece sure she will um genuinely if i could do a session with you at the end of season and then if you rate me off the back of that what you think because okay i think i think i'll be humbled because the problem is going to be your missus is you've said to your missus 2029 potentially i don't know if you've announced that to her yet that you might be you run until 2029 and after that that's when the higher career starts for you oh just be locking in and something else elite 15 yeah i don't think I don't think I could do it and not like do it properly.

1:57:27It's like, I don't think I'd be like, I'll just do it for fun. I'd be like, nah. So my grandpa - She's thinking we're going to live happily ever after. Oh, in the gym, in the gym though. I'm going to get my husband back and everything and then you're going to be off fucking doing high rocks. It'll work. I think my aim would be to carry on when I finish my season for like a few months and just literally commit to high rocks, do one high rocks within the first three months and then like call it a day. but imagine if you spanked it if it went so well then i'd be like right well that's that was fun but i'm hoping that i'll be so scarred by it that i wouldn't want to do it again that could happen couldn't it so well you're still going is it yeah i've not been bad enough for you is it yeah i've had some bad races yeah i'm still going but yeah no but yeah i think uh we'll round it up there yeah thank you man thank you thank you