What It Takes to Be a Hybrid Athlete: Spencer’s Untapped Games

0:00Imagine you think you've definitely won, right? You think this guy's miles behind you and you're just like preparing to think and instead you just get lamped. Wake up a few hours later in hospital. Did I win? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's going on? Where am I? It's like, no, mate, the bloke who did win decked you before the finish. See you later. And don't worry, the entire world saw it. It's fine. The female broadcaster, I'm not sure if you've heard the clip, but she's terribly excited by it. It's not that Gary Neville clip where it's like, ahhh! Yeah, no, those are incredible scenes. well that was close than i thought actually nearly took my schnout off today we're going to bring you a bit of a kind of internal episode from the team right so got the team in here and we're going to be going through the kind of latest big apex updates we're going to be getting some of the apex athletes that you've been nominating and some of whom have nominated themselves physically onto the show so we're going to discuss who they are We also might change the name.

1:01I think that we weren't really anticipating to actually go out and build these games. What started as quite a fun idea of finding a bunch of really athletic people has led to a fair amount of traction socially and online. And as such, we don't really want another brand. So we're probably going to end up calling them the untapped games. And we also came across a young five-a-side football team of children who call themselves Apex. And there's quite a few other Apexes kicking around, obviously. I didn't want to have to be the guy to have to call their parents and say that they can no longer refer to themselves as Apex athletes.

1:48I think everyone should be entitled to call themselves whatever they want and listen, crack on and good luck. there's also a bunch of apex people in texas of course in austin texas um as you would wholeheartedly expect so apex unfortunately is dead not for the children's football team or the people in texas but for us we are we are evolving and growing into the untapped games so welcome do you think it was ever an error that we just called it apex because you did a bit of chat chat gpt one time and we just never really thought to change it after. First, I find that quite offensive that you think I use ChatGPT for my creativity.

2:29And secondly, no, I don't know what it was. I think we suddenly realized today, didn't we, that the F1 film is Apex GP. And I have to say, despite it being wildly inaccurate in terms of Formula One, I loved that film. I really loved it. Brad Pitt is just a legend, isn't he? What a hero. like like like and his character in it as well sunny oh legend um so i don't know i um probably came there was a there was a bit of that there's a bit of that and also the i don't know i i think that pretty much everyone calls himself a hybrid athlete nowadays right if you're healthy and fit basically you're a hybrid athlete like if you run and you lift weights then you're a hybrid hybrid athlete if you do high rocks then you're certainly a hybrid athlete i think it's kind of like no disrespect to hybrid athletes because i obviously i may even consider myself to be a hybrid athlete and also find them fascinating but i think it's kind of overused and i don't know i i thought apex sounded pretty cool you know unless you're thinking about well an apex predator in terms of animals is very cool you know the word predator itself though could be a bit dodgy but other than that you see as you can see i haven't put too much thought into the the branding exercise of the games.

3:50I just liked it. And people seem to resonate with it. You know, Apex Athletes, Apex Games, like it sounded cool. But like all cool names, you know, when you do do a bit of legal digging into it, you know, often you come up against others that have had similar ideas. Yeah. And this is an argument for maybe doing some of that legal digging before we start. But as I've said, Simon, this started like all great ideas this started as a bit of fun i you know i set out to try to find 50 freak athletes that was the idea wasn't it for the show really like to have them on as guests and like like learn how you know and and after you know a little bit of thought it was it was this whole idea of the bench press and the fast running that made sense to me because they're so counterintuitive to each other like you know being an excellent fast runner over long distance will certainly have an impact on your bench press and vice versa which can't be said for all exercises like if you're an incredible at pull-ups it's probably not going to affect your running if you're incredible at bodyweight exercise it probably won't affect your running you know even even like squatting and and and uh and deadlifting like won't have any major impact when you're running it's all it's all leg related as long as you stretch well you know strengthening your legs is probably a good thing whereas having having a heavy upper body right like being physically powerful up top um will almost certainly have an impact over long distance in your speed like even me who's just ran like my first sub three so 257 42 in tokyo felt like real pain in my back like the the following days because and I'm not some like jacked animal but I'm far bigger than you know lots of people that run fast marathons and um because the muscles in my back are kind of like going up and down and dragging it like it like it I felt I felt like I'd been in a tumble dryer because I'm just carrying muscle that I kind of if my sole focus was to run really fast, I wouldn't lift.

6:05So I wouldn't be carrying excess muscle. So that's the kind of, I know you know this, I'm just going over it again, just in case you're a first-timer to the Untapped Games. The process to get to the Games is to qualify, right? And then once you're in the Games, the Games is a completely separate thing, which we'll talk about for the first time properly today. And by the way, I would love input from you, the listener, as to what you would like to see at the Untapped Games, right? But in order to qualify, and I think there's going to have to be different, what are they called? Stations? Levels, capabilities.

6:43No, this is just to get in. Oh, I see. So we're not at the games yet. In order to qualify for the games, 10 reps of 110 kilos on the bench. Clean reps, unassisted, not yanking it all over the place. Clean, bar down to chest and up, straight arms. 10 reps of 110 kilos that's a hefty bench right if you're not if you if you don't if you don't do lots of lots of bench press and a sub two hour 50 minute marathon so 249 59 good 250 one second no good right and 10 clean reps of 110 that gets you in your like your platinum elite like you're competing for the world champs, right? That's your untapped games world championship entry, right?

7:31That's what you need to get into the games. Do we say that's in like, to make it like really clear, should we say you've got to be able to do that within 48 hours or within 24 hours of doing one, you have to be capable of doing the other? Yeah, I think so. So I think 24 hours is fine because you like, and if it were me, I would do the bench press middle of the afternoon the day before the marathon 48 hours i guess i wouldn't really have a problem with 48 hours but if we're putting rules in place let's do 24 hours that gets you in and then i think there'll be a more still like you know really high end but probably not quite elite entry level this is where you probably get you know a few thousand people that are able to do this uh call it 10 reps of 100 and a sub three hour marathon so like as an example i would be in that pool you know like i'm not quite at the uh big larry elite level but i can do 100 for 10 and run a sub three hour marathon and i could do that within 24 hours of each other so and i'm sure by the way i i know lots of people who could do that so do you think big larry elite level is what we should call the top tier.

8:43Why don't we just call it that?

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11:02big Larry elite level and then you know not quite so Larry elite level for like for like the larger pool and then you know if were this to be incredibly successful you know we can have just like average right which which is like I don't know call it you know a 3 a 3 10 marathon and 80 for for 10 which by the way like for your average person is is pretty good going but it's not big hairy elite level yeah right so anyway we'll come back to you with with what these are going to be across male and female of course we're not forgetting female the big hairy are we saying hairy or larry i think larry larry larry the big the big larry elite female level is um a three hour marathon so sub three hour marathon and 60 for 10 on the on the bar we had lucy charles barkley uh on the show and came to an agreement that we felt that that was the kind of equivalence of the big, leery, elite level men for women.

12:03Once you have been vetted and achieved entry level, and by the way, what would make it really easy is like an official marathon chip time. So please don't like get in touch and say, here's, you know, a video of me shot on a flip phone, you know, with my mate in the gym and then me, you know, hammering out a marathon on a running machine. That doesn't care. It has to be an official marathon. Well, I noticed official, unofficial commented on, Well, they've approved my time. And they approved your Tokyo time. So I think we should enlist them to approve all the marathon times. That's a very good idea.

12:35I like that a lot. That's a great idea. So we'll get official, unofficial. Or is it unofficial, official? One of the two. I always say official, unofficial. The reason it must be an official marathon chip time in an official race is because of the discrepancies and differences in different data and how that's measured. you know the way whoop measures things may be slightly different because it's on your phone to how koros would measure it which has its own gps system so you always end up running further in an actual marathon because you're not you're not you're not running the true race line you're running the course which is obviously you know fit to fitted to 50 000 runners it's a great big thing so you must be verified um on an official marathon course because otherwise i could run laps of bathsy park and only register it on whoop and it would have me running a marathon in the big hairy elite times and hopefully we're not boring people to death with the kind of creation of it we just want to take people on the journey with us like this is this is quite fun for us it's not like we're devoting countless hours in our week to actually build this thing like this is organically kind of taking shape and happening with your involvement uh and you know i i aim to bring you guys probably the first games across elite not quite elite and average um you know across male and female probably as early as as next year you know like i think i think uh i think it might be a bit of a stretch to fill wembley this side of uh of the year but there appears to be quite a lot of interest in this untapped games and and you know i hope you i hope you are interested we've had over 50 people just so that you're all aware get in touch with us claiming that they can do these things and i'm talking about the the big larry uh qualification the sub 250 and the 110 for 10 upon further inspection it's quite clear that many of these men cannot do these things right but but that is also fine listen it's always good to have a goal it's always good to aim towards something um but what what is clear is that some of these guys uh certainly can and i cannot wait to develop like a group of games to get these guys competing in because like i will have i'll be so interested in in seeing these lads compete coming on the show we've got fergus crawley who completed a 500 plus pound deadlift so that's 227 kilo deadlift I'm gonna take a random stab in the dark and I hope Fergus doesn't get annoyed but I'd be very surprised if Fergus can bench 110 for 10 and run a sub 250 marathon from what I've seen like there's a big difference to being an endurance animal like to being able to run you know hundreds of kilometers in a few days and doing lots of Ironmans, you know, like he's also doing and being able to just run a sub 250 marathon.

15:47It's a bit of a different beast. But anyway, loves to be proven wrong. We also have Lucy Davis coming on the show. So Lucy in Berlin this year ran a 256.33. One minute faster than me. We're never on this. She's one minute. she's one minute she's one minute and nine seconds faster than me so we're not I mean she looks ripped and she does a lot of lifting but we're not seeing any like like what her actual kind of like lifting numbers are so it'd be interesting to know what she she can do yeah well it'd be great to secure our first female athlete for the games she's coming on she's coming on in April let's talk about the three guys who we kind of know can do it.

16:43I mean, we've had plenty of people who've contacted claiming they can do it. And to be honest, a fair few of these look like they can also do it. But, you know, the favorites. Well, the first one's already quite controversial, Truett Haynes, because he definitely can't do it now, right? He could do it, for sure. This is the guy, by the way, if you don't know who I'm talking about, who runs marathons topless and in jeans. Really, really fast marathon times. Like he ran a 236 Austin recently, which is obviously well within the time. And he regularly smashes, you know, 100 kilos for really high reps in all of his content.

17:25So easy, easy, easy for him. But he is trying to become an Olympic marathoner, isn't he? Currently. Yeah, he wants to join the US team, doesn't he? So he wants to become an Olympic marathoner for the US, which would mean running a marathon in 2.14, I think. A runner must run a marathon in under 2 hours 19 for men and 2 hours 45 for women in order to qualify to enter the Olympic trials. Right. For which you then can get onto the team. Okay. So Truett is trying to run sub 2.19 so he can get into the trials. Still doesn't mean he'll make the team. he's still got to then beat x amount of other potential marathoners given that true it definitely was at one point like had both things in the locker easily i'd still love to chat to him as an athlete and like all he all he's done is chosen the lane to go you know supersonically elite right and to the whole point of the untapped games like you you you can't be that good at one of the things without the other suffering like it's not possible to be an olympic marathoner and bench this we can say categorically that no olympic marathoner in the whole world can bench 110 for 10 or anywhere near it so like in order to get to that level of running you must sacrifice the upper body strength that's like the whole point of what we're talking about but i think we found quite a cool balance with the sub 250 and 110 because it's kind of bang in the middle of you know being able to go either way type thing so nick bar is next big strong beast can press 110 for 10 in his sleep no doubt he's got a marathon pb of 239 20 yeah so he's in well he's in on the marathon that was in 2023 but yes i'm sure that you know i'm sure he's not fallen off uh too much no verified time for recent 2026 austin marathon why is that why would he not say what he got in austin how bad was it and then we've got even Andras Vold who he's coming on the show he's currently in the mountains running around with Killian Jornet so hasn't got the time right now if I'm not mistaken it's the gentleman who survived cancer and he like several days later ran a very fast marathon and he's an all-round beast I think he even laughed at the suggestion of sub 250 and 110 for 10 being difficult I think he even said that he could do it in his sleep or something, or that he's just recovered from cancer and he can do both things easily.

19:56All right. I mean, I believe it. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, yeah, no. That's fantastic. And congratulations. I think it's amazing. Look, some people are, and this is the whole point, some people are, you know, genetically gifted. We've had a few people contact us claiming that they can do it. We've got Coach Crombie says he runs a 235 marathon and can bench 110 for 10. No worries. Dimitro Moiseev a 239 marathon and 130 kg for reps how many reps? Lee Tuck two time Asian high rocks champ no marathon or bench time that we could find but he certainly looks the part and Don Barber ran a 249 marathon in November 247 marathon in November sorry and his max bench is 130, he's right on the edge.

20:56He said he thinks he can do the 110 for 10 and sub 250 on the same day. He said he thinks he can do that. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, if he can bench 130 and run a 247, then it's not, you know, obviously he... Like, I personally, from my experience, the sub 250 is the more difficult thing. But yeah, he's done that before. And if he can bench 130, he'd need to bench 130 for several reps for it to mean anything. If that's 130, one rep max, he may not be there for the 10 on 110. But listen, by the sounds of things, he's very close. Can we film with these guys? Can we get them in? Can we, let's go to a gym, let's have some fun, let's bust out the Osmos.

21:33I think, you know, we need to be putting these guys to the test. I think if you think you can do this, for now, send us some sort of proof. Yeah. And then we'll get you on and talk about it. Send us a picture of you. Like, you didn't run a sub 250 marathon and not take a finisher picture, right? So send us the picture so that we can see your bib. We will key it into the internet. Look at me, I'm 37. We'll key it into the internet. We'll send it to official unofficial and they will tell us if your marathon time is done and then just send us a picture, like a little iPhone video when you're next in the gym of you pressing 110 for 10.

22:13Going to surf the internet again, iPhone video. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, send us a flip phone video and I'm going to surf the web. Yeah. Okay. Send us your MySpace account. We'll find you. So just before we move on, Coach Crombie, he's been quite active on the comments. He thinks we're like dodging him. Like this is like a fight or something. Dodging him? Yeah. Listen, this is the first I've heard of this, right? Coach Crombie. We're not dodging you. We're not. Well, I'd love to see you. If you can do it, we'd love to have you in, mate. Just prove it, mate. Listen, we're not dodging anyone. As I say, anyone can say anything.

22:45you know we would like to see some evidence please and then you know once we receive the evidence i'll sign you up myself to be one of the first contenders of the untapped games what if we're actually going to get we might we might cut this out but like um so we're going to get seb co on the show and maybe we should just use the opportunity to pitch him what to try and get the untapped games to the olympics yeah i think it's pretty early for that as a discussion i think Do you think we should do it first? We came up with the name today. So I think, listen, I've got, you know, High Rocks are making a big play to be an Olympic sport.

23:22That's actually kind of like, those conversations are happening. Personally, I'd be pretty surprised if that happens. But you never know, you know? They always add random, not random stuff, but like each country, every time they host it, gets to add a sport for their, for their, Olympics so like was it Australia? I think I think before we set our sights on like Olympic glory it would be handy to kind of like get maybe like one games done. Proof of concept. Yeah yeah and and if it's like you know a crazy wild success then maybe we'll do like you know several hundred more and then maybe we'll say okay let's think about the Olympics but I think for now it's listen nothing would please me more right.

24:10Do you know what the sports of that have been added to the Olympics are. Should I tell you them? Yeah. Flag football. So that's touch rugby, but American football. Squash. I mean, that's better, why are you putting, that's better than flag football. No, no, no. That's just touch rugby. No, no, no, I like, no, squash would be cool. Well, squash is cool. Yeah, I know. Cricket, T20 cricket. Yeah. Lacrosse. Yeah. And, uh, softball. These are very American sports. Yeah, I don't know, we added, what did we add in 2012? We added golf and tennis, I think we added, which is still in. So sometimes they keep them, sometimes they don't.

24:46But like kind of tennis should be an Olympic sport, surely. And thanks to us, it is. Well, yeah. But what, did it only come in 2012? I think so. Tennis. Hopefully, like, when you reckon... Sorry, tennis has been an Olympic sport since the inaugural 1896 Athens game. You are a fucking idiot, honestly. That is just mad. I thought it went away. obviously tennis is an Olympic sport mate when do you reckon paddle will be made an Olympic sport 100 % it will be I mean it definitely will get in but it will be for sure do you know what I find bizarre with paddle anyway we're getting slightly off the piece but you know when they bash it out of the court and the guys manage to get out of the court and return it but that's insane by the way so when I play paddle which is every so often if I smash the ball and it goes out of the court it takes anyone that I'm playing with like a good few seconds to just like realise that the ball's gone.

25:43You know what I mean? Like, that's the same for me. Some bloke hammers it down the floor. It's like, like imagine having the sense to get out of the court and hit it back in by the time it's nonsense. They're like little rats. I think they should introduce that into more sports though. Wouldn't football and rugby be better? If the ball just came back in. If the ball went out, if someone in the crowd just chucks about it and you just carried on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be better. Well, you know, want to be playing away ever but that's good yeah but that's good though you want you want to have like a real home home versus way let's focus on our games instead of trying to change the rules of rugby which i think we've got very limited chance of doing this ad is sponsored by zoc doc hi it's danny pellegrino from everything iconic have you been putting off that annual doctor's appointment because you don't want to make the call or maybe you've been meaning to find a new dentist, but you have no idea where to start.

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28:35What will these games actually look like? Okay, so let's first set the scene. So this whole untapped athletes thing is to qualify for some... For the games. For the games. Yeah. It's the one part of the process we've not really described yet, which is that what is this, ideally this big arena event thing that will take over the world? Well, again, it's going to take over a football field for the day. An arena with a football field, like Star Setup, would be the ideal place, providing it's popular enough, we have enough applicants, right? So I think we'd have to do it in two tranches. We'd have to have the big Larry lot, you know, later or first, and then the kind of more mass market middle section on the same day, I would have thought.

29:25And then there's going to be a series of games, right? So your mind might take you to CrossFit, it might take you to High Rocks. This is a little bit different, right? I want to test not only speed and strength, but agility, balance, accuracy, grit, determination, will, all of this stuff. It's not just athletic, right? So I have an idea for an example to have a series of ice baths there, all set to zero, right? And we may choose to do this in the middle of winter. and I want to see if you can sit, like how long you can sit in the ice bath for. And like, obviously we'll keep it safe so that you don't go into, you know, early onset hypothermia or whatever, but there'll be a max limit of say seven minutes, right?

30:15On a zero degree ice bath, like anything longer than that, I think you could be looking at a bit of danger. We'll obviously have medical people there, but I want to see if you can sit still in a zero degree ice bath for a long period of time. If you do the full seven minutes, you get the full amount of points. If you jump out after two minutes, you get you know a smaller amount of points that's kind of like just just will the desire to win right so that so that's a test um as well as kind of you know sprinting dead hanging you know things that test strength that often isn't tested uh how long you can hold a handstand maybe could be one of the things you know these are all things for athleticism like i'm not just interested in speed and strength although obviously a lot of it will revolve around how strong and how fast you are and what good engine you have.

31:01We'll be testing your VO2 max, not as an official VO2 max test, but just like, you know, the fitter you are, the more points you will receive. Some log chopping, how quickly you can split a log down the middle. I think that there's a, one of those like really long, thin bars that you have to run down. So like we can do the whole length of the football fields on like a bar that might be like a foot wide. And it's a race to see how fast you can get down the end of the football field and if you fall off the bar you got to start again you get three goes um so you'll be more cautious obviously as your goes diminish because if you don't finish at all you get zero um you know i want to know if you can sprint the bar basically a good test of balance um there can be like things that you have to climb up and do things along the way you know like like a tower of sorts so testing your strength climbing uh and maybe you have to juggle something halfway up it and then get the full way to the top and then come all the way down with a rope hang.

32:00I think that's one of the better ideas. I like the idea that it's like Tower of Doom where each level is another test. Right. And you can literally zoom out and watch people racing up this thing, doing each challenge as they go, and it's where they get to the top in the quickest time, plus the points. I like that. I also like that, again, look, you'll see that there's plenty of ideas and that we have not formulated a clear path forward but like but i do think that a cool idea um is like how many three pointers you can throw in 60 seconds so like you have unlimited basketballs that are just being provided to you you're stood on a three-point line how many three pointers can you hit in 60 seconds because it may be that you're like super strong super athletic like all these things that hybrid athletes consider themselves to be but like how many three pointers can you hit i'm interested in that right like i look at people like justin bieber and like some people who you wouldn't expect to be like really gifted athletes justin bieber's an amazing athlete i don't know if you know that but like he can play eight musical instruments to grade eight as well as throw like unlimited three pointers on a basketball pitch like it's mental like that's really cool like he's really good at that he's really good at baseball as well randomly like do you know what i mean and so i want to know if with all of this speed and muscle mass, whether or not you can remain agile and accurate.

33:28It almost sounds like a Super Mario level. You know, you got a whole section underwater, then back up. And you got to do the whole thing on shrooms. Yeah. But we only tell them that on the day they arrive. What about the idea that you could actually almost do it like a bracket? So it would almost be like head to head. so you could kind of seed the people based on how they had qualified and then have a series of head-to-heads like a final this is a race I think you'd start like five people off at the same time and there's five sets of each of these things and you've got to go from thing to thing and you finish but you may have to bail on one of the things so you don't get any points so you amass points over the course of the course and then you finish and your time in itself is worth points I think what's good about this as well is is I think it opens up the idea that athletes from sports would want to try and give it a go.

34:23Because I don't know if, I'd be shocked if LeBron James could run a marathon in the time he needs. He could definitely do everything else. Yeah, but he's not allowed in, mate. But I'm just saying, but maybe there is a basketball player out there who could do it. And then they would be really good at some of the skill stuff and maybe not quite so good at some of the, they'd be good enough to get in, but maybe not as elite as some others but they'd be really good at all the skill stuff. This is kind of like a squid game set up. Yeah. So it's the last one alive. Yeah, we're not going to kill anyone.

34:55But it's kind of like it is almost more like that vibe. In fact, like do you eliminate people as you go? I think it's kind of cool. Well, you don't even get to do all the things, right? if you come last in your group, maybe you're just out. Well, some of it's got to be an IQ test, in a way. Yeah. So there's got to be a little bit of tactics as well. Oh, you mean not an actual IQ test? No, you don't have to be intelligent, I don't think, to be involved in this thing. You don't have to be intelligent. No, you can just come along. Yeah. You don't need straight A's at school as well, you know, yeah, yeah.

35:33But there could be, like, some... We're not looking for, like, the best people on Earth. Like, this is athletes. Yeah, yeah.

35:45But tactically, though, it could be quite interesting. So if you could deceive someone in some way, that they eliminate themselves, well, then you should have been... Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe there might be the odd bit of trickery. It's going to be quite extreme, I think, ultimately. Yeah. It has to be the most extreme. These are supposed to be the most extreme athletes. We've got to test them the most extreme ways. Yeah. So like one day it should just be freezing cold and then way too hot the next day. Everyone's just going to get a horrible cold. So this is like the Hunger Games now.

36:25Are we controlling the climate? Indoors you could though, couldn't you? We'll just make it boiling and then freezing. That's actually quite good. I like it. I like it. People need to feel desperately uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. This is no disrespect to high rocks, but like this isn't high rocks right like literally anyone could turn up and do a high rocks and oh i've got my buddy he he's better at pulling the sled and i'm better at wall balls so like that's no lame right you've got to do the whole thing like yourself right no in fairness if you do that voice anything sounds lame i don't know like you know what i mean i i just like i if i were doing high rocks i would go with a super super jacked mate who's like really good at pulling sleds and stuff and then i would do all the running i'd just do the sort of like a mice of men situation.

37:10I don't know, but just like, there's no point, right, in bringing a buddy along who's better than you at some of the things. Like, that's not a test. I don't know. I've never really liked high rocks, I have to say. I liked it even less when I found out it stood for hybrid rock star. Yeah, no, that is really bad. I didn't really like it anyway, but when I heard that, I went, oh, no, no, no. And they're like, listen, they're far more established than we are at this stage. But, uh... You've got to do better than that, though. you do have to like they should have done better than that I don't think anyone who does High Rocks is even happy about it no I've not met anyone who is a big fan of High Rocks that likes the name yeah well Jay did and I remember he wasn't a big fan of it no well like you know my pals Mike Murray and Josh Rose do High Rocks all the time and like they don't like it they like High Rocks yeah they're just you know hybrid rock stars that's but maybe they crazy things but maybe they also saw the under nines youth football team that we saw because they wanted to call it Apex originally.

38:11I still wouldn't call it Hybrid Rockstar. No, no, no, no. No, never. Even if it was the last decision. I'd rather call it Toffee Banana. Yeah. I would. Yeah. In the endurance marathon world, first bit of news, I suppose, is that you have got your PB in Tokyo. I did. I did. I secured a 257 42 minute PB in the Tokyo Marathon. And let me tell you something. All signs were not pointing to success in the days leading up to it. It was pretty rough, actually. Tokyo, firstly, is miles away. The time difference is just mad. like you can begin talking to people you love back home at 4 p.m right 4 p.m is 7 a.m and you're wrong by a whole day so flying out there you lose a full day out of nowhere well I left I mean this is obviously not news to people but it's still quite interesting I left the house at like 6 p.m on the on like the Tuesday and got to the hotel at like 6 30 p.m on the Wednesday so it's like You're 24 hours from London time.

39:36So it felt like quite a lonely experience, if I'm honest. I love the guys that we were with, but we weren't all staying together. And I was there for a day completely on my own, which I don't love, to be honest. I walked around with my Osmo and just shot Tokyo. But it's quite like, obviously, there's a massive language barrier. So it's not like you can just chill and chat to people. Although supermarkets and stuff are remarkable. they speak English like I'd go to the front and they'd be like oh please pay here it's like if a Japanese person were in London you wouldn't hear like the London bloke at the chip shop just busting out Japanese so like it's quite I thought it was amazing that like there was a surprising amount of Japanese people who spoke English albeit broken English but still enough to get by so I was pretty surprised by that and I don't know it was a great experience but it was also just quite you know when you're tapering I don't know if you know this actually but when you're when you run a lot so when you run you know hundreds of miles in the lead up to a marathon so I decided to do Tokyo Marathon like eight weeks before the marathon right so like seven seven and a half weeks before the marathon I had not trained fast marathon running you know since project seven obviously and in the lead up to that I wasn't really training speed either so it'd been a while you know and so i thought seven weeks is pretty quite rough to get that right basically it's not a long time uh to to dial down uh where i where i was which was 306 something in berlin anyway took the took the offer to go with these guys uh who i now love shane mcguigan and josh rose and we had an amazing time but it was just quite it was pretty serious and that's not saying that they're like particularly serious like they're lovely guys but like we took it pretty seriously like we're carb loading like perfectly and you know obviously not drinking any alcohol and trying to get to bed really early and like the whole thing was very that was a bit like a training camp you know when we were there hardly doing any running in Tokyo at all like no more than 5k a day type thing so just like tapering off the running um and my shins just like blew up to hell like like in the last few days in london they were really bad i went for a deep tissue massage in the shins uh shin splinty style stuff like like really really really sore like like like really sharp aggressive pain all the way down the shin bone to the point where i nearly didn't go to tokyo like i was calling people going like is this gonna like tone down or go away and they were like no no like it'll be fine just like don't do anything on them bought a box set fresh of alpha flies for the race because obviously we've been talking about these prime x3s not being legal for professional athletes and in certain settings and you know there was a ton of back and forth about whether i should wear these things i love the shoes and really comfortable in them but i got comfortable with the idea of wearing alpha flies and put them on just in the time I was in Tokyo and literally like I couldn't I couldn't run like I literally couldn't run and like I'd like pick up a bit of pace and a couple of k's in I'd have to stop running I'd have to take the shoes off I'd have to like massage like deep into my shin bone it was like could barely walk back to the hotel big problem guys I was with were like mate you can't run on Sunday like you know your shins are a serious problem put the Prime X3s back on later that day went out for like a little jog uh and it just felt like a lot better like a lot more supported and obviously I think because I've done so many miles and then my like shins legs whatever just got quite used to those and then changing the shoe just really wasn't helping um so just decided to wear those right because I knew that I'd have serious problems with the alpha flies um and then yeah just like but the alpha fly thing was it was a was a real problem i'll try i'll wear them for london i'm doing london um i don't think there's any like serious difference in time at my level like i think i think if you were kipchoge he might gain like seconds maybe from wearing the slightly more technical shoe i think at my level um i'm not convinced that the heavier prime x3 is actually more beneficial over you know 42 kilometers than an alpha fly um but anyway i knew that i'd probably get some shit from wearing the prime x3 but i didn't really have a choice at the time i could have gone and bought some pro fours or something a bit different but what i did know was i couldn't even walk in the alpha flies so like and that like i love alpha flies by the way but and is that because you if you train in that level of super shoe the way everything kind of gets a bit used to that but then when you take away what it does that can then give you the i think ali brownie said that didn't i think i think so from my experience like mixing up the shoes is not a bad idea so but but not mixing up like different plates you know like like if you're training in the prime x3 and you have like a night nike vermero plus for the slow long runs and then you do your speed work in in the in the plated shoes um that's kind of fine it keeps everything guessing a bit and like your body reacts to both things and it's almost like you're when you're running in the in the in the Vamero pluses you're getting a break from the plate and vice versa you're getting a break from the heavier thudding you know when you're wearing the plate and so it kind of it nets out whereas when I did a lot of running in the plates I hardly did any slow running at all I mostly ran speed sessions and I mostly used the Prime X3s in training.

45:27And so I think, yeah, I just got very used to that dynamic. So that level of rigidness, that level of support, that level of drop, like, you know, the whole thing was just kind of embedded in me. So then when I swapped that out, I think had I swapped it out to a soft shoe, it would have been fine. But when I swapped it to a new rigid Alpha Fly with a new plate in it, I think it just made things worse. I could feel it in the shins in London a bit. And then when I put on the new plate, my body just said, like, I'm not having this new plate type thing. So I don't know. It was a bit worrying. I did a piece to camera in the hotel.

46:05I was furious, actually, because you kind of had really felt like you'd wasted your time at that point because I've taken the training really seriously. I've done, like, you know, probably six proper sessions a week for seven weeks. Didn't touch a drop of alcohol at all. went to bed you know uh you know as close to 9 p.m as i possibly could every single night you know for the seven weeks ate really clean and healthy you know took all my supplements you know just basically just like did everything i could to give myself an edge on the day uh to to be crippled with shin splints like the day before was was um was really annoying so so i just made the decision i kind of felt like the decision was made for me to wear the prime x3s and um um and i had an amazing race you know one thing's for sure um you know i pb'd by a really really really big margin like eight and a half minutes um you know the shoes are not shaving eight and a half minutes off berlin you know they i may i may have had some seconds potentially a minute but you know as well the difference between running a three-hour marathon and a 257 42 is pretty big.

47:17That's significantly under 3. So I guess my argument would be that regardless of what shoe I was wearing, I would have sub-3'd that day. If my shins didn't hurt, I would have been perfectly happy in AlphaFly's or Pro4's. Well, talking of AlphaFly's, have you seen the latest prototype of the new AlphaFly's that's been revealed? I have. I've just put up a picture on your it's a uh they look pretty hefty i'd say i mean they look very similar to the threes if this is the finished prototype the fours don't have the air bubble at the front at all that's the thing i like the least about the alpha flies is that like they're plated but they also have this air bubble at the front and there's a corner of the air bubble that's not really supported it's quite it's like it's got quite a thin layer of you know the rubber that hits the road uh and then there's like quite a sharp drop off so if you run a lot in alpha flies which i have you know over the course of my running in recent years that breaks that bit breaks it might also because i'm 85 kilos and you know like I'm obviously quite a heavy runner um but that breaks and then you've got this like disjointed bit where you're supposed to have the lovely rocky support at the front but it's kind of caved in a bit because of uh the distance between the air bubble and uh where it picks back up in the rocker so there's this like if you press if you have a pair of alpha flies you'll see it you compress a part of the shoe that should be really firm in my opinion um and it's not firm because of the air bubble so i don't know um these uh look a lot more shaped like the prime x3s you know which have a super solid base which are really firm and have absolutely no give whatsoever with a big rocker which appears to be uh what nike have adapted so exciting stuff i like them i like the look of them i think they're really cool in other shoe news um if you scroll down a bit more um lidl are going to bring out their own carbon plated running shoe that will cost only 49 years how much were your uh primex threes 380 i think no no no no no sorry no my primex threes were 250 sorry my pramix 3s are 250 my new set of alpha flies were 288 not 388 288 because they're the new canary things and yeah they've just waxed 30 quid extra on on the cost of them uh yeah so so no these would be 200 or euros less shoe we have to get them i think and find out we We are going to get them in and I am going to review them.

50:25They come out today. Do they? Apparently they're out today. It could be a play. Obviously when you buy a set of super shoes, you're paying for the technology and the research and development of that technology, but you're also paying for the brands, right? There's no way that Little have put in as much tech and research and credibility as Adidas or Nike. I would have thought that much is obvious. however they will have put a foamy stack you know in the bottom of the shoe with a carbon plate or something similar to carbon in a similar way than these large companies do you'll suspect that there's just a bit less margin in the way that they do it you know because they're entering in order to try and steal you know share from people who buy super shoes but find them very very expensive, which most people do, right?

51:20Like most people go, do I really need this pair of alpha flies for my marathon? And eventually, you know, they subside to it because they think, yeah, you know, I want any edge that I can have in the marathon because obviously, you know, I want to do well in this thing that I've prepared for. So I guess little are looking to kind of, you know, undercut that mentality and say, this is also a super shoe, which you can get for 49 quid, so why spend 250 on it? We'll see. Now, this says to me as well, surely, surely, if you've got 50 euro shoes from Lidl, 280 quid shoes from Nike, somewhere in the middle, an untapped shoe, perhaps?

52:01Listen to this. I think in order to do these things well, it's quite difficult. I've thrown out quite a lot of ambitious ideas today, and you've been bringing some realism to the table, which is probably necessary, but also surprising. I would buy a super shoe from a brand that I trust. That's why I wouldn't gravitate towards the Lidl super shoe because it is not a focus of theirs to create great running shoes. The focaccias are great though. Exactly. So they do a really good focaccia. If I needed something to eat, maybe I'd go to Lidl. And even then...

52:42but you know I'm very happy to try the shoes even if there's a good few runs in them for the price they're going to fall apart even a good pair of AlphaFlies are significantly worn after like a couple of marathons 80k something like that the Prime X3s have like 400-500k in them they're a sturdier shoe they're a lot heavier by the way like before anyone gives me shit about wearing prime x3s they're much heavier than the alpha fly if you were to put into the chat gpt which shoe is faster over marathon distance the adidas adizero pro 4 the nike alpha fly uh three or the adizero or the adizero prime x3 prime x3 would come last in that list they would see it as the biggest hindrance to a marathon.

53:35So if anything, you could probably knock a bit of time off my marathon time for wearing clogs. Do you want to see what chat GBT thinks an untapped super shoe would look like? Is it a belter? Not sure I'd call it that. Oh yeah, I like it. Why would you say that shite? I don't understand the mountain bit. Shoes cool. What are you talking about? Sick. Maybe you should do some shoes. I like how they're just written carbon plate on it yeah yeah mate they're quite sick look at that U on the tongue oh that is quite cool actually yeah yeah yeah no I'm quite into it I like it I'm quite into it god AI is crazy isn't it why would you have like honestly like I'm not being funny but why have a marketing team genuinely well you just got me with a laptop create me a bunch of images that I can post over the next few there you go boom I'm done.

54:33Crazy. It's just making another one now. I think that's a really cool shoe. Genuinely. I actually genuinely think that's quite cool. The Elia Marathon has just happened. As people are hearing this, it would have been a week or so ago. Okay. They announced that because of the heat, you could finish early. I don't like that. I think it's ridiculous. Like, you know, I don't mean to sound so bent out of shape by it, but when I saw that, I just thought that's slightly ridiculous. I know that it's really hot, but that's part of the challenge like if you're going to do a very hot marathon then go slower fuel better drink more the marathon is the marathon right so like that's like saying you know i'm going to go and race 800 meters but if you feel like pulling over at 500 that's fine that's ridiculous like it's an 800 meter race so i don't know i saw that and just thought that it was really lame and a bit annoying and i understand by the way probably more than most that running marathons in very hot conditions can be dangerous.

55:33I ran 30 of them back to back in conditions that were a lot hotter than 27 degrees. So I do get it. But like a marathon is a marathon. So it's not, you can't, like you can stop at 18. You can't get a finisher's medal though. That's ridiculous. Why, like what incentive do people have to finish the race? So I guess it's obviously the professionals still ran the full marathon. This is just for well of course yeah but you know you can't have but how do they land on 18 miles i don't know i just i just think it's like if you're doing the marathon you've prepared for the marathon it's a bit of a kick in the teeth for people who do the full distance do you know what i mean and then there's that awkward question of like oh did you run the whole thing because you have a marathon you have a marathon medal on so it incentivizes you to quit early which is another reason i don't like it and you know listen we've all had shocking experiences with sports and if you want to quit you quit that's fine like if you have to stop stop nobody's saying that like you have to run the full thing but you can't be rewarded with a medal for stopping but is the problem is that is the problem that it was a finisher medal so like that so according to them according to the so it's the mccourt foundation who run the marathon they they describe it as like if you're having a tough day, you can go home with a medal if you just take the turn at the 18-mile mark.

57:03It's obviously just some geographical reason why that made sense. So they just said that as a thing. So it was very casual. If they didn't call it a finisher's medal, I think it would have been less of a... So if they basically said, if you turn up today, you're going to get a medal. It's not a finisher's medal. You get a medal. And if you finish, you still get a finisher's medal. I think if they went through the trouble of creating a special medal, for that, like an 18-mile medal or a smaller medal. Sure, that's not a problem. I don't mind people finishing the race early. It's being rewarded with a finisher's medal.

57:40That's not, it's not honest. That's like doing the, you know, the race to the stones, which is a 100k race, having a mare at 80, pulling over, stopping, and them just going, well, here you go, have a medal anyway. It's like, well, no, you've not succeeded. You haven't completed the distance. So, like, come back next year and do it properly.

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59:24It's not something that's going to ruin my day either. But Josh Rose from Tokyo sent me this. He was like, what do you make of this? And I was just like, well, you know, it's obvious rubbish. Okay, put it this way. If I failed in that marathon, and I had to pull off at 18, I wouldn't take the medal. Put it that way. I would say no, thank you. I actually don't want to be reminded of this. You know, I don't want to look at I don't want my kids asking to see my medal when I haven't done the thing I set out to do. I nearly failed in Berlin. As you know, not to go over stuff. Berlin was 26 degrees.

59:55I pushed really hard. I got to halfway. I threw up twice. Everyone was packing in around me. Loads of people were just pulling off to the side and stopping. I hadn't really made a big deal of running Berlin. I very nearly just walked off the course and went back to the hotel. I wouldn't get a medal for that. You know, that's ridiculous. So I thought to myself, now actually I've come all the way to Berlin. So sack up and get on with it and stop allowing these ridiculous thoughts of quitting into your head when you're fine. The bit I don't get is I don't think anyone... So lots of people, like you say, stop marathons before the end.

1:00:37That happens all the time. I saw a guy, do you want to just as quick... I literally nearly picked this guy up. I couldn't believe it. Tokyo. I knew that I had sub three in the bag pretty early on. I was running 406 average. I did seven sets of the eight sets of 5k that I was clocking at 406 average pace. I need to be doing like four 14s, right? So I'm miles ahead of time. I've got 7k left, right? One set of five and a 2k finisher. And I started to slow down a bit and I was like, oh, that's fine. Like, you know, I was doing the maths in my head and I was like, even if I ran each kilometer at like a 5, you know, 40 pace, I'll still make it sub three, right?

1:01:26Because like, that's how much time I've banked. So and I was running 420s or something at the slowest end of it from 406. So I knew I was just comfortable. So I started to just relax. And I wasn't paying attention to the time and I was trying to take in bits and bobs because I was hammering it before. and we got to like 300 meters from the line we could see the finish line and a bloke that was running next to me just stopped and like like and like he was running quite fast so he was ahead of me so he he was he was also sub three right and he stopped and sat down on the side and just like put his hand on his head and I literally looked at him I nearly went like hey hey like it's there like do you know what I mean it's crazy couldn't believe it and just to be clear so what you actually did was just no I just ran past him why would I I don't know the guy but like I did have a really good stare at him to make sure that like he wasn't having a heart attack or something but he pulled over I thought you meant you had a good stare to make sure he knew you were disappointed oh no obviously I was disappointed but like I think he was probably disappointed in himself there's 300 metres left to go genuinely way to break both your legs like you'd get to the finish line crawl or do something whatever like just get don't stop with when you've done 41.9k like you are very much there I couldn't believe it guys thanks very much for listening was a great pleasure to bring you a slightly different episode today again please remember to write into us for all things untapped games for all questions and queries please do reach out to us we love hearing from you for any suggestions for the games themselves again please send those in also if you know of anyone that you think could do really well competitively as an athlete of the untapped games again please do reach out to us lots of love if you enjoyed this episode drop us five stars and a review it does help other people find the show and we will catch you next week with a fresh episode of untapped