Jonny Brownlee on Olympic Glory, Retirement & the Cost of Elite Sport | Jonny Brownlee | Ep 66

0:00Jonny Brownlee, welcome to the podcast. How are we doing today? No, no, I'm good, thank you. I'm also recovering from my injury at the moment, but I'm all good. Life has changed quite a lot for me recently. I retired. I think I had a week retired now, so big, big change. But no, no, I'm good, thank you. So for the people that may not know who you are, which I feel like everyone does know who you are, but obviously Olympic triathlete, you've been to two games, right? Three games now. So I went to the Olympic triathlete, or I guess now ex-pro athlete, but I'm still very much involved in the sport.

0:33But I've got the full set of Olympic medals. I think I was the first triathlete to ever do that. So a bronze in London 2012, feels like a long time ago. A silver in Rio 2016, and then finished it with gold in the mixed team relay in Tokyo. Come on. And like you say, you've just retired. Yes, so literally about a week ago I retired. Obviously, I kind of knew it was coming, but to actually make a decision was about a week ago. So I had my first week of retirement. I think I've actually been busier than I was before, but it's a weird feeling. It's a weird kind of mixed emotions, I think. Yeah, incredible.

1:08And I'd want to take it back to kind of like the start. Obviously, you've always been obsessed with triathlon, and I feel like you was one of the first ever guys that did triathlon from a very young age. and didn't kind of, obviously you did other sports, but you didn't like specialise in one sport and then go into triathlon. You kind of did everything growing up. How did that even come about? Yeah, so we were definitely the first generation of full-time triathletes. I'm very, very young. Triathletes, if I'm honest, used to be a sport that if you were a failed runner or something, you came across and gave triathlon a go.

1:45But I started triathlon for now six years old. And how I got into it was quite simple. I swam because my mum used to swim and she wanted to take us to the swimming pool. She actually holds more records at the local swimming club than I do and Alistair does. So, yeah, she took us swimming. We ran because we ran at school and just ran at lunchtime and ran for the school. And then my uncle just happened to do a triathlon. You know, a triathlon was not a very well-known sport. So when I was six years old, I remember going to watch him do the Yorkshire Dales triathlon up at a place called Semmerwater.

2:18It's from this beautiful lake. It went on this massive hill. I'm thinking, wow, this is quite a cool, exciting sport. But I also remember going to school and saying to friends, I did a triathlon on the weekend, and those guys were like, what was that? Did it involve horse riding and shooting and all that kind of thing? No, no, no, it's a different sport. So, yeah, we started off at a very, very young age. But, you know, I never was a triathlete at six years old. You don't go and go. Honestly, I don't think people say they actually believe they're going to be Olympian from being very young. The Olympics feel so far away.

2:46And triathlon was just something that I did. I played football for a local football club. I played rugby at school until I stopped doing that because I broke too many fingers. I swam, biked and ran and played a bit of cricket. I did everything. And then one by one, they kind of fell away. And you used to bike to school, right? Yeah, I used to bike to school. So from the age of, I'm going to say about 13, I started cycling to school and then 14 very, very regularly. We were very lucky. We lived in Horseroth, just outside Leeds. and we can ride down on the canal towpath straight into Bradford. It's about 40 minutes.

3:20Pretty much off the road hallway, so it's quite safe. Drop your bike off, lock it up, and then ride back home. And it was actually quicker than the school bus was biking to school. My poor little brother, Ed, he's five years younger than me, he used to have to take our school bag. So he'd go to school with like three school bags on and he'd leave it outside. On the bus, yeah. On the bus, yeah, yeah, on the school bus. And then Alice and myself used to cycle to school. And it was a great way to start the day. You know, we used to ride down. We used to turn right to go to Bradford. My dad used to turn left to go into Leeds.

3:50And Alistair and myself used to race. And I remember all sorts of stories. You know, I fixed my first puncture because I got a puncture and Alistair was a little bit late for one of his lessons. So he's like, right, you have to solve it. I remember dipping the tyre in the canal. So he got the puncture? He got the puncture. He made you fix it? He made me fix it because he said he was late. And I remember breaking the ice on the canal. This is like one of these stories off an old film. Back in my day, it was really hard on it. But I had to break the ice, put the inner tube in the water to find out whether the air was leaking out and fix a puncture for the first time.

4:21And I remember I cycled to school pretty much every time from the age of 14 because I remember when I was 14, I was at school and one of my friends nearly beat me at a cross-country race. And that was the first time someone from school had nearly beat me. And I decided on the way home from that point I was going to train properly and actually commit to cycling to school. We spoke about before off air that you kind of have a fear for turning up to the start line unprepared. Do you feel like that all comes back from that one time where the guy nearly beat you? Yeah, actually, yeah, I never thought of that.

4:56Probably it was the start of it. I've always had a philosophy, and I don't know if it's just my kind of safety mechanism, or if it started from that, or even from my parents, but my philosophy is that if you turn up on the start line and you've done absolutely everything you possibly can, if you're prepared the best you can then you can't lose if you race again your heart out and do what everything you can then that's all you can do so i've always had that philosophy just if you're prepared and that's that's great and going to london 2012 obviously that we'll talk about later but the incredible nerve-wracking experience going to that i knew i was prepared and that gave me so much strength i think also my parents were massively important in that in teaching us they we're strong believers in we give you the opportunities to do everything and you have to kind of try hard you know they i realized not they told me but i kind of realized that they were making a sacrifice as well they're both doctors they're really busy you know full-time jobs but they still took us around uh firstly the city of leeds and bradford to go to training sessions on an evening when they probably wanted to chill out at home and then secondly on the weekends around the country to take us to races so i think they very much said if you know we're committing then we want you to commit as well and give it your best.

6:08And again, all we can ask is you give it your best. And I've kind of taken that throughout my whole sporting career now. Yeah. And with your parents, do they understand what it takes? Because obviously you're cycling to school. You're then running for like an hour or something on your lunch break. And then you're swimming for a couple of hours in the evening or something. And you're doing that every single day. Like most parents will probably say, oh, you're doing a bit too much, Johnny. whereas did they kind of like push you on uh no they never pushed us on there's only one time a couple times i can remember them encouraging me to go swimming i remember coming home and it was a time i wasn't sure if i wanted to do it again that kind of 14 years old just before i full-on committed was like do we want to do this can i play football at school and with our mates and i remember hiding my swim uh bag and be like mum i can't find my swim bag and and she He was going, no, no, no, I've got a spare one.

7:01Off you go. But no, they never. I think our parents let us kind of learn and fail. Fail is not the right word. Learn from our mistakes. And that involved with training. And they never say to us, you're doing too much. As long as we did our schoolwork, I think that was the most important thing, then we could do what we wanted around that. And they never said, I can't believe you're psyching 100K today. What are you doing? That's crazy. they would let me for example i remember doing my first actually 100 mile ride and i absolutely blew up about 30 40 miles from home um and my dad i'd stopped in a bakery and phoned my dad up and came and picked me up and and and took me home because again that's part of the learning process and maybe that was too far but they wanted us to just give it our best and learn from my mistakes i think i would have been very different if alistair wasn't around i think he was the one who was kind of the ground baker really he was the one who as a young lad from being very young basically look at a week and go okay what free time can i train in okay let's stop there i can ride to school there i can lunch time i can swim after school okay there's three sessions that day i can do that again the day after on a weekend i can do a four-hour bike ride and the british triathlon coaches would go what are you doing you know you can't train 25 hours a week as a 15 year old you're gonna burn out you're gonna blow up and he's like no no i can do it and i'll show you I would have been the one who listened to those coaches and went, okay, maybe it's too much, I'll back off.

8:28And that gave us that massive fitness base that we kind of took for the rest of our career. But Alistair was a really strong kind of groundbreaker. And again, Alistair was a really strong one who, he went to the Olympics in Beijing in 2008. It was a bit of a shock when he qualified, you know, he was only 20. The qualification race was earlier in that year. And I remember fixing his bike for him the night before he flew to his qualification race. and he's pretty laid back about it. Then he went to that qualification race, qualified for Beijing, and I was in a stand watching him where he actually nearly meddled until about 5K to go on the run when he blew up.

9:03I was thinking, you know, if he can do it, then I can do that as well because he'd shown me that he could do it by cycling to school, by eating fish and chips, by just training hard, and I thought I can do that as well. Yeah, no, it's so inspiring. You mentioned when you're young, when you're a six-year-old, you don't really say, well, you don't believe that you can be an Olympian. and obviously with the hard work you made that happen was Alistair a little bit different with his mindset? Do you feel like he believed it from a young age? That's a good question he might look back at now and go I did but I actually don't think it's reality I honestly think the Olympics feel so far away I remember watching the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 waking up in the middle of the night because there's obviously a time difference and watching triathlon it was the first time triathlon to be in the Olympics and being like this just feels a million miles away from where we are now never mind British I think it's doing that well because we didn't at that time but I just think it's a gradual process and Alistair very strongly believes himself and he's definitely someone who is scared of not giving it his best and scared of the failure of that side of it I don't think he was there going I could be Olympian and I believe myself I think he first he goes right I can qualify for Yorkshire doing the Yorkshire CrossFit Champs and then I can maybe do well in the National CrossFit Championships championships and maybe I can call if I have a great Britain for triathlon as a junior and you work your way steadily up that way a big moment for him was winning the world junior championships in 2006 in Lausanne and that's when you kind of go maybe I can do well at this but even then you go am I just a good junior maybe I'm not maybe I can't make it a senior so he might look back now and say he believes he could be but I don't think he I don't think he could because from cycling along the Canal Tope after school to the Olympics just feels like a jump that you can't make as a youngster.

10:50Yeah. I love how humble you both are being kind of like the mindset. I feel like it's typical British culture to, you know, even if you have, you know, the wins, you know, you still are like, I don't know if I'm good enough. Whereas like someone from America or whatever would be like, yeah, I'm good enough. And they may not be. But no, what was your relationship like with your brother when you were younger, so Alistair? I think for me, it's always been looking up to him. It's been the younger brother going, wow, I've always wanted to copy and follow Alistair. Even from very young, we had a forebodoon house in Horsforth and I chose the bedroom next to Alistair, even though he was way smaller, because I wanted to be around Alistair, I wanted to copy him.

11:37Apparently I used to get blood on my knees from just crawling around following Alistair as a young baby, wanted to do what he did and kept up with him. So we've always had that. I always looked up to him in that way. And he's always been the one that I believe, if he does it, I want to do it as well. We were very close, obviously, training together. I think there was times when I started to copy him when we were still living at home. And he was like, oh, it's not cool having your younger brother just following you around the whole time. And he didn't really like that. But then as we grew up again and got into kind of more of our important triathlon years, we both realised the strength of having each other there.

12:13Yeah, no, it's interesting. Did you bicker like normal brothers? Yeah, we bickered. We bickered way more over non-triathlon things than we did. Did you ever fight? Yeah, we did. I remember once hitting him over the head with a golf club because I always believed that I was better at ball sports than he was. So he once beat me at table tennis and then I picked up the golf club and hit him because he was annoying me. So we did fall out. And then when I lived with him, so in 2010, so when I was 20, two years before London, we moved out together. So a couple of years before, London was sometimes quite tough.

12:46Alistair had his tour as Achilles in early 2012, and he was a bit of a moody, angry man. So at that point, it was hard to live with. And it would have been hard to see your younger brother going out, training and winning races around the world, where you're sat at home with a boot. So there were times when we fell out. But on the whole, we did pretty well for people who had been in high-pressure situations together. yeah and what was your favorite discipline growing up running was always my favorite i love running i love the fact you could put your shoes on with it everywhere i like competing um domestically in the local cross-country races and national cross-country cross-country races and trying to be the best runner possibly could i actually love the simplicity of just go for running just put them on a year ago and i used to love running at lunchtime used to be my way of getting away from school yeah i love school but the fact i could go around the streets of Bradford and you every single footpath around Bradford come back to school have lunch and crack them with lessons I absolutely love that fact and I love how you can just get a 45 minute running in a short gap and then you feel like you've got your exercise fixed for the day and when you was back at school like you said you was training up to like 25 hours a week was it super structured was you having like specific sessions or was it kind of just going out and getting volume in pretty much for uh early school years was volume uh it was cycled to school it was run it's just from after school with a swim group whatever they did and then it's run at lunchtime and there were not really any kind of official sessions to start off with i remember the day because we moved house i looked back at my old training diaries and i opened some of them some of them i would just do stupid stuff so for example uh i would do a time trial on the tuesday at lunchtime at school because the cross country club at school was doing a time trial and on Tuesday evening we would go to Leeds Beckett track and I'd meet the triathlon squad there and on that day they would be doing a track session so I'd do two sessions in a day and stuff like that and then I'd probably learn that was stupid and not to do it that way but I just thought this is what you did but for most of our school years it wasn't any structured training it was just go out there and train it wasn't really until I'm going to say 16 really started to get more structured so that point you start to get on the british triathlon programs and we started working with really good coaches at leeds beckett and at that point you start to introduce run sessions and then uh but at 16 i was doing one run session a week and um just cycling to school and cycling at lunch cycling at weekends with my mates but and then swimming with a squad and then gradually becomes more and more structured but for most of our school year it was just aerobic volume and just fun training.

15:24Where did you actually learn that that was the key from? Because obviously, like you say, building up volume, you'd probably advise everyone to do that within the early years of starting any endurance sport. Did you have any kind of like role models when you was a kid? Yeah, role models. I remember watching a documentary on Haile Gamishilassi and learning about how he ran to school and that's how he got his base foot volume in. And that's how he's got his weird left or right arm, I can't imagine one, because he carried his books with him into school. and then I think so I kind of knew a bit about volume.

15:55Alistair probably read into it. He was a lot more of the kind of reader. But to be honest with you, a lot of it was because it was fun and I loved the exploring and the kind of easy aerobic training. It wasn't structured. It wasn't I got to do 30 hours or whatever. It's just I enjoy that side of training. So on a Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, that's when we get long rides in. It would just be I enjoy riding in the local cycle group. I had a couple of mates that we rode with. I enjoyed exploring Yorkshire. I loved just waking up in the morning, get the map out, going right, I'm just going to cycle to there.

16:25It's got a nice cafe, let's go there. Find out it's a four-hour ride. Okay, it's a bit longer than a four-hour ride back. So it was more the fact that it was fun. The sessions are the ones that take more mental energy and you need to go to a specific place. A coach's got to set you the session. If you want to go to track, you've got to get there, whereas the easy aerobic stuff is just stuff you can get out the door and do. So I think it was more the fact that that was just easy to do. yeah like you say it's it's a lot more mentally taxing like if you've got a session planned sometimes you can procrastinate and 30 minutes can go by an hour can go by and you're just procrastinating because you don't want to do the session or you get nervous for the session because like you said that easy stuff like start off at whatever pace and just ease into it and whatever happens that day happens you mentioned that everything started to get more and more serious obviously as you got older um obviously training got more serious but did you start to look at the other things around training that obviously would give you a benefit maybe nutrition maybe sleep and stuff like that when did all that become like a priority to you i'm gonna say so when we i went to university and we started working with the uh the leeds triathlon there so we had two great coaches in malcolm brown and jack maitland and their biggest role apart from stopping me doing too much and going too crazy in training was to add those little things in that we kind of were missing out on so we never made it too serious but for example drills we'd start adding drills on a Thursday because to help to help our run technique and mobility then we started adding in strength conditioning as well initially strength conditioning used to be a thing we used to do a track session on a Tuesday night and then go to gym and after a while you realize that's probably not the best way to do it when you're cold and wet and tired and need some food so that would come go to a different day so again it was trial and error we added a saturday morning run session because we wanted to do two run sessions a week as well um nutrition has never i guess been a massive i don't think i'd prioritize it much as i should have done apart from around big events so day-to-day stuff i'm a malcolm would go initially to go to the local supermarket buy a load of big a load of pints of milk and then come to track sessions and go right after after attraction here's your milk to get everyone's got to make sure you recover well so here's some milk for everyone to drink and that turned into protein shakes and off you go from there um but then also around big events so into london we went to altitude camp and we would have a a someone there to cook us all the food so we prioritized around big events uh and like to focus on those kind of big events rather than every kind of day nutrition nowadays obviously it's a different world so we did start to add those things in once you kind of get to 18 19 yeah and um and sleep oh sleep again i think i always just knew i needed sleep i don't think there's any massive no need to tell me that i think i probably learned that the hard way in that if i didn't sleep enough i got injured or ill and got sick and then you kind of missed out on training so i didn't want to miss out any training so i wanted to make sure i recovered and slept as well as i could so i think that just can that came naturally to me.

19:33And was there anything that you was doing back then that is now in fashion now? Like a trendy thing that you do now, like you was doing before anyone really knew about it? I think one of the big things is keep the easy training easy. You know, very much everyone now has gone back to that polarized training, whereas we were always doing that. When you say easy, what was easy for you? Well, I'd go out for runs back in those days and run five minutes per kilometer for the run, just because we used to have runs as well where if you're really tired, you'd find the small little single trail tracks through the woods because you didn't feel really slow.

20:08Whereas the big main tracks, if you're tired, just felt really slow and boring. So if it was easy, I would run easy. What else did we do? Again, we were actually quite early to the protein shake and all that recovery after training. Strength conditioning, that was something that we added that I gave everyone doing at the time. You have run drills, like I was saying. Altitude training, I guess. Everyone does altitude training. I first went to Alchud in 2011, in 2010. We went to Samarit's and that's my first experience of Alchud. And now everyone does it. And we were quite early to that, I think, in the triathlon world.

20:45And I think that we went to that before, we went to Alchud before all my big and major games. Yeah. And do you feel like that is a game changer? One of those that's really hard to know is, is it the fact that it's Alchud training, and actually altitude benefit and, you know, does your blood value show that? Or is it the fact that you go somewhere nice and you're kind of taken away from all the distractions for four or five weeks because you have to commit a certain amount of time to altitude? So is it the fact you just get a good training camp? You know, when we went to altitude training camps, we had great training partners there that made it fun and they've got the most hours in training.

21:20We had chefs that would look after you so you wouldn't have to go to the supermarket and cook and your coaches would do everything for you. So is that actually the impact around the altitude? but I think it did work for me, definitely. Yeah, and how long did you go up for? What was kind of like the protocol? The protocol for us, I never liked a drop-in last minute because I always think it's a bit too risky. I tried that once, going from America to Japan. I know it involved a lot of travel as well. It just went completely wrong. But you used to go for four weeks, come back home, have two weeks at home before the big event.

21:52So the idea with that is you had four weeks of great training, come back home, probably have a few easy days, maybe a couple of days after that where you felt a bit rubbish, and then try and do a really good session about a week before your race because you should be flying by then and then carry that into your actual race and also allows you to train really hard at altitude for that four weeks and have two week buffer to recover. Yeah. A lot of people say that you guys trained harder than anyone else. Whether it's people that have witnessed you train, where does that come from? I think back in the day, we did train harder than anyone else.

22:27I think maybe it's changed slightly now with what people know about nutrition. I think Super Shoes has changed that as well. And also the threshold training because people now keep it below the line so they can do more volume. We very much, like I said before, polarized it. So my philosophy, our philosophy was you have your key sessions in the week. So there was a couple of hard run sessions, a hard bike session, two or three hard swim sessions. and you try and do as much hard, as much easy training as you can around that before the hard training drops off. So that easy training has to be easy.

23:03So we do hours and hours of just really steady training. So if you was running, you mentioned five minute Ks. If you was on the bike, if you was to say average watts for like an easy bike. 180 watts or something like that. 180 watts. So it's a lot lower than what people think because you see some people and they're apparently pushing 280 watts in zone two and shit like this. Zone two is a really interesting one now, isn't it? It's that kind of middle ground. It's actually zone one on a bike, really, isn't it? Technically, what you're probably aiming for. Yeah, yeah. Just because you're only using your lower limbs.

23:32And I think zone two, if you're going to go out and do four hours at 280 watts, it's actually going to take loads out of you. Nutritionally, you have to eat loads. You're going to come back, you're going to be tired. You've probably done, if you've done four hours, you've done, best part, nearly 4 ,000 calories, haven't you? So it's a big effort. So I don't believe that doesn't take it out of you. So I think that stops you doing the really hard stuff. We believe you really need that top end as well. Zone two is all right if you're going to control it by the threshold as well. So you never really go super, super hard.

24:00But yeah, we took out that gray zone and just went either hard or easy. Yeah. And then swimming-wise, would you do a lot of easy swimming? Swimming, not loads of easy swimming because swimming, the kind of muscle damage is nowhere near as bad as it. So we used to do a real hard kind of sprint session once a week, a threshold session once a week. and a VOT two session once a week, and then a couple of easy sessions and technique. We're swimming as well. If you're in there for 5K, you might only be going hard for 1K, even in the hard session, so there's still quite a lot of easy swimming around it.

24:35How many hours, if you were to talk us through a typical week, maybe hours, maybe actual sessions, what would it look like? For traffic, it involves, I'll be up here for all day, if I tell you all the training we do, but pretty much 35 hours a week. 35 hours and it's 35 hours a week is that counting like just sessions with your heart rate elevated no everything everything so that's like recovery oh no obviously recovery is an easy training but 35 hours total training so I would aim to ride 15 to 20 hours run 100k and then swim will be it by 25-30k and then gym one two times twice a week used to be a Monday and a Friday and gym again Yeah, gym's always been a hard one to fit in.

25:21Yeah, gym's always been a hard one to fit in. So us for gym has always been about injury prevention and a bit of force production to improve your performance and then a bit of kind of loading as well to bone loading, tendon loading as well, and some mobility. It's always really hard to know when to fit that gym session in. We used to do Monday, Friday because they were easy days. But the problem with that is any easy days are not that easy. you kind of have that muscle breakdown on an easy day as well so we used to in the gym pretty much for me it was always something kind of squats or you know single leg squats to look after to get the glute work it was always leg extensions to keep on top of my patella tendons a bit of ankle loading and then some hamstring stuff to stop because you used to get quite a lot of upper hamstring tendons we never used to do any shoulder stuff and i always thought i got the kind of strength from swimming so i didn't need to do any for that and then a bit of mobility as well so quite simple the idea either philosophy as well with gym is you want to leave the gym and better than when you came in so you don't want to leave the gym too sore and also a gym should never be making you so sore that you can't do any other of the other sessions so it always be on an easy day yeah it always be an easy day but again i'm looking back i think you're probably better doing it and fitting another day after the hard training another day and then keeping that easy day kind of free so you don't have any more uh any more illness any injury on that day, any more kind of stimulus on that day.

26:47And when you did your easy days, did you ever cap the amount of volume you did on an easy day? Because you probably capped the heart rate, right? And cap the intensity. But did you cap the volume? No, as long as it was easy. So you could go out and you could go for a five hour ride. Well, I never would because I always wanted to keep fresh. Easy days back in the day for me used to be on a Friday and some people would laugh at this. I'd do an hour and a half swim so 6k maybe an hour and a half bike ride so 45k and then an hour run and then gym as well so it never became much more of an easy day but at that point I think easy training like that so four hours of training plus gym yeah easy day like that it's still recovery but the problem becomes if you need a mental easy day so at that point as well a lot of my life was around training so an hour and a half on the bike with my mates would be fun you know go to the cafe have a chat so that was better than sitting in a cafe for me you know not better than sitting down playing xbox so if you but then as i got older mentally and busier i kind of mentally needed a day off so that's actually i think more important if you need that mental day off that's when you need less training physically your body can have to resolve quite a lot do you think as you get older your training hours can kind of decrease because you build up that volume and then you can focus more on that performance rather than I think it can I was too scared to do it and I'm probably one of these people who do as I do as I say not as I do yeah because I would tell people that but I've always been someone who's been scared of dropping the hours looking back at the last couple years my career I probably should have really dropped back the hours kept the real intensity relied on that base I've had for years and but I was scared to do it is he easy It's just really hard as an endurance athlete when you spend your whole life and mentality of, unless I'm doing this amount of training, I'm always letting myself down to then kind of change that.

28:42And also, as you're older, you need more recovery. So if you can take out some hours, because if you're not training, you should be recovering. So if you're not on the bike for five hours, if you reduce that to three hours, then you should be doing two more hours recovery. But then I get my life got to the point, especially now, that recovery was not there. So if I wasn't on my bike, I couldn't recover anyway. So, yeah, I'd advise people as they get older to reduce it a little bit, to give themselves more time as well. Yeah, I always find that, like, how many athletes are potentially ruining themselves because they're training so hard the majority of the year, and then when it comes to, say, like, competition, and they want to sharpen up, probably drop the volume, they're kind of, like, sneaking in an extra hour here, sneaking in an extra hour there, because I do it myself, and it probably takes away from your actual performances when it really matters.

29:31It does. It's really hard to do, isn't it? And also, I think to be a good athlete, you're almost wired in that way. But then almost that can be your negative as well. And that's when you need good people around you. Yeah, no, for sure. You mentioned there about recovery. Now, people will think anything that's not training is recovery. Would you just be able to explain what you think is good recovery versus bad recovery? Yeah, well, I've always been pretty simple in recovery. and you really think about the important things and the important pillars of recovery, sleep and nutrition, and then you're kind of day-to-day, kind of chilling out in life.

30:09So sleep, I've always tried to get at least eight hours, eight to 10 hours. I know some people have said you should get eight hours plus an hour for every exercise, every hour of exercise you do, but as a trial for it, it's impossible to be sleeping all day. So the rule would be eight hours plus every hour of exercise you do, you try to sleep another hour? Yeah, which is impossible. You need a lot of sleep, so that's just basically impossible. It includes naps as well, so you could do nine hours at night and two hours during the day. But when are you going to train? Yes, I think that's too much.

30:40I just think I always try to be in bed by 10 and get to sleep, and we never used to train until 8 the next morning at best. I've seen a lot of people, and obviously this is a luxury to have, but a lot of athletes that I spoke to, they've said the number one thing is try and not get woken up by an alarm. and wake up naturally. Did you ever do that or was it always kind of like strict wake-up time? No, it was only strict wake-up time. I woke up to train, so I never wake up to it. If I could wake up without alarm, I would, but in reality, that never happened because we were swimming at eight, so you'd probably be up by ten past seven and that meant you were, yeah, alarm would wake me up.

31:19I did. I'd love to get not woken up by alarm, but I think if you were the kind of person who trained somewhere waking to someone you want and you're not in a squad, one of the great benefits about a squad you got people around you one of the negatives is you obviously fix times out here so if you are completely on your own and you have your own training then if you wake up nine you can swim at half nine you wake up eight you can swim at half eight but we could never do that we all had fixed times to go to training and we couldn't miss them and that involved all our training swim back and run as well and the other side of nutrition as well so let's try recovery sorry it's nutrition and i think that you keep that quite simple and the first one is after a hard session you try and get something down you quite quickly so something with protein in it like a good meal or recovery shake whatever that is and then secondly you uh eat well and eat enough to the day and the most important things to eat enough if you don't eat enough you are basically uh blunting your recovery from all training so you're absolutely wasting your time and the third one is and it's only really become a believer of this when i've had more going on my life and that's just stress and your kind of day-to-day life if you have a stressful life or you got lots going on the recovery is really blunted you know you can't rush it in whether that that could be stress from work or whatever sponsors or whatever whatever if that's really affecting you then it's going to completely knock your recovery yeah no interesting obviously you mentioned like you you feel like you you're honed in on recovery when it was important sorry nutrition when it was important what does like a typical day of eating look like are you fueling just to fuel your body or are you thinking about the actual micronutrients that you get in and macronutrients uh so your nutrition's got two sides of it you've got the day-to-day nutrition so in the day-to-day nutrition um i just try and eat well you know into we ate just good food in london 2012 we just made sure we had good we called it just good home cooking that's prepared for us.

33:10The risk of the triathlete is if you go too down the kind of perfect nutrition, it's hard to get the calories in. You know, some days in the Samuritans, we're burning 5 ,000 calories, 6 ,000 calories. So if you want to eat the most healthy food, you just not get the calories in and then you just put yourself on the back foot. So we just had very good home cooking. You know, try and eat as much fruit and veg as possible, good meals, try and get more protein from meats, fish, whatever, but just eat well and don't overcomplicate that side of it on the bike nutrition again i've talked about this i've gone through the generation of uh not fueling on the bike to uh now fueling on a lot of the bike uh bike quite a lot i like to fuel from for real food on the bike um we were talking about earlier i like these gels um ogt bars sorry i like these they're called ogt bars and they're actually real food so they're bars i've got a wrapper on they put your back pocket and you eat it i'm not a massive fan of fueling the whole time with gels and energy drinks or anything like that because i just don't like it in my stomach i'd rather eat a pop of food i'm really impressed with the otg bars because they've not got a wrapper on them right yeah so the otg bars have not got a wrapper on them they're kind of the you they come for the post in a box and then you just put in your back pocket and when you're out cycling or running or gym or whatever they're actually bringing out a protein range as well so they're going to have 20 grams of protein in it as well so good for post-gym workout.

34:37And then you just don't need to put a wrapper, you have to get that wrapper after you've finished your bike ride or whatever. There's nothing worse than finishing a bike ride than having a load of gel wrappers in your back pocket. The gels, because they leak everywhere and make everything so sticky. And also I hate going around the Yorkshire Dales and seeing gel wrappers on the side of the road that someone's just thrown out of their back pocket or just dropped out of their pocket by accident. And also, one of the big things is they are real food. I don't like the kind of, again, we were back to nutrition before.

35:07One thing is simple is you try and get foods that are messed around with the least amount as possible. You know, simple, easy, simple food, home cooking is what you want. And these are just nice kind of flat-jap, real bars that you would eat anyway. So I'd much prefer to fuel my training with something like that rather than something that's been modified and you don't know what's in it. Moving on to the Olympics. what is it like training for something that only comes around like once every four years I know you've got other races like in between and stuff like that and you may think that these are just as serious and so on but something that is once every four years what's it like it is it's amazing because you only get one shot at it as in each time so you've got what you've got and you need a certain amount of luck that's involved you know if you look throughout our Olympic careers Alistair has been one who's very much timed it 2011 actually he was well, he did well but early 2012 he was injured, got back for it 2015, both of us were out, he had a stress fracture in 2015, he had a ankle injury, got back for 2016 so if it had been a year earlier we'd have got it wrong in 2020 if I'm in COVID I'm pretty sure there'd be a completely different winner as well, so it is very much about timing but I really enjoy the fact that someone draws as a line and so some of the points are counted so the Olympics is there, you've got no option to be fit by that point and it's up to how you prepare it's an art to get ready for it, it's an art not to overdo it a lot of people go on the Olympic start line and they've overdone it and they've trained too much someone said to me if you turn up at the Olympic start line thinking you are absolutely 110 % prepared you've probably done too much because you've probably overtrained and genuinely I think 50 % of the field on the Olympic start line have pushed it too much and too tired so if you turn up at the Olympic start line mentally fresh physically fit but also fresh I think you're 95 % of the way there yeah so going into it more reserved more reserved and not overdone it but that's hard they say even like getting to that start line is a win really it is going to start and getting the get no we'll get into start line injury free and healthy and prepared to race is a win.

37:26A lot of people are broken before they get there. And I remember, so into London, London was obviously my first Olympics. Another thing as well, you want to qualify the year before. If you qualify the year before, it makes your life a lot easier because then you have a whole year to prepare. How many times is there, like how many chances to qualify is there? So Olympic qualification is a whole minefield, but for the British team, it's normally pretty simple. They'll choose two races the year before. One will be the Olympic test event because they always do a race on the Olympic course to check the course that all works, and another one up for the grand final of the World Series, and if you podium at both of those, then they pick you.

38:02If you do well at one, not the other, they might discretionally pick you as well, but the teams normally pick kind of the end of the year before, so kind of October, November, whatever, the year before the Olympics, so that gives you a whole year to prepare, which is a massive advantage, because you can then go into the winter training going, okay, I don't need to be fit until August, July, August, rather than going, okay, there's a selection race in April May I've got to get ready for and that's what a lot of people um come unstuck with because they train they get fit too quick maybe get to test event maybe race well but then get injured again off the back of that so that year out really really really really helps it takes the stress off as well like I say and with that year obviously you knowing before was the only priority the Olympics was you not did you scrap every other race that year um so the year before Or you'd be there at that point, you're focusing really on the Olympics.

38:54And that's actually something that a lot of athletes have got a big challenge at now, is because there are more... Triathlon now has suddenly exploded. You have Super Tri going on. You have the T100 going on. You have the Ironman series, 70.3 Ironman. And you have the World Series as well, and other events as well. So there's a lot to choose from. Whereas when we were there, it wasn't... Well, when we were at our best, there was a lot going on. But it was easy to choose. but we were very focused on the Olympics and back to my philosophy of four of you want to be an Olympic star I know you've done absolutely everything to be there not thinking why are they going to do that half Ironman if that event wasn't going to help my Olympic preparation I wouldn't have done it and that included the World Series travelling around the world trying to take out all the long haul trips the year before and the Olympic year as much as possible so I could keep my body fresh It's crazy how much time before you've got to actually think about what's going to affect you being ready in 12 months time or whatever it is.

39:53Like you say, just one long haul flight 12 months before could affect how you performed. Oh, definitely. That has a knock on effect. That long haul flight, then you come back, maybe you get back in training too quickly, you then get tied and ill, that knocks you out a few months after that and then you miss a few months of base training. So again, we had really, really, really good advice from our coaches that would stop us going and doing that. Did everything get more serious? Everything to get more serious. And that's actually one thing now I'm looking forward to is almost taking off the serious side of it.

40:21You know, I can go on my bike now and ride my gravel bike. At the same time, I can go into fun races that I didn't have a chance to do. We very much committed, took out all the kind of fun, or everything, actually I have a simple question. Is that going to help my performance on the London, was the 7th of August, 2012, on the 7th of August? The answer was no, you take it out. It's pretty simple. That happened commercial stuff as well. Opportunities of, do you want to come down and do this and we'll pay this amount of money? is that going to make me is that going to get me to the start line as best possible no let's take it out it was as simple as that and then we very were home on that one day and it and that's one thing I'm proud of because it meant that we we delivered on those days and then well at the end of the day that did change our lives yeah so you don't regret turning down anything no I don't no not now because the choices I made and they were all for a reason and I think that's actually what became harder by the end of my career is that these are things i probably do regret to end now at the end of my career is i wasn't performing quite as well so it was harder to make those sacrifices because when you're winning or you're performing well it's easy to make those choices i'm not going to that wedding i'm not doing that because i'm gonna i can justify it because i'm doing well in my hand in my head it became harder to do that because i wasn't performing quite as well and it's all the more the day-to-day sacrifice as well of you know uh my wife is going to look to Freddie for a few hours because I'm going out cycling.

41:44Or, you know, when you're performing well, you can do that. Whereas you get, when the performance isn't quite there, it makes it harder to do. Yeah. I feel like after just spending today with you, you're a very thoughtful person and you care about the people around you. Oh, thank you. No, but I feel like that can come at a disadvantage when being an athlete. Did you ever struggle with that? Relationships or anything else? Yeah, but you know what? Apart from a psychologist, I think you're the only person that's ever asked for that so thank you yeah no you should be a psychologist yeah I actually think that's a bit of my weakness is wanting to keep people happy and that's the advantage that my brother had over me is that he was very ruthless and there's times when I definitely should have been more ruthless and less cared less about what other people thought or their feelings than what I my feelings and just gone right it's good for me I'm doing it But for me, it was very much, yeah, thinking about other people, maybe a bit too much, especially Alistair as well.

42:45And I should have definitely focused on myself more. But that's just my personality. And maybe I'm just a people pleaser. And that might have cost me maybe beating Alistair in Rio because I genuinely believe that was my chance to beat him. But, yeah, maybe sometimes it's better to be a better person. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Is there anything that you change? yeah one of my big moments I would change was in Rio 2016 I prepared really well again I was fitter than Alice to go on the start line I was ready to go and I went into that race to innocent I you know hearing back the stories of training session before Alice would be letting air out his tyres to make it harder for himself whereas I was turning up kind of training just feeling that I was training there you know as part of the group we're helping each other out as best he possibly could, which we were, but Alistair was almost trying to get one over us all as well.

43:40And then secondly, on the actual race day in Rio, we had a great swim, great bike, dropped everyone, got onto the run, dropped everyone else with five k's to go. It was just two of us. I said to Alistair about 6k, relax, relax, it's really hot here, let's not blow each other up. He saw that as Johnny's suffering, and I'm going to capitalise on this and take off and drop him. whereas if I hadn't shown that weakness then maybe I'd beat him that day. If I go back, I think I'd be more ruthless and be on the start line going, you're not here as a younger brother to Alistair. You're here because you can beat him and go out there and beat him.

44:15If I could go back and do that day again, I'd do that. And that kind of rivalry, did you enjoy that with your brother? Because when it gets to the start line, I know you're brothers but you're also competitors. Yeah, I think Alistair, I found Alistair harder than anyone to beat because he'd always been my older brother. I looked up to him and I almost thought I had to be way better than him to beat him because he was tougher, he would out-suffer me and also as my older brother. So I had to really, really get in the right mindset and the right physical ability to beat him because he always had that hold over me.

44:53And I probably should have worked with a psychologist earlier and believed myself more that I could beat him because there's definitely times in my career that he got one over me because he had that edge over me mentally. And do you think that really does matter? You've got to believe in yourself first and foremost? Yeah, I believe the physical attributes and the ability comes first and that allows you to then have the mental. I look back at this and people always say, mentally Alistair, you look so tough and so in control, but it's easy when you're better than people because you can look easy.

45:27it's when you're the one who's uh getting uh destroyed on the bike and you know you're suffering so much that's when it's hard to be mentally tough because uh or mentally composed because you're the one getting destroyed the whole time so it's easy when you bet when you physically better than people but um i yeah you have to believe in yourself you want to succeed after you've got the physical ability as well going back to london olympics what was it like represent in your own country at London? London was amazing. We talked about it for obviously years before and then the day finally came. But I remember we'd done the exact same thing the year before.

46:04We had the philosophy in 2012 to basically replicate what we did in 2011. Being altitude in St. Ritz for four weeks, came back home for two weeks. We tried to switch off from the Olympics because our event was the second week, so towards the end. Didn't work very well. We had a fishing ship, opening ceremony at home, got an opening ceremony kit on. watched loads of Olympics, probably changed our training around watching events. Went down on the train a couple of days before, we were ready to go. I was really nervous about other athletes improving because it's Olympic Games. I remember going down to the pool for the first time and seeing some Kiwi athletes thinking, oh, you guys haven't improved, your technique's still awful.

46:42So, you know, it's just another triathlon. People can't magically get better in two months' time. the event with itself we come down to the start line I remember hearing the noise when we were doing a warm up lap on the course and just thinking well this is a day that we'll never have again so I wanted to just give it everything and make sure that I gave myself the best shot which I did until I got my penalty but in the end it didn't cost anything and I believe that was the fairest Olympic podium we had the three best athletes I didn't actually think that Javier Gomez his Spanish rival at the time was going to up his game that much because we were We were in absolute flying shape.

47:17And I knew on that start line, if someone had beaten us that day, then fair play to them. They were really, really fit. And I didn't think Gomer was going to make that jump, but he did. And yeah, to come away with a bronze medal. If I'm honest, it was a bit of a kind of relief. It was more, I'm really pleased we didn't mess it up. But at the same time, it was unbelievable. And then obviously after Olympics was incredible, all the stuff you get invited to. Did you have some downtime? No, and that's one thing. Another thing I regret after my career is I never really stepped back and reflected or had downtime.

47:46I enjoyed it. It was always on to the next thing. For example, after London, we were really busy. All the stuff, you know, the media tours you got to do, everything else. We came back home, and then I was pretty much straight back into training because I wanted to win the World Championships. Our World Championships still is, but was then as part of a series, and we had two more events to go, and I had to race in Stockholm and then actually in Auckland and New Zealand. So I had to get back into training to get ready for that. So it was very much back home and straight back to it. And like you said, you regret that.

48:16Do you feel like you would be the athlete that you are today with the medals that you've got today if you did take in them kind of things? That's a really good question, isn't it? And I probably wouldn't have won enough as much, but I could have probably had better performances, in some ways kind of one-off performances because I'd have more ups and downs. I was very consistent. I just kept being, you know, one of my proudest achievements was between 2010 and 2014. I was on the podium in every single race I did. it's from like 40 odd races so to be able to level that so as a consistency but yeah I probably looking back I wish I almost took, Alistair was very much at polarising, it had the good race and the bad races and I wish I took more time off and reflected and then got back to it and I probably would have had a more better performances if I had been more consistent and another one as well is I wish after my heat exhaustion in the Cozumel moment in 2016 I wish I had taken at least a year off then because I never fully recovered after that I think that almost destroyed the last few years of my career.

49:17Do you think that just put you in that kind of hole and getting back to training, obviously fatigued, like you say, with the heat exhaustion? I don't think people realise how much it takes out of you. No, yeah, so the heat exhaustion in Cozumel is, I get well known from it now, if you're asking about that the whole time. I think that, well, firstly, that is, you can die from it. You know, you are at some point on the scale to a not close to somewhere near a near-death experience. It's not great. And I believe after that, for at least three years after that, my body was capped at a point where it would just stop me going hard.

49:56I would do races and I would get to the finish line and go, I'm not even tired because my body just wouldn't let me go any harder. My body almost reset lower. And then for the rest of my career, my zone of a good race was so small. Everything had to be perfect. I had to be heat acclimated. I had to be well-fueled. I had to be super fit. I couldn't be ill. Whereas the years before that, I could go to a race and be tired because I'd been really busy or trained too hard and be absolutely fine. So that narrow window became so small to perform after that. And yeah, if I could go back, I'm trying to avoid doing that, especially now I know about heat now to prepare for heat, but also I'd make sure I recovered after.

50:36I thought I did recover. I did everything I possibly could. I went down to do some tests with the British Navy, with experts down in Portsmouth, and they told me I was absolutely fine physically. Whether it's a physical thing or a mental thing, I'm pretty sure it's more of a physical thing. It definitely affected the rest of my career. Yeah. Would you say that was like a low point? And what was your lowest point within your career? That was one of the lowest points, was that because I, one, physically did harm to myself. And secondly, I lost the chance to become world champion as well by having that.

51:10One of the lowest points of my career was not qualifying for Paris Olympic Games as well. I thought I was the right. I thought I could have done well in that event. I was really unlucky. One of the races where I could have shown my ability in the relay was in Abu Dhabi and it was a freak rainstorm in the desert and the race got cancelled and just everything like that conspired against me. It was just a bit of bad luck. I think I got all my bad luck out of the way in that year. And then the years in 2017, 2018 were really tough. I had, as you know, 2018 when I raced the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, I really saw a hamstring that was hanging on a little bit.

51:48I had an upper hamstring tendon off a, which I don't know if anyone's had. It literally is a pain in the butt. It just won't go away. You'd be sat on a chair like this, it'd be hurting. You'd go for a run at a hurt, it'd just hurt at night. And I wasn't performing very well. I wasn't enjoying the training. And that's the first time in my career I was like, do I still want to do this? Wow. It's crazy how an injury can do that. Yeah, injuries can do that, and underperforming. How long did it take to get rid of that? It wasn't until I got rid of it really properly into the Olympics in 2021. It was a good three years of just pain.

52:21Tendons are an absolute nightmare. There's ups and downs. You have good days, bad days, and you fly to a race, it'll be fine. You get off the plane after sitting down for 10 hours, it'll be sore. And you get out of bed, and the first thing I do is, how's my hamstring? It just took over my life for years, and I absolutely hated that. I couldn't do anything pain-free. and it's just amazing how your mentality changes from being, love training, going out there, training being a passion and being enjoyment to just looking forward to every session being done. And then now that obviously you're retired, you don't have to, well, I'd hope that you don't have to stress as much about things.

52:58What is it actually like? Do you know, having this incredible career where you make so many sacrifices to now being able to kind of do whatever you want? Well, I had a bit of a reflection on this when I was riding my bike back yesterday. And at first, I was on a bike ride. I'd gone and done a gravel bike ride, but normally I'd have a structured training session. This time I just went, right, I'm going to find all the cool different rideaways around my house that I haven't been able to ride on for years so I can just enjoy exercising rather than training, I like to call it. And there's two things.

53:27I think, firstly, finally in my life, I can say yes to things. I'll spend a whole lifetime saying no. And I'm not regretting it for a second, but a whole life that's out of school of school friends saying you want to come and do this be like no having to make excuses to missing out on weddings and missing out on opportunities like this and doing cool stuff I've always had to say no whereas finally now I can say yes to a lot of things and then secondly it almost feels like the feeling of you know when you've worked really hard or you're at school and you've got an exam coming up and every time every spare moment you're thinking should I be rising should I be doing this and that finally you do that exam and that weight's lifted off you it's almost like that now of there's no training session exercise that i have to do now i want to do it but i'm going to continue to do stuff that i want to do but if i don't do it or i change it slightly it's raining outside i don't want to ride a bike i can now go for a run i can now do the fun stuff i can do it on my own terms finally and i'm looking forward to that and i'm also i'm really looking forward to doing all sorts of events out there that i haven't had chance to do yeah i know obviously you you've got a family at home uh how's how's it been like the last kind of like like you said you knew this was coming so you probably adjusted prior to announcing your retirement but how's it been how's family life been with that less stress yeah it's been uh great i knew it was coming it's almost like a wean-off process with sport in a way you know i was almost i wasn't training quite a level before anyway especially since freddie was born because it's hard to fit it all in basically but since i've retired and then i've had the pressure off i can definitely just be more relaxed around freddie you know i'm not in the night going i've got a hard training session tomorrow i've got to go to sleep i can be more relaxed and if i miss a bit of sleep who cares you know i'll deal with it i don't swim at the moment in the mornings i'll get back to that because i want to get back to a routine but that gives us more time in the mornings i mean i can spend more time with freddie and i think i'm just a better dad to be around because this morning um before doing this i was up baking which i haven't i didn't bake anything before i retired for about probably about 10 years uh i'm absolutely terrible at baking i baked it baked it around the bed the other day and no one eats it so it's that bad so just more time for more things like that so so you're going to practice what would you what do you want to learn how to do baking wise uh well for me something simple i'd learn i'll start off simple but eventually uh i guess at the moment simple i honestly just want to be able to do know something that i don't need a recipe for and actually gets right and actually rises at the moment my cakes don't rise so i'm going to start off small and then i'm going to get to stage that i can do more complicated stuff but it's just more relaxed you know even coming to do this you're normally you'd be stressed about i've only got a certain hour i've got to do this fit it in can we do it at home i'm missing a snooze whereas now i'm coming to it i can talk to you beforehand and we can have a nice time and actually enjoy doing stuff like that and enjoy meeting people.

56:16Yeah, it's cool. And you don't realise at the top level what athletes actually sacrifice. When was the last time you went skiing? Yeah, I didn't ski for between, I think I was 17, all the way up to Rio in 2016, about 10 years. When I knew I was starting to wind down, I skied the last couple of years because I knew I wasn't serious. Yeah, that kind of thing. but it's more the everyday you know i almost got scared of people asking me to do stuff because i knew i was gonna have to come up to excuse of why i couldn't be there because i had to train i had to sleep or all the guilt around it of you go and see your friends and it goes past 10 o 'clock and you're going i've got to go home you know i've got to go back to bed the sleep anxiety is the worst and then you get worried about that and it's just that kind of hanging over you it makes it worse you end up not actually sleeping properly because you're like worried i've ruined it i've got less and eight hours or it's going to be a nightmare tomorrow yeah you always got that counter but you've always got to be accountable and it's always got to be over you kind of got to do this i've got to make sure this well and i at a moment i've still it's not a process where you stop and go right i can do what i want now because i still want to stay fit i'm still accountable for lots of other things but you can be a bit more relaxed about it and not think if i miss a couple hours sleep it's going to derail my whole training week or something like that or not think if i go out for dinner it's going to derail my next day of training uh and like i said go to kind of think things now whether that's friends weddings or events and again go to them actually be present and enjoy being there what what is next for you then so uh a few things coming up next so i've kind of started a few roles one our big role is the brownie foundation obviously i love the work we do with those guys and we're gonna go for a hundred thousand children who've done a found i'm gonna try up on the first time the brownie foundation next year so i'm gonna get involved with that and try and keep on growing that uh brownie fitness we have a coaching company um which has over 300 members now and we provide uh affordable coaching that i'm heavily involved in so that can be involved in actually writing the programs for people meeting them on drift sessions or group meetings or training camps i think like that so i really enjoy i've been involved that last few years but i can get more involved with that um my we're talking about there I'm working with OGT we talked about the bars before so I'm looking forward to getting more involved with those guys also a lot of cool challenges as well it's finally the time now that I can go out and do things that I haven't had a chance to do before, I started the sport because I loved it, I started the sport because I wanted to go out and do adventures, I wanted to go out and run fell races and mountain races and now I can go back and do that so I haven't quite sorted out a calendar yet but I've got a list of events I wanted to do, that could be the three peaks in Yorkshire.

59:02I want to try and have a good go at that. That could be going to some mountain running races, UTMB, that kind of stuff. Ski mountaineering, some completely different stuff, even a bit of high rocks. So I basically want to go out there and just do a lot of events that I haven't had a chance to do. But also at the same time, do things day to day that I've missed out on, whether that is a mate just text me and say, it's fancy that you're going and riding here today. you know five hours five hours to do that loop yes go and do it why not rather than going i've got a run test on tuesday i can't do that so just go out and go back to kind of the pure side of enjoying it again yeah no i love that and that's what's so inspiring that i feel like you you got into this because you loved it and then you're kind of not saying that you're finishing it because you're just transitioning to another chapter of your life but you're going back to just because you love it definitely that's what i'm really looking forward to going back to i love it and that's what i've learned the last few days as well is what i i want to go out on my bike i want to run i can't at the moment but i want to do that and it's going back and doing that and if you've got if you want to be successful you've got to love it and i'm definitely not retiring from sport i'm very easy to say i'm retiring from pro sport um because i'm retiring from that uh the strictness of pro sport yeah and uh what made me smile before i asked you a question off air and it was do you think you'll live here forever would you just be able to answer that on here oh absolutely definitely I love Yorkshire.

1:00:25I love the sporting culture of Yorkshire. I love the people. I love the honesty of the people. I love the fact that Yorkshire are proud of where they come from. I love the fact that I live in North Leeds so I can get straight out to Yorkshire Dales or come here to Central Leeds pretty quickly. I've got my family here and hopefully, well, I will live here my whole life. I moved house about two months ago. I moved about 100 metres. So at this rate, it's going to take me a long time to get out of Yorkshire. and I love that because you seem genuinely happy with everything in your life at the moment which is incredible and not to say the amount of talent around here, like we were just at the track before and you mentioned the amount of incredible athletes that use the facilities here in Leeds That's another great thing, I get inspired by those people as well and I train with a lot of guys I can go down to the track on a Tuesday morning or evening and there will be Phil Sessman Emil Caress Mark Scott a load of other guys probably Vinny as well so probably you've got 5, 6, 7, 8 runners who are sub 40 minute 5k runners at least maybe a lot faster and they're all doing a session together and that's what I love about sport when you get people coming together training together and enjoying it and helping each other out and I think that's what that's what sports are and that's what the culture got in Leeds Yeah I love that I've got one final question bit of a mad one but what is your worst habit?

1:01:49Uh, my worst habit, I think, is I hate when people are late, I think. You actually don't be late, too. I didn't mind that at all. So don't worry about that. But I don't like when people are late, and that stresses me out. Why? I just see it as, um, I've seen it with my brother a little bit, and I almost feel like... Does he feel the same? No, no, he's fine with people being late. All right. I almost think that people almost think that their time is more important than yours. I feel like I'm doing you out here because it's been great fun, by the way. So I did not feel like that. I was happy waiting for you today.

1:02:25I was 10 minutes late. Yeah, 60 traffic is in. No, I'll give you that. I feel like I'm, oh, I feel bad now. No, no. So yeah, I almost feel like if you're late, you almost think that your time is more important than someone else's. No, I feel like that's a complete fair point. But apart from you, because you had a good excuse. That's what I mean. I love that thank you Johnny for today I wish you the best of luck with everything that you're doing hopefully we can keep in contact and get some sessions in I want to invite you over to do a high rocks workout back over Bolton Way and maybe we might see you doing a high rocks in the future I'd love to it's the kind of it's what everyone's doing at the moment isn't it so I'd like to go what did you want to find you said before you mentioned that you wanted to find who is like what is the fittest discipline oh yeah we were talking about Well, one other thing that really interests me is find out who is the fittest athlete on the planet.

1:03:17I know it's really hard how you measure that and how do you measure that? You know, you could have Tadej Pogacar or someone else, a cross-country skier, maybe got the best VO2 max. But I almost mean fittest athlete is in all round as well. So the ability to move well in a certain direction, but also the ability to run up a hill well and, you know, do all sorts. So the fittest all-round athlete. yeah and I don't even know where we'd start with that we'd have to I think we have to start with like a concept of what defines fitness in every aspect yeah go from there and then create an event and then yeah test people with it we should do it yeah let's do it thank you for today no thank you I've really enjoyed it it's been good to get to meet you and I'm looking forward to coming to High Rock so thank you for the good questions as well you're good at this oh thank you