Good evening and welcome to another episode of Run Till
You're Done. Tonight we are joined by one of
the most experienced and insightful voices in British
ultra running. He's a Spain race champion, a
stage race winner and a coach known for his honesty, clarity
and deep understanding of what the sport really asks of people.
He spent years helping runners find their strength, rebuild
after setbacks and chase the kind of goals that change them.
What a treat with him for tonight.
Welcome to the show, Marcus Scottner.
Thank you so much for having me on.
And kind of what a wonderful introduction.
And is that written by Chachi PT or with that kind of your own
research? Maybe.
It's amazing what chapter PT will come here, but once I'd be
down as a counsellor so be careful when you ask it.
Well, when you do have an accomplished runner such as
yourself about welcome to the show, Marcus seems about
underwhelming. How do you introduce a guest
like yourself that's done so many epic events?
Yeah, thank you. I have been really fortunate to
be able to keep running for as long as I have.
And I think, like you're alluding to an introduction
there. Yeah, it's about not just
playing common sense, but I do lean into a sports science
background and that really kind of informs not only how I coach,
but also how I train and look after myself as an athlete.
And with your sports science background, is that what led you
into running or did you start from an early age?
Yes, so my running really starts all the way back in the annals
of 1987 when I was 13 years old. So you start doing a bit of
maths, you start kind of working out how old I was.
I got into orienteering originally through Mr.
Dickinson, a PE teacher who one day after cross country, on the
way back to kind of changing room, said to me, have you ever
come across orienteering? The school had a really quite
active club and I was down in a little place called Portishead
near Bristol. Then grow up and it was quite an
active schools league and I got, you know, asked to go along to
an event and absolutely loved it.
It was just great fun running around, mapping my hand felt
like a little mini adventure finding these little controls in
the forest. And I just kind of found I could
yeah, run and navigate at the same time.
And that's kind of rid of running really started and the
introduction to even kind of running in the Southwest Junior
squad. But whilst that was also going
on, as I got into my teenage in later years and A levels, drugs
and rock'n'roll, literally, I'm not talking better for him,
talking physically, literally kind of took over life really.
And sports science came about kind of by accident.
I failed my A levels, I was living in Leicester and I
decided to try and go back to to college to do some sort of
course. And there was a choice between
performing arts or sport science and drama and acting and always
been my, that's why I was trying to get into drama school when I
was doing my A levels, but unsuccessful.
So weirdly, I decided, well, let's do sports science because
I enjoyed running. I'd already done a couple of
coaching qualifications. And yeah, yeah, I mean, what a
influential decision that was because taught me all I know
about Physiology and got me interested in that kind of
science and kind of being a very kind of science background.
And even on the bookcase behind me, that's my original exercise
Physiology book down there in the corner all the way from kind
of 1992. So, yeah, so that, you know, was
the introduction to sports science, but it hadn't really
become a big part of my running till kind of more later on in
the 2000s, really. And in in the 2000s, was there a
a point that you went, I'm a runner?
It's a good question, isn't it? Am I am IA runner.
So for more intering, I then go into kind of more road running
and kind of shorter endurance half marathons when I lived in
the kind of Southwest Scotland, doing a lot of Rd. races around
there. And I'd always, you know, it was
like a, a key hobby. Yeah, soon as I always did, I
trained every day, sometimes twice a bit.
I was even training twice a day back in the 90s when I was doing
short distance. And it was more just, it was, I
wouldn't say I was a runner. I was just like a hobbyist
runner. It was something I I did, you
know, with friends that went into football or other
activities. Yeah, I was just into to
running. That's where my social scene
was. That was my my tribe.
And yeah, everything kind of it already then was a roving around
their holidays stuff be kind of picking and choosing.
But you didn't have like the ultra scene what you have now.
You know, it was enjoy its races.
I remember reading in Runners World in the kind of the 90s of
these people doing these hundred mile races, but there were
really few and far between. You know, you could count on
your hands how many races and you had the 100 KS going on.
And one of the classic plans was that London to Brighton
endurance race. And you know, and there's also
the famous ones around kind of Falkirk as well.
So it, it was a really small scene.
And then, yeah, as I got more into the Nordism, really started
getting a bit more involved in running club.
And there was a couple of guys in our running club in Dumfries
who were running for Scotland at 100K and I got a bit kind of
curious about it was kind of like, yeah, the sea was just
starting to to grow. And then 2008 was when I really
stepped into my first ultra. So officially my first ultra was
back in 1994 when I ran from Elam at Edale Youth Hostel to
Elam Youth Hostel as a 35 mile race to try and qualify for the
Caravans National Mountain Marathon.
But yeah, 2008 it was because I was then starting to chase a
Scotland or England 100K vest. And I think that's when I then
started going, OK, this is becoming more serious.
And then when I got selected to run for England and then Great
Britain, it was like, yeah, now, now I'm and I'm not saying that
we have to be achieving great things to be recognised as a
runner. And I prefer to the people I
work with in coach, I call them athletes, not not runners,
because I think an athlete is such a more nuanced term and
kind of shows like dedication and how it's kind of more
embedded in all you're doing where running is just the
activity. So yeah, it was that kind of
slow progression. But if you ask a lot of my old
friends or people I still know from that time, they'll be like,
yeah, it's always been been running.
I expect it's my mum and dad. They'll be like, yeah, it's been
running for years. What was the name of that first
race that you did and is it still around?
No, unfortunately not so. It's organised by the Youth
Hostel Association and there was 22 versions, 1 you could start
in Croydon, Croydon Youth Hostel, which no longer exists
as well. It's no functioning youth
hostel. And you went over Kinder and
down into Edel, and that's where we then started.
And we then went from Edale down through the Peak District, just
visiting of youth hostels. And there was no set route in
between. But there's always best lines.
And yeah, it was 35 miles. I had a caramel ice axe
rucksack, which is an old climbing rucksack because we
didn't have running packs. I caught really bad chafing in
places. You know what?
Bad chafing. And there was a guy Mike from
Dark PQ pulled out his kind of film canisters and again shows
you a 1994 film canister. Remember when you had to wind a
film on in your camera? He pulled out a film kind of
full of like Vaseline. So you're really useful tip.
Yeah. I can't remember how long as I
ended up. I was at 3rd.
At one point I dropped down to 5th, but I just remember just
being absolutely broken. It was like when I did my first
road 100K race. I've never felt pain like that
in my life. But we had a bit of spine
conditions in April. I've got photo of me going up
Cavedale just outside Castleton in snow.
It snowed at the start. And yeah, it was an interesting
introduction to ultra marathons when they were really called
ultra marathons. Those film canisters, I've used
them for things like sugar or tailwind or that that type of
thing. So they they still go about.
I'm not sure how you get them nowadays.
My ones are probably BPA D leaked into the food.
You shouldn't use them but. Yeah, I used to find them really
good for safety pins as well, the storage.
So you can always just kick them and you kick back.
But yeah, and I, I, I use a little, if we can do any
advertising, girly goo now is the the, the best ultra
lubricant. We can definitely do
advertising. We will tag them in on Instagram
and everything like that. Not that I'm sponsored by them,
unfortunately. Yeah, that's a very, you know,
Gates for a short question. Yeah, it's it's it's wonderful.
And I reflect back and I'm so, I feel so fortunate as an athlete
to have been able to have such a, a long career as well, where
I know so many people whose running career have been cut
short or those of I warranted with back in the 80s and 90s who
are no longer running. And yeah, I'm, I'm really
grateful. But again, I think that's
because of as I got older, my approach towards it has kind of
been varied. You mentioned about looking for
a Scotland or England vest. Most people aren't in the market
for for either or at all. How did what?
What sort of qualifies you for either of those, and how did you
choose or what chose you? Yeah.
Well, so it came about because there was two guys in our
running club down in Dumfries. And if I listen to probably know
who they are, when I was down at the Dumfries half to Year 4
last, I was trying something which is quite interesting and
they were running for Scotland at 100K.
And I've been doing, I've done a marathon.
Yeah, I've done Lock S, which was my first Rd. marathon around
2:33. I was like, well, maybe I'm
fairly reasonable at long distance, maybe this could be a
goer. And I felt like, I felt running
for the Scotland, that'd be quite a course.
They're completely egotistical really like.
And so I was then inquiring about how do I go about, because
I was also a lot quicker than these other guys, you know, I
was beating them quite, quite a bit, timing and half marathons.
So I inquired about the selection process and one of
them was the the Devil of Highlands, which was I did in
2008, had an amazing race with Jez Bragg.
He's got, I think his blog is still available out there
online. I found it when I was preparing
for it two years ago. Hit the race and then there was
a little bit owing and owing. I said, Oh yeah, we'd like you
to go and do another, another event.
So then went into the 35 mile race down near Rugby around a
reservoir, which is like four or five laps.
What won that race, which I was like, OK, this is going, it's
going quite well. But then I got there, Scotland
was saying, Oh yeah, we want you to go to another race.
We want to make sure I'm like OK.
And ended up going all the way down to Littlehampton near
Brighton. I mean, This Is Us living in
Dumfries. We have family in the Midlands.
So that wasn't too bad a journey went and did that and they were
still humming and R ING Scotland, where in fact, no,
that's when I then went into the the next one was to run around a
reservoir and when I completed that, the England management
were there and were like that's couldn't have to get in Pundra
painting. So that evening I emailed
England and switch my legs even though I was living in Scotland
was kind of based there. But my I was also being coached
at the time by former world 100K champion Carolyn Hunter Rowe,
who had set a world record at 100K as well.
So really interesting to work lines her.
So yeah, I would had to go through quite a few hoops and
gain the qualifying times, which I was able to do.
And then, yeah, I got to go out to Galway Bay Run, my first road
100K, which that in itself was an experience because that was a
one mile up and down the same piece of road 32 times.
And yeah, it really kind of showed how much up to running is
about that mental fortitude and not getting distracted or caught
up in other people's races and things like that.
But yeah, after I finished that race, which I finished third,
which, you know, I was pretty amazed about, but I kind of
messed the pacing up. But I just remember getting back
into the hotel room and lying up on the hotel floor going, I
can't move my legs. And they were like fizzing.
They were tingling all over. It was like nothing I'd
experienced in my life and was like, Oh my God.
Well, if I down to my legs, they got better.
So yeah. And, and annoyingly, on the back
of that, I also qualified for at my first GB vest to run in the
World Trail Series, World World Trail Champs, but I couldn't
take it up because of my job. And that was a bit.
You said your legs were in bits. How would you?
How did you deal with it and how would that differ than what you
would do? Now, I think that part part of
that is also just that learning experience.
It was such a steep uphill and people are turning your stuff
and your research then was a lot, lot kind of more minimal.
And I just remember it taking days and days and it was just
about cutting back over training, focusing on nutrition
and just, you know, looking after, after myself.
But the more I did the 100K, the quicker the recovery was getting
the same by most ultras now. Yeah.
The legs are still sore.
I think as the central nervous system gets to know what it's
been put through and as our brain adapts into it as well,
you know, we we start that recovering far quicker and it's
less of a shock and stress and strain upon the body.
But yeah, it was just trying to take things really easy for a
couple of weeks. And I think I may have had like
impression tights on to fly back in.
And it's a comical walking off a plane that you've almost kind of
Ivy part of my franchise shake yourself off for like you've got
some severe leg injury when you're so completely
self-inflicted. So your 100K road running
adventures very much tougher to your multi day adventures such
as Spain, Cape Wrath, Dragon's Back.
How? How do you go from wearing your
GB vest and getting England qualifying vest to doing
adventure races like that and winning those effectively?
Yeah, I mean, I'd always been training off road and I'd always
done hill running and neon tearing and the mountain
marathons in the background. And so it's easy to kind of make
that kind of switch across the the issue I sometimes have,
especially to begin with, was I was arrogant thinking I could
take the, the speed from the 100K in into the trail, as I
remember going to do the late than 50 and just running away
too, too fast early on and having a really disastrous run.
But I've always been somebody, you know, who's tried seeking
all my training off road. I think the most time I've ever
trained on roads when I lived in Dumfries itself, Before I lived
in Dumfries, I was in a small town, Dalbetty, which, you know,
has backed on to woods. So I've always kept that element
of my training to be off road. And so I found it very easy to
make that transition. But it does require a very
different kind of pacing approach where 100 Ki, call it
kind of metronomic. You kind of like, right, I want
to try and run this pace at this target time.
You set off at that and you try and maintain it until the body
at some point goes very much where trail is.
Yeah, you've got to pace it early on, be, you know, adaptive
to what the course is like and what the terrain, how it alters
and changes. So yeah, just like different
approach. You've got runners like Jim
Lumsley who go all in red line the whole way and if it works,
course record broken. Some people see that as
arrogance, but it works for him most of the well some of the
time. And if it doesn't, it blows up
and he'll learn from it. Do you think that's the
arrogance that you're talking about, or were you going into it
thinking that you could do that? Yeah, I suppose there is that
element of, well, I've ran this time I'm 100K on the road, so I
should be able to run that time off road as well.
And I suppose it's, it's more of a naivety and just an arrogance.
And I think when you look at the likes of kind of Jim Molesley,
Tom Evans, Hayden Hawks and I talked to him everything he
knows, kind of, we spent a week out in Costa Rica and she had a
hotel room when he first was starting his running career.
Shared everything. So that's, you know, a little
bit of gossip there. He might, he might deny it, but
if you ever get him on, just say, oh, what that week with
Marcus and Costa Rica? I'm sure you can put a word in
for us. Boost your listeners.
And so I think I think it can come across as an arrogance you
but those sort of, you know, they are Creme de la Creme
athletes and their full time as well.
So they've got the capacity to be training at a really high
level because they can then spend the rest of the day feet
up recovering. And like us mere mortals who
have to do jobs as well and which impacts our recovery.
So they're able to have that higher level of Physiology that
enables them in which we might be looking at going, well, if I
tried that, I'd be red lighting it where for them probably still
within their ability. And if you look at their their
background as well, you know, both all three of them as an
example. And even if you look at people
like Kilian as well, if you look at what their half marathon and
marathon times are, yeah, it's astounding what Tom Evans is.
Has he got 63 or 62 minute and locker when he ran for GBA
couple of years ago at the World half Marathon championships.
So they've got that that whole range of Physiology.
They've got the engine underneath.
And I think that then gives them the ability and yeah, I mean,
they get it. They get it wrong very nice
sometimes, which is the wonders of of racing and the body
sometimes doesn't always play ball, you know, and the
nutrition can go awry or something comes up and but it's
kind of ask what makes racing so exciting and it's not it's not
completely certain, you know, there's so many uncertainties
what what always are the outcome or potentially change it.
And I'm going to ask what's probably in my head a DAF Nikki
question, but I think these are the questions that people really
like to hear from me because I think everybody else one does
these kind of things. When you do your events such as
Katra Dragon's back, do you actually run up the hills or do
you fast hike them? It's a mixture, and it almost
goes a bit like that. We were talking about the kind
of Tim Walmsley thing. You're well, for me, I'm always
gauging how I'm feeling and what's degrading.
Like am I, am I feeling good enough to be able to move up
this hill? And also, especially if you're
in the competition of what is the benefit of me maybe going a
little bit deeper here or just bidding my time and walking and
having a bit of a bit of a rest. So absolutely, there's some
hills. I am walking quite happily up
there, stuffing my face full of food because, again, that's a
good opportunity to get the food in.
There's other times where it's at a grade and I'm like, yeah,
I'm going to go for this stuff. The classic one, Kate Wrath, if
you watch the BMC film, which is on YouTube from the 2016 first
edition, Day Day 5 is where I really make my move on Tom
Adams. And there's a clip of us getting
up into Fisher Fields and the course turns off the main track
and goes up this little pathless side of a hill.
And I'm just like, right, I'm going to keep keep running here.
Now. I'm not, I'm not.
And and that was purely because I know I wanted to try and snap,
snap the elastic. But Tom, I could sense you were
struggling. So yeah, I mean, I always say to
athletes of a lot of races, you are better off walking.
That's my coach gives me and I am sticking to that
wholeheartedly. Yeah, it's sensible, isn't it?
Yeah, definitely. You've got again and it's also
making sure, though, that you maybe sometimes you're walking
with a purpose because I think sometimes we can when we say
walk up a hill that we kind of go kind of like High Street kind
of oh, just that for an atom. But where you still want to be
walking with a degree of purpose because the clock's still
ticking. So that in itself in the
training, you know, if you look likes again, going back to Tom
Evans and power hiking up colder ferret on UT MB Yeah, he is
power hiking at incredible pace and he and he trains at that.
And I think as athletes, you know, if we are going to be
walking a bit or even when I'm training a pair, you know, in
the hills, there I'll be times I will just be power hiking and
walking, keeping the heart rate a little bit high.
And because you need to learn that muscle movement as well as
getting that visual stimulant to get a bit of walking.
One of the races just passed the last episode we had was Ross
having just finished the the spine race.
You've done Challenger, Have you done any any of the other ones?
No. No.
I assume that some of that even like it's not just hills, it's
things like snow and the terrain takes takes a toll.
So you have to, you can't like run through the river even
though you want to sort of thing.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's modifying your, your races.
It's unfolding to 1 how, how you're feeling.
And so how easy is it to move across.
So if you're coming to a really boggy area, then you're
modifying that effort. And I think it also comes down
to what your what your outcome and what you're trying to to
achieve as as well. So for myself, and the first
time I did the spine ratio, I was at the front of the, you
know, leading the race and I was running quite a bit, though
interestingly, the last 60 miles.
So from the bottom of pen again, and we didn't have to drop into
Horton the air. I did it was able to take the
three beaks route. It took me 4 hours to do 16
miles because I was absolutely broken.
I, I spent more of that point. I, I literally could not get
into a run in the tour. I was like doing this weird
hybrid run walk. And there's some great pictures
of me coming into whores. It's kind of how I'm probably
going to look when I'm 80 or 90 years old, bent over like some
old man hobbling into whore was about to come in collector's
pension. And yeah, absolutely in bits.
And and you know, yeah, you're right, Mike.
You know, you've, you've got to to kind of alter and, you know,
make sure you have that adaptability in your race plan
as well. You know, it's all really
important and it is so important to have a a race strategy and
plan for things like fuelling kit pacing, just so you get an
idea of, you know, how much food you're going to need or how long
you're going to be on certain sections.
But you also know the kind of plan B&C for if that starts
falling apart or if you get snow.
Like the start of this year's spine races.
In 2014 we had snow upon Kinder, but it wasn't that bad.
The second year I went back, 2015, we had a big name storm
came over and the race should have been held back and it was
stopped for a bit, but I was already out on the course and I
got blown off my feet twice upon Kinder was literally picked up
and it was like 40-50 mile an hour winds up on Kinder and
ended up spraining my ankle, which is rather annoying.
It's a very short race that yeah, but yeah, it's it.
And and I think that's where again, the planning and that
having a bit of strategy, spending a bit of time.
So I didn't get out much on the pen and way the first time I did
it. But I used to be this fantastic
website of this guy who'd walked it and there were hundreds of
photos of the course, absolute hundreds.
And I just spent ages just looking all through those photos
and getting my head around it. And but now you can sit and
watch stuff on YouTube. Can't give us loads of videos
and bits like that. So you can start getting an
idea. And then you've also got
different split times from people doing the race now.
So you can be looking at other people's times again, right?
How would that section equate to what I'm going to be doing?
And again, just creating quite a nice strategic plan for
attacking the race. And you're a coach and how does
do do you tell people to train for that sort of thing, like
train that they're going to be walking?
And does that include your own own training as well?
I I think you want to, if you, you know, and it depends on
where where you live, where you're based.
And ideally, yeah, the more time you can spend on that terrain,
that the more of advantage you're going to get because
you're going to be training the muscles, but also neuromuscular.
You're going to be kind of training the brain to cope with
that proprioception and ability to move over.
That's one of the reasons why I ended up doing Cape Breath,
because Shane only had written an article promoting the race in
Training magazine. And he said, like, the Peak
District was a great area for training for it.
And I lived in the Peak District and like, yeah, great.
OK, you know, what more excuse do I need?
And then Sarah, who won it last year with me, she's based in
Sheffield. And when we were chatting at the
finish and afterwards, you know, we, she'd been doing the same
runs that I had been doing when I was living in the Peak
District as as well on certain bits of routes there, because
they're very similar to what you're experiencing at Cape
Wrath. So I think the, the short answer
is something roughly honest as absolutely.
But then if you can't be creative of your training and
that, you know, sometimes it might mean you have to do some
boring loops or yeah, maybe kind of way a bit tracked, you know,
it's yeah. And and to carve some time out
and saying, right, I'm going to drive for an hour because I can
go and do some, some training there.
And, and it's also that's what's really important to disconnect
the ego from the training, because if you are going to
train on that sort of terrain, you're going to probably move
them far slower than what you're used to on the road or other
stuff. And you know, the ego will just
be going, Oh my goodness, you know, you're really slow.
But as I always tell all my athletes that, you know, our,
our body, our Physiology doesn't care about pace, doesn't give a
who not interested all it's interested in how hard it's
being made to work, which is why I'm a big fan of using heart
beating in training and coaching.
And, you know, it's the ego which is the one at the end of a
run going, Oh my goodness, 2 minutes slower or, Oh my God,
look how slow our pace was. So it's, yeah, really important.
Yeah. I've coached a few athletes for
Kate Ruff from America and it's been really anxious found.
You know, I've been saying to get on the roughest trail as
possible. It did have one couple who
unfortunately were unsuccessful or unsuccessful at Kate Brath.
Didn't get to do the full course but drop down.
So they kind of explorer. But yeah, we were all joking
that they should have made me filled a bath with porridge and
just spent hours and hours just walking in porridge in a bath to
kind of simulate what it's like running on part of the Cape
Brath Trail. If it's a wet, yeah.
If it's a dry year, you're in luck.
You've really sold it there, Marcus.
What? Kate Wrath.
This is a problem. Every year I do it.
It's beautiful weather. It's amazing because all the
photos look good. And then you get some really wet
coping years and it's like, yeah, it's a mod fest.
I've heard most American trails described as manicured.
I think that's not a word you use in Kate Wrath.
Yeah, no, definitely not. Yeah, yeah.
You, you can't get away with some of your nice smooth
American trailer shoes, what they have out there.
So it's a very, very different surface.
See, I think after the last few conversations we've had on the
podcast, Mike, particularly when they're focused on the Pennine
way especially, I feel like the West Highland weighs now
manicured as well. So with the sounds of it.
Compared to some it is, yeah. Yeah, 100%.
I mean, the only technical bit you've got on the West Highland
Way is after him besnayed. Yeah, yeah.
You know the rest of it, when I did it two years ago of a guy
who won it, whose name now eludes me, he wore alpha flies.
The guy from Carnefy. Yeah, I've had.
That on the show before. Yeah, yeah, I was wearing alpha
flies. Yep, and and we had and we had a
whole section on his episode where we chatted about that.
It's a good. I'll have to go back and listen
to that. There we go.
Plug in that. So what, which, what date was
that? Like everybody going back.
And we'll send you the link. Yeah.
And please do, please do. But yeah, yeah, I mean,
phenomenal to to run that course in alpha flies.
But like you say, yeah, it is so, so manicure and it's so
smooth in places. Same with that even the devil
top it. You know you can you can get
away about kind of trail shoes on that section as well.
Yeah, and evolution of trails, like back back in like 20 years
ago, you couldn't come down Conic Hill in Alpha Flies.
It just wouldn't happen. And then there's a bit, it's
about 40 miles in. We used to call it Cow Shit
Alley, where the farmer would deliberately go and put his cows
down. So they've churned up the trail.
But it's it's a path now. It's just things evolve.
Yeah, that's just about Craig and Lyric, isn't it?
That was renowned as a kind of shit alley.
Yeah, I remember when I think. Yeah, because it was.
That was it when they had the the selection race, the British
champs on it, where Damian Hall finished second and Donnie
Campbell was first. Was that the final year when
they had Kashi Ali and then it was every surfaced after that?
Yeah, not sure when they got rid of it.
But I was, yeah, I was helping Hawk at that time that weekend,
so it was a good lapser in that place.
And to add to the cottonic hill, you can't come down that you
struggle to come down that now as well.
Like that is the only hill that even for me I am faster going up
at the down that. It's those steps are just kind
of so I mean you can see where they've done it for erosion, but
it does take a certain skill and ability to be able to come down.
It's just not enough of that on the West side of my area.
I think, I think Rob Sinclair paid them so as that his record
couldn't get beat. I wonder how many people just
skip down the side. I know, but you can't do that in
your alpha. Flies can.
No, they actually did too Marshall it to make sure people
don't so. Is that yeah, because there's
one of my athletes was there two years ago or weaving who I was
so focused I hadn't recognised until afterwards.
And it was kind of give me a good bit of grief and
encouragement at the same time. And it was afterwards he
messaged me on social media saying that was me.
I was like, but yeah, it's it doesn't make it very conducive
for flying down. It doesn't.
I'd be interested to see kind of what Rome was like going down
that in his alpha flies. So back to your race then with
the many that you have done, is there a race when you do look
back at your photos and maybe even occasionally on the
YouTube, that means more to you now than when you actually done
it? Yeah.
I mean, this is a really interesting question.
And part of it is more of a kind of, you know, I would almost say
with the situation, I'm finding myself in more of a life at the
moment with finding myself in academia.
You're about to start PhD, which is something I, you know,
somebody who was old at school, was not very clever and didn't
do well at school, came out with 1A level.
And then NI mean who else gets an N as an A level?
I can get an N so I can near miss or nearly there.
You know, I never quite understood 1 N men.
I find out to spell my name right.
But, but, but for me, like, you know, when I, I, I'm really
fortunate all the races I've been able to do, but I don't
think any of them have really come close to now what I'm what
I really feel like I'm achieving in in life and having this
opportunity. But then if you were to say, OK,
what you know, now it's down to one race.
It's that easy to say. And that has to be of a Dragons
back race without a shadow of a doubt.
And part of that is not just because it's an absolute amazing
trophy, but it's just the history of the event.
I remember that even back in 1992, seeing the race on
Transworld Sport, which used to be this programme on Channel 4
and Saturday or Sunday morning, and it had races for kind of
really weird sporting events all around the world, Red Bull
events stuff. And I remember seeing the
episode with Dragon's back race in it, which you can now see on
YouTube as well. So it's available to watch on
YouTube. And just being blown away.
And then meeting some of those people who were involved in that
race, like Joe Faulkner, Mark Cartel, Craig Harwood, Mark
McDermott. Yeah.
These were. Yeah.
Mark Cartel held the original Lakes 24 records.
And, you know, these were some of the early guys doing Bob
Grimes and kind of, you know, Ramsey rounds and just doing
some amazing endurance feats and, you know, to go climbing as
well. And after the days running or
climbing, we just sat in the pub and hearing about Towers of the
Dragon's back, you know, Mark Cartel and Helen Dermantis.
Mark Cartel. Martin Stone.
Sorry. Martin Stone and Helen
Dermantis. Do you have to do it at a pair
then as well, just for kind of safety.
And yeah, pulling through on Day 5.
And it was talked about so many times of trying to bring it
back. Yeah.
There's so many whispers now and again, so many was trying to
reprise it. And in 2012 when Shane only.
Managed to bring it back and I was really fortunate that I was
on kind of gardening leave from the job.
Was able to help out for a week and Oh my God working on it is
way harder than running it. Running the Dragons is so much
easier than working on it. Have full admiration for any of
the people who help out on on Chains events.
It's a great way. If you are interested in doing
slightly Dragons back Kate Wrath of Norman Traverse, go and work
on it. Get to see what it's like for
the competitors as well as the helping out.
But that year, 2012, seeing Steve Birkinshaw and Rob Steve
Birkinshaw has always been one of my kind of running heroes for
years and years. Just seeing him getting
absolutely trashed by the course, just absolutely done in
by it and I was like I can never do this.
Never ever get anywhere near you remote doing it.
And then there's a one-on-one. OK, Ralph is like, what's next?
I was going what's next? But I'm not going what's next.
I'm people motivate because I love pit Ralph.
I just remember this kind of moment of realisation about a
month. I was like, oh, I'm going to
have to do Dragons back. Aren't I going to have to do the
Dragons back? Oh no.
And interestingly, I have talked about if you have kind of
podcast and blogs. But six weeks before I nearly
pulled out, yeah, I was like, really questioning if if I could
even complete it, let alone go anywhere near the program
because I just knew how tough a race it was.
What it you know, what you needed to take it and how, you
know, physically broken. I was post Kate Wrath.
Yeah, good friend Stu Smith talked me around to it.
And I was just like, come on, you can do it.
So yeah, kind of put my big boy pants on, which were brown,
thankfully, which was useful in those situations, especially on
Cribcock. And yeah, that's just blown away
by it. It is such a such an iconic
race, but it's so damn hard as well.
Really is. The year you were talking about
the Highland Fling, it was 2016, and just looking at the results,
that was an absolutely stacked field.
You had Lizzie Wraith, Neil Mcnichol, Elizabeth Pascal, Jazz
Bragg, Owen Lennon, Robbie Britton, Kim Carlson, Damon Hall
and Donnie Campbell won it. So it's like the who's who of
Ultra running at that time. It it was because it was also, I
think it was a British giant. It was also a selection race for
the world trial champs and, and, and, and this is where Damian
Hall's book is, is incorrect. So if you've read Damian Hall's
book, he he claims that his coach at the time.
So ladies and gentlemen, I was Damian Hall's first coach, as
you mentioned his book. We then met kind of just
particularly for tea or for dinner before the race.
And he kind of, yeah, Ian Shalman apps his coach after me.
And he's claimed in this book, Ian Shalman told him this, But
it was me. I said to him, right, this is
how the race is going to unfold. This is who's going to go up at
the front. This is the pace it's going to
go at. Venus is who you need to sit
back and watch, bide your time and you'll pull through.
Lo and behold, yeah, Damian came through behind Dolly, overtook
him and Robbie Britton. And I think like most people
blew up here. And then, you know, they all
kind of just completely capitulated because it just went
off like a 10K race. And yeah, I know it's runnable
all the way to the bottom of Connick Hill, but still, 56
miles, is it, or 54 miles, 53, 53?
Oh, here we go. close enough. Yeah.
So yeah, it's not a race. You can start off too quick.
So yeah, I have talked to him and he put it wrong.
I think you just need to drop your name, drop Ian Sharman in
his book as a coach. So.
They get a break on lock side when they slow down.
But but the problem with that race is you.
You can't bail anywhere until you get to Balmer Harris.
Even I discovered two years ago I'm just going to have to keep
trudging along now. And so you get given some
paracetamol by a very kind Marshall.
Right. You said that Dragon's back is
probably a race that sticks out, but is there a moment within a
race, it might even be that one that sort of sticks in the
memory that this is? What does it mean to you?
What being in that race or well. Running a a certain point in a
race that has a a, it might have been a point where you overtook
somebody, it might have been somebody's gesture at the
checkpoint. It's just something that sticks
in the memory for you. I mean, there's one which is
really ingrained and and I kind of feel like we're talking all
about Kate Wrath and and Dragon's back.
But there. Well, that is interesting.
As I, as I reflect on that, there's this.
So I remember we were winning my first cross country race back in
98 and that was kind of a kind of quite a monumental moment.
But I vividly remember back in 2016 on day three of hate breath
and we were fortunate with the web and the views we had.
But you, you you've gone down past a big waterfall and I can't
remember the names of the Glens you're in, but you're coming up
to this be like and you and you just look down and and all you
saw was just a Highlands. That's all you saw.
There was there was a wee boss, the ride a distance, but it was
just expanse ahead. And I was just like, yeah, This
is why I'm here for this kind of scenery, for this this
connection, for just just being privileged enough to be in this
place and at this time. And, you know, I say it to so
many athletes and and other competitors in races.
It's really important now and again, you don't have to
literally stop, but just really look up, look around you, really
kind of take in kind of 1 where you are and then kind of reflect
on, you know, how fortunate you are to be in that place.
Even if you're maybe feeling a bit rough, food's not going down
so well, your legs a bit sore, your horrible blister.
But you know, we have. So, you know, we are so
fortunate at times to be in those races and sometimes be in
those places. And yeah, seeing sunrises in a
race. Oh, sunsets just get priceless.
It's got to make you feel better.
How could you not getting a sunrise in the Highlands as
opposed to on Buchanan St. in Glasgow?
That has a beauty of its own. Absolutely.
There's a whole different aesthetic, isn't it really?
It's yeah, it depends on the on the second.
But yeah, you know, and there are, there are so many other
ones which are just poignant. And I think that's, it's a
really good kind of good question as well, Mike, because
I think we all should be, you know, taking time to reflect
post race and to record. I have, you know, I do a lot of
journaling. So I kind of record stuff, write
stuff down, and then saying we've kind of like why strata
can be really good because we can write these little moments
down and they're really useful then for us to reflect back.
And when maybe things aren't going sort of like training or,
you know, preparation for races and quite going, we can use that
as a bit of an anchor to go, OK, you know, why am I doing this?
Why do I want to go be back into that environment?
And they can just, yeah, just be this confidence basis for us.
What? What do you think you get out of
journalling? Is it for coaching purposes?
Is it for life in general? I don't.
So what? What is it that?
So I, I, Yeah, so I journal for my mental health and for a
former addiction. So my, my therapist host Kate
Brath got me on to, to journalling.
So I don't talk enough about it. So as as somebody who probably
seems like they've got life sorted because they're doing
lots of great running and achieving lots and having a
Great Britain vest and being a sponsored athlete up until
around about kind of 2016 and 17, my life, my personal life
was ruled very much by porn addiction.
So I was very much kind of held in that.
I always had a bit of an addictive personality.
I had drug addiction when I was late teens and then that kind of
morphed into porn addiction and it's really unhealthy.
You know, it was definitely kind of stopped me achieving things
in my, my work life and social life, which is weird that, you
know, I could run, I could win Kate Wrath.
But then I just had this dark sneaker, this burden I was
carrying and I couldn't, couldn't unpack, couldn't cope,
you know, could not get myself out from that place.
So I found a brilliant therapist who specialized and that
addiction and that helped me unpack it all, helped me get to
the kind of root cause of it. But part of that process was
journaling, you know, every day sitting down, writing my
thoughts down. And it just became a kind of a
natural habit. And so for me, journaling is
it's an opportunity to be reflective.
It's an opportunity sometimes to right.
I've what I've been thinking about in a negative way or
positive ways during the day. And one of the other key things
that I'm encouraging people to journal is this wants to be non
critical as well. So you're not you're not judging
yourself of if you've done anything, you know, which you're
maybe not happy about or you know, you sometimes should write
it down and increase it out. So yeah.
And that leads itself into, you know, training Diaries as well
because you start journaling about your training, how train's
been going and if you actually do this, Nikki.
But I really encourage all my athletes to to leave subjective
feedback in their training because it's such an important
element. It's easy to look at data and
try and interpret data, but that doesn't always give us the full
story of what that athletes experienced and what we
experienced on a run. But yeah, if you, I mean, you're
journaling can sometimes feel a bit of a chore, but once you get
into the habit of doing it 10 minutes and then it's like
mindfulness, like meditation, when you're not doing it, start
missing it. A good question.
Yeah. And so I hope and sorry for
sharing that over that term. I know, I think, you know, so
many men, you know, men need to be more, you know, a lot of men,
young people. You know, as I talk more about
it, I find it, yeah, fascinating how more people start standing
up and going, Yeah, I suffer, experience a problem as well.
And, you know, we know how young people are so engaged but not
engaged but come into contact with pornographic images, social
media, phones. It's so easy to connect to it.
And I think the more we talk about it and kind of normalize
that it's good to talk about it and positive to help people
overcome those addictions and struggles.
I I've written down write down notes as we go along and the
next one is to say thank you for being so open about it.
If it helps somebody, great. If it helps you, even better
question was do you think that you've replaced that addiction
with an addiction for running? So initially, yes, 100%,
absolutely. And, and I, I joke about it now
in that running was, and like I talked about this, this one, it
was like running is running away from that problem.
You know, it's well, if I, if I, if I run, it kind of numbs that
area or distracts me. But as we all know about runs,
if you kind of head up from your house to go for run, you tend to
always end back at your house. You always end up back at the
same point, don't you? And however many times you keep
running, you're always going to come back to that, that same
point. So absolutely.
Yeah. I was well and truly addicted to
running. And again, this is a way of
transformation happened in that 2016 seventeen in that.
And This is why when I you know, when you ask how yeah, I knew I
was a runner and I see myself less as a as a runner and more
as me. It's less of an identity.
And I think that's what we have to be careful.
We can get ourselves caught up in identities and we tie so much
up into my identity, which I had done.
And when we can't then run, how do we then fill that that gap?
So, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I I know so many
other runners who treat their running as as therapy, which is
what I did. As I say now to people and to
athletes and to when I'm, you know, given this wonderful
opportunity to share my story or to do talks.
Not at all like Damien Hall, unfortunately, not yet, not yet.
I'm too too busy with my PHDI haven't got time to go trudging
around the UK, but but I hope I didn't come across a few
jealous. Yeah, Damien Marcus has got, we
have been David a good friend. So for a long time we've taken
quite a bit out of each other. But I think the the the big
switch what I had for me was recognizing running, running as
being therapeutic rather than therapy.
I think that's a really important distinction.
It's great questions. You might have been asking me
this question shortly. So I do apologize for pre
empting it, but you asked the question, why, why do I run?
And it's a, it's a question I ask every kind of new athlete
who comes to work with me when we have the discovery.
Cause it's the first question I put to them.
And, and, and I, I love their, that initial response to them
being asked that, that question. Because I think as, as athletes,
we don't always reflect on that, you know, we just, we just run.
I just, I don't know, I like racing.
I like these events, but when we really maybe sit and hold that
space and go, why do I run and try and articulate it, It gives
it more more context that helps us to maybe go a little bit
deeper and understand that. And one of the reasons why I
asked that question and to my athletes is, you know, I want to
get an understanding of that place they're coming from and is
it from something that they want to be doing.
There's no external pressures if we're not chasing certain
recognition or some sort of external reward, that's not for
external motivation. And I would say now 100% of the
athletes who I asked that question to or in some sort of
way verbalise that they're doing it for their mental health.
And it's just kind of brilliant that opportunity to kind of deal
with different stresses, kind of be able to process stuff.
And I think that, you know, that's what is such an
important, amazing opportunity of to be able to exercise and
improve our mental health. And that's why we have to see it
as being therapeutic rather than therapy because it can't replace
actually spending time with somebody who's more qualified if
we've got certain things we need to unpack or certain issues
going on in our life or, you know, mental health maybe isn't
in a good place. So it's it's really, you know,
important to kind of, yeah, recognise, OK, this is maybe
tilting to one side, which could be unhealthy.
If it all falls apart, what's my backup plan or what I got to
fill that space? Right.
And one addiction, good addiction was running, which
benefits as, as we said, part of that addiction is food.
A lot of people say they run so that they can eat.
Like the Segway? Yeah, absolutely.
Is that true? Is that but you can't run if you
don't eat? What are you what?
What is your fuelling strategy for races?
Are you addicted to food? What is your what addiction have
you got? What is it?
Mine's is ice cream. I love ice cream.
Let the lettuce on the table I'm liking.
I'm like I'm liking the honesty here.
Any flavour ice cream? I've got an ice cream maker and
I I enjoy making ice cream as well.
Pistachio is probably my my one of choice.
Kind of very middle class. Well, when you're making it
yourself, I I got the machine, the the maker as a birthday
present, so. Pistachio, isn't it?
So do you have to bite, you know, grind those pistachios up?
And is it a whole kind of process so it becomes like
making bread? Is it this kind of wonderful
laboursome process? Yeah, so it's kind of
mindfulness linked into it as well.
Could be. Yeah.
Wonderful. Nikki, do you do you have a
anything you wish to share? Food addiction or I think.
At the moment, Mark is my addiction stress.
I just try a bit running. I I sometimes check when people
go like when you're you're doing the the big training volume,
which I've done in the past, but I think like, you know, Dragons
back, take a breath over 100 KS. But you really then can just be
like a dustbin and be like, are you on there some sort of
special diet? You're sort of thinking, yeah,
I'm on a I'm on a seafood diet, seafood and I eat it.
Terrible dad joke. I know, sorry, but but yeah, I'm
which again, was really weird when I had, I've had certain key
addictions when I say key, but prominent addictions in my life,
drugs or porn that's never kind of gone into other areas like
smoking, drinking food. I mean, I love food absolutely.
And I love cooking. And yeah, I think running does
help me keep in good shape. I am quite fortunate that I
don't put a lot of weight on even when I'm not running.
But it is really important to recognise that if you don't feel
successfully, that will impact your training as well as racing.
And as a coach, I'm really mindful how I approach that for
some athletes because, yeah, diet and nutrition can have a
lot of kind of connotations or you can be quite triggering for
some people. And some people are willing to
lose weight. And then if you're saying, you
know, you've got to make sure you're eating lots, then that
kind of feels going kind of productive.
But then if you're not eating enough, you can end up with
things like Reds relative energy deficiency impacting hormones
production and stress fractures, which I have seen in a couple of
athletes more when I've started working with me.
And there's not always been the transparency early on, but it's,
it's making what I would say common sense choices around
food. If you're training hard, and
this is where all training should also have a degree of
periodisation, you shouldn't be doing the same training volume
week in, week out, month after month, year after year.
You want these peaks and troughs of your training volume going up
and down the intensity. And that kind of means your,
your nutrition kind of changes as well.
And then, you know, just like you said, like, you know, you've
got to have your rewards as well.
You know, you've got if you're doing lots of training and ice
cream is what's going to pick you up and make you feel good,
then get that pistachio ice cream in.
But yeah, it's it's making sure like in, you know, again,
talking about kind of diet choices, I don't think there's
one complete correct diet other than real food.
You know, that is the most important element, you know, not
having process or minimal amount of processed foods.
And if you want to be carnivore, herbivore, plant based, you
know, if you are choosing a certain kind of diet, just
continue off for real food. Avoid the process because that's
where all the chemicals and rubbish fats are and that's what
puts the weight on. And I'm not an efficientness,
but that's come from years of reading up on stuff and working
with loads of different athletes.
I just thought of a flavour that beats Cesario.
And. That is dark chocolate and
chili. You had me on the dark
chocolate. You had me on the dark
chocolate. But you have to.
Try it. You look like it's going to say
something very profound, Nikki. And we have Ice Cream Chat.
Yeah, if you could do a whole episode of Ice Cream Chat if
we're laying. Absolutely.
Really kind of like, I'm not a big fan of ice cream.
I've ever. Like I've said it, I've said it.
I know, I know. I can take it or leave it as
well, Marcus. Cake is one of my weaknesses.
I love cake. I agree with you wholeheartedly
on that one. A cake is far better than ice
cream. And and even better, so when
mine and my husband's birthdays are within the same week, it's
just that it's the best week. Again, this is where rewards are
so important, you know, just if you don't always need like it's
a birthday excuse, just come treat yourself some cake.
If you don't, don't. Tell me.
Some you know, you've got to have your cake now and again.
You've got to have those rewards.
The the profound question I was about to ask you before the ice
cream chart was when you're giving your advice on diet to
athletes. We all know as runners, the diet
is an absolute minefield and it is not the same for any single
individual. You know, we're all totally
different fuel and strategies, you know, out with the running.
Have we got any resources or anywhere that you can give
people point us for where they could start to look when if they
want to bear or they'll die? Yeah.
So I tend to point them in direction of people who are far
more qualified, people like Renee McGregor, Paul Booth, you
know, they're the two. And I've been really fortunate
to work with Paul Booth in the past as well for a 24 hour race
and and Renee McGregor's got some great books out there and
some online tools as well. And so they're really good
starting points. And if you are then going to go
off and do look for zero kind of somebody professional to help
you, you know, like any kind of especially if you're going to a
physio or sports therapist, you know, make sure they have an
understanding of running of of the sport you do.
Because if you go and see a nutritionist who specializes in
football or golf, yes, they'll still understand the energy
system is still the same, but there's certain nuances that
come with the mindsets of of running compared to different
sports. So I think my advice was, you
know, there are some really other good sports nutritionists
out there, but Renee McGregor, her books are really good.
Training the athletes got is a really good book as well to kind
of tap into. Just be careful what you take as
evidence based on social media because there's some real
charlatans out there and you'll study snake oil when it's not
the best, best advice. So and then, you know, if you're
really curious, go on Google Scholar and put it into Google
Scholar and see what what comes up.
And yeah, AI models now are really good.
And you, you know, if you're struggling to understand
research papers, most of them would like we use Copilot and
you can wrap key points and then ask around as well Chats people.
If I take snake oil, will it make me run faster?
Absolutely. I can send some later if you
want. I'll send you my bank details if
you can pay me up and I'll send you a bottle instead.
Just pistachio flavour but as well if you want and.
A question that the IT can either be entertaining or really
know what's the biggest fuelling mistake that you've made and and
watch what type of race has it usually happened and if you've
made that mistake more than once.
Thankfully I've only made it once, so it was in my first GB
vest running in the world 100K champs in Gibraltar 2010 I think
it was. And a bit of context to it, I
was living in Dumfries at the time.
It was end of November and the race was in Gibraltar.
So I was going from like 8 degrees, 10° in southwest
Scotland to 24° in Gibraltar. And I've worked really well on
my my nutrition. I worked quite a bit with my
coach on it and then really kind of upped my calories.
And at the time we was focusing more on calories and carbs, what
we do now. But we'd spent, yeah, quite a
bit of time coming up with quite a detailed plan.
However, I sabotaged this plan in that thinking a few days out
and when we got out of your devotion and like, oh, this is
really hard. That was going to increase the
amount of electrolytes I was going to take on board thinking
I didn't want to cramp, not realising that there's still a
lot of sugar in a lot of electrolyte drinks.
And I was kind of sipping away quite merrily to about 5560 K
when I remember taking on this gel and my stomach just churned
massively. And then I just projectile
vomited into a drain. It was just like, it was like
suddenly out of the film. It was like they put special
effects by the side of me. It was just like, and after I
finished it more, I must have like brought up 4 litres of
fluid. It was just yeah, and and
thankfully that was one of the ever GB last and she ran past
me. So she saw me and she was like,
yeah, I'm fine. What?
Not enough? And and yeah, yeah.
And my race then just unravelled and I remember then stumbling
out the toilet a bit later and ended up in the back of an
ambulance. So yeah, that was the end of my
first ever GB race, which wasn't how I expected it to go, but
yeah, it was a big lesson learned.
Don't mess about or change your nutrition a few days before a
race. I was about to ask did you
recover from that and you were able to complete the race but
obviously not if you were in an ambulance.
Nope. Yeah, pretty much what Yeah,
race had completely gone out to me in more ways than others.
Yeah, but but what is interesting now is the
understanding of the importance of of fuelling in races.
You know, it's completely transformed and yeah, 2014 where
ask a younger drop kind of did some of the first Seminole
research on there and one of the if you want to really get your
head around some of the kind of fuelling systems and best ways
of fuelling his website. So might be worth stickiness in
the the notes, but my sports science.com, his his website,
it's brilliant because it's all evidence informed and it's also
presented in a way that most people can get their head round
and understand. But he was one of the first kind
of nutritionists to start pushing, you know, to recognise
that after three hours of exercise, that's when we need to
increase our carb intake and start pushing 90 grams of carbs.
Do you find that you've obviously know about all the new
science actual facts, but you've been running for a long time
like myself and I sort of go, I've been doing this for 1020
years and this is what I've always done.
So why change it now? So you're you're saying don't
change your nutrition on the day, but why change it at all if
it worked for you back then? Even though science says.
It, it didn't work back then. It, yeah, no, I, I, I, I thought
it worked. But I, I look back and recognise
when I had rough patches and I in races now in ultra marathons,
as soon as it starts getting hot, as soon as I start feeling
like I'm struggling, I, I, I will take some food on board and
that picks me up because I've learned now that is an indicator
from my muscles saying they're running out of glycogen.
And I now consume 90 grams of carbs an hour in racing.
So I'm very open minded. I look back at some of the stuff
I was doing years ago and just like, Oh my God, what was I
thinking? You know, part of that was the
science wasn't there. The research hadn't really come
about. But I do remember, like my coach
really at the time, she was really pushing me to be taking
like 300 calories an hour because we was working more on
calories. And then the carbs came to the
more to the forefront. And as I was reading the
research, hearing other races starting to take it on board,
seeing how that was impacting their performances, and then
dabbling in it myself and then seeing the the improvement in my
own performance, you know what happened Devil Highlands two
years ago, 8 breath last year was completely fuelled on 90
grams of carbs an hour. And I was like shoving my face
full of food. And I think that's why I was so
close to my course record. And I would have when I broke my
course record a couple of days, but kind of previous times on
those days and I'm not sprained my ankle on day five.
I'm sure I would have potentially broken my growth
record. But I and I, but I think that's
the reason for that was training was slightly different and
better this time, but fuelling was far more on point you.
Were back in 2012. I'm just looking at your DVUV
record 2009, you were winning races back then.
Do you think you would have been faster?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, way, way quicker when we
did that 1st 2008 Devil of Highlands, there's Bragg beat me
because he feel better and he he also because he had a crew what
came out to where the last checkpoint is now at Lindoverna.
It wasn't an official checkpoint there and he caught me up after
King Lot, me even, and I had gone a bit too quick, but he had
crew there, picked up more fuel and I was running on fumes from
kind of just before Llandudno and I just couldn't respond to
him. So yeah, no, absolutely.
I look back at some of those results, even 100K time and go,
yeah. And I think, you know, This is
why I think we're seeing some kind of improvement in kind of
record times 100K trout races. It's not just the carbon plates
shoes which do make a difference.
People are able to sustain their effort and the science shows us
that as well. When they've done studies on
races. Fortunate majority of that
science is on men typical not much, not on women because it's
we've have found some female athletes it's different quantity
of carbs required and 90 grams of carbs and again for some
athletes if the intense is not the same, you don't need 90
grams of carbs. You can get away with 50 or 60
grams. You kind of have to work out OK,
how much am I expending? What's my expenditure compared
to what? I didn't take an intake, but
yeah, so it's my record, so my time.
So what website was that? DDBU.
DDUV if you Google DUV it's a German website that takes all
the ultra results. Some of them are missing but
it's got majority. The problem they have now is
GDPR. Although GDPR is a fantastic
thing for protecting personal people's personal data for
things like this, race directors have to submit things race
results with identifiable information which breaks GDPR.
So this the theory behind this website is flawed now.
So in few years time that sort of thing might not exist
unfortunately. But I suppose if you've signed
like a waiver and if your results are going to get
published anyway online. Yeah.
But I, I know that there's one of my race results is not up on
there because the race won't submit it with being able to
identify me even though I've said that's me.
But that's the reason behind it. Excellent.
I couldn't have it. I mean I've looked at power in
Temple and that's got my results all the way back I think to 2006
on there 5 road running days. Yeah, so brilliant.
And you said there that you coach male and female and
nobody's doubting that there is a difference between male and
female athletes. You've obviously got history
that you can apply to your theories on male athletes.
How much of that do you apply or where do you get this of
information? Is it from other runners?
About female runners? Yeah.
I mean, there are some kind of studies on that and I think it's
we've all coaching it. It has to come down to it being
holistic and a lot of science as well out there.
We have to be mindful when it talks about endurance running in
the sports science or even in the athletics terms.
Endurance running is kind of three 5000 meters, you know,
unless a study says marathon running, you know, and there's
very few studies on on ultra math running in itself.
There are more coming out, which is quite interesting now.
So it's discerning that. And then there is that anecdotal
element of working with female athletes, having those
conversations, really allowing it to be quite open and
reflective, but then also making sure that it's holistic for the
athlete. Because sometimes what can work
for a male athlete and you go, well, it should work, doesn't
always work because everybody's context, it's different.
And you know, I think the key thing we have to be in mind for
was when working with a female athlete, the things like the
menstrual cycle, the hormonal cycle is so different, way, way
different to, to men. And even in menopause,
perimenopause, all, all that has an impact.
So it's, it's not about being in any way gatekeeper.
It's about. Acknowledged.
I've read this paper so I know about it.
Absolutely not. You know, as a coach, I view
myself very much more as a somebody's journeying along them
and bringing ideas, sometimes going, well, look, this kind of
says this is it going to work? And if the athlete turns around
and go no, this isn't this isn't working.
OK, we're in. Well, let's try something new.
Let's alter it. Let's change it around so it
always has to be like dynamic, but definitely having the
confidence to sometimes say you're wrong or you know, I'm
wrong, not the athlete is wrong because you know that that
subjective understanding is far greater than and why you know, I
would never never in a million years.
And you can understand what it's like once a month to be bleeding
from a certain area of my body and how my hormones would go up
and down and how it would make me feel and bloated or, you
know, I never have to go for a run with something stuck in my
pants. So I'm not bleeding everywhere.
You know, men, we have it so freaking easy.
Absolutely. So easy.
You know, one of my athletes was doing one of the spying races.
And if I listen, if I do apologise now.
But they started appearing on the Friday the day before.
And he just like, oh, that is so unfair because straight away,
you know, that's going to impact performance.
And as a male athlete, I just wouldn't.
Yeah, have no understanding of what that can be like at all.
So this is where, you know, coaching in a real holistic
endeavour. And yeah, you want to ideally
lean into science, but there are other times where being more
anecdotal can be just as powerful and impertinent because
it's personal centred space for that person.
I guess that's very good. Yeah, as you as.
You said that there when you're talking about your athlete, even
just I've never done a multi day event before, but even from
observing, watching the dwell time.
And if that happens, that particular time of the month,
which you say is really unfortunate.
If you're a performance athlete that takes even like 5 minutes,
10 minutes to just sort yourself out to make sure that you feel
better, that you feel fresher so that you can get back out on the
course and get it done. It's it can be a pain in the
backside, but for anyone that is listening, the you know, wants
to learn more about things like that and even for yourself.
Marcus as a coach, Karen Nickel does an awful lot of research,
part of wild heart runners. She is phenomenal at giving
information. And when you ask her about, I
hope she doesn't mind me saying I'm sure she won't.
But if you were to ask Karen for resources, she would happily
point you in the right direction because as a man, there's only,
as you say, there's only so much that you can understand.
You know, as you say, you don't go through it.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, it's great now that, you know, a lot of races are having
female designated toilets and then also having kind of
sandwich towels or tampons available during races because
you know, even we found in the Lakeland 100 or 50.
So an athletes cycle can start in the middle of the race.
And yeah, I think it's really important that race organisers
are prepared and ready for that. It's it's, you know, it's a
shame it's taken us till 202425 to start.
Recording, the awareness is there and I know Sophie Power
does a lot of work as well as she races a lot of campaigning
for it and I feel that there's a lot more awareness out there
which is great. Yeah, it is improving vastly,
isn't it? But you know, as a, as a, as a
coach, it's so it's so important to to just have that.
And it's not that in any sort of way patronizing.
It's that care and concern. I think you were saying about
journaling, if they're doing that on the coaching platform
that you use, being honest with you because you're they're
paying you to be as the best coach that you can be.
But you can only do that if they're honest with you in
things like that that are happening to them.
Yeah, and absolutely. And some athletes, you know,
with things like the Garmin app, you can put in when your cycle's
due and that then comes into, into training peaks.
So I have that, that data there. And we'll, yeah, we'll have that
conversation regularly with with athletes and, you know, making
sure that we build the programme, the cycles around the
menstrual cycle. But then it's what is becoming
more and more interesting is things like perimenopause and
menopause. Or, you know, you've got Stacey
Sims have written the book raw. It's still a lack of
understandable data out there of what how you know, women need
support during that period and what exercises work or what
doesn't work. And it's how many kind of
athletes experience it in different ways as well as no one
like everybody experiences prenimals pre menopausal or
menopause in that way. That's and that's, I think,
yeah, we've really got to, yeah, as you, you should say, might
get to know that athlete and make sure there's there's a good
relationship where you can have that openness and transparency
all the time. And totally changing the
subject. No big.
Way there? No.
Pizza is my favorite savoury food.
Pizza is that, is that where was that?
Is that where it was going? Yeah, that's.
That's exactly where we're going when when you've fueled up on
your pizza but you're still sleep deprived and multi day
races or a single day race that's gone over multi days.
I've never done a multi day race where the clock stops.
It's always been a continuous race, but they've been over
multiple days, sleep deprivation.
What's the worst thing that you've been there, hallucinated
or said to somebody while you've been sleep deprived?
I've never really been sleep deprived in the race.
The longest race I've ever done is the spine challenger which
was 29 hours and he has never, never sleep deprived.
It's really boring isn't it? You have not had any major.
I thought us hallucinating to apologise in advance of that
crazy story is but my first 100K going back to go away and it was
coming down one of her laps. One of the other England female
competitors, she was peeing standing up and I thought I was
hallucinating that initially, but I was like, that's an
amazing skill. But yeah, how boring is that?
Because I keep doing all these short races.
When you when you chat to Jen, Jen's got a letter of stories.
And when I've talked to athletes, so I've coached for
things like the Spy and Northern Traverse and stuff like that,
and of hearing their stories of hallucinations, I'm kind of
like, I had that kind of back in the early 90s when I used a lot
of acids. So maybe that's when it might,
maybe my brains experience that through lucinogenic drugs.
And now it's all a bit like, yeah, it's isn't even touching
it now, doesn't get anywhere near it.
Can I just say, Marcus, if I managed 29 hours, I would be
definitely hallucinating because I'm shouted after three hours.
But. But this is the amazing thing.
It's a bit, and, and I don't know if you found this as well
back when you've done those longer events that the, and part
of that is, is because of the chemicals the body is producing.
Anyway, in these events that I, I never felt tired in 29 hours.
The amount of adrenaline, cortisol in my body.
You, you just, you know, when you even think back to like, you
know, some of the alters, you've probably done Nikki, you know,
you think about the, the fling and you're like, Oh yeah, I'm
going to get to a point and I'm just going to be like dead on my
feet. But really, because you're so
focused on what you're doing is so involved in that moment, you
just keep moving forward. It's it was amazing.
And when I've, you know, yeah, when I stopped on the spine
challenge, absolutely, I was like dead man walking.
But at the time, I was so focused on trying to keep moving
forward that, yeah, my brain obviously was just so much more
alert. And then if you found this same.
Have you had any good hallucinations yourself?
I've never hallucinated. I'm still chasing it.
So. But yeah, I I feel the same.
I think it's much easier to run for say 30-40 hours than it is
to sit on the sofa and do nothing.
You fall asleep within a couple hours, but if you're actually
moving then something chemical based in your body is you stay
awake. I've been running like the
original hill route. I remember running along and I
actually fell asleep while I was still running and the only
reason I knew I'd fallen asleep is because I I was there and now
I'm here. Oh well, might as well keep
running then because I'm still awake.
But in terms of hallucinations, never, never hallucinate.
Yeah, I know. It's like.
At this point. Drug fueled past as well.
Do we need to have any, you know, same space there, you
know, but yeah, what about you? Have you had any legalize
nations Nikki? Have you ever?
I've not ran long enough. The longest rates to have done
Marcus is the one that you asked me about the devil.
But as you're saying about like just keeping on going and that
and you said with the spine challenger, you were dead on
your feet. When I finished the Devil, it
wasn't so much dead on my feet. It was display if I'd finished
because I got to the top of the Devil staircase.
Doesn't live up to its name. Sorry to interrupt, but it does
not live it. Walking.
Walking with some purpose because I knew I had to get to
the top. Cried at the top of that hill
saying to my husband. On the phone to my husband
saying I can't do another six hours of this shit.
This is horrible. God, I'd convinced myself I was
getting to Ken Locke leaving and I thought I'm I'm pulling out,
I'm just pulling out here because I I can't do it.
And then the Marshalls tidy you up.
Don't they change your socks? And I'm like who?
Far to the next checkpoint and they says it's not that farm.
Like can I walk it? They went well, if you don't
muck about, yeah, you'll get there.
So obviously carried on and then got to Linda after.
I didn't get tamed out and just got to the end.
But no off, sadly, no hallucinations.
My feeling strategy was terrible on that as well, Marcus, because
actually I don't know how I got through that.
I didn't take a pee until after Linda after.
And yeah, it was everything not to do.
But I mean, you got to, I mean, this could, you know, do it once
so, you know, like me and all my natural lights.
You'll need it once. Next time you'll feel far
better. Oh 100% and I've no graces, no
else in graces about peeing anywhere anymore because we're
all trail runners now. So it's when you're just in the
street amongst normal people that you don't do it.
Majorities of training around Buchanan St. eh?
Well, I mean, some fucking hungry, but this interview is
not about us. It's about you, Marcus.
So what is the one piece of advice that you wish every
runner from front of field to back of field?
What's the one piece of advice you wish every runner would
know? Thank.
Goodness, mate, I mean that is like, I mean like an
encyclopedia in front of it and pick one, pick one piece out of
this and it kind of going for a bit of a politician's answer
isn't it's a really good question because I'm trying to
fumble fumble My my my wife. There is.
I thought there was another bit on the original question you
sent through to me. Hey, this is sorry to to ruin
this video. This was there was some
questions sent out beforehand the original question.
Was for multi day races. But I think if you want if you.
Want to choose a multi day race and advice for that?
Then that is your prerogative, but.
I, I think so, as I say to so many of my so we've alluded to a
couple of them. So if we, if we rewind back one
bit would be that, that distinction between not letting
your ego, you know, override and ruin your runs and let the body,
you know, recognize if you're working hard, you're working
hard. So we've talked on that one, but
the other, the other key one is don't be afraid of rest.
Do not be afraid of taking time off because it is such an
invaluable key part of of training.
And without rest, you will never be able to do the races or the
times you ever want to do. Because we think our training is
where it all happens. But it's not that the magic
happens when we, we stop training and we allow the body
to recover, repair and renew. All training is about overload.
You know, we overload the body to a degree where hopefully it's
not broken, but it's getting close to being overworked.
We back off and then amazingly, the cells come in and repair and
renew. We strengthen and it's kind of
like, oh, we know we're going to be worked harder again.
So we'll, we'll make more new cells or more new pillaries in
our muscles or improve our stroke heart volume.
But we have to make sure we take that time out.
And I know as an athlete the reason why I'm still racing.
Yeah, 18 years after that first racing along the Devil Highlands
or even before then, you know, my, I set my half marathon PB in
2569 minutes and still able to run very reasonable.
Half of it's because I'm not afraid to take time off.
Now you're really, really encouraging when I'm, when I'm
as a coach, when I'm building a training plan for an athlete,
the first thing, what goes into a training plan is the rest
days. And and then I start building
our elements around it. And if, you know, the more we
become comfortable with with being still.
And sometimes it comes back to like we was talking earlier
about, you know, how we're using running for therapy, that we're
running away from staff, that we're sometimes, you know, we
can't sit still. We can't sit with after thoughts
or we feel guilty if we sit still, if we're not doing
something. But really it's so important to
our body. And this is what makes a
difference between elite athletes.
And as we're speaking earlier, like to Jim Walsley, Tom Evans
there, they're training and then sat around all day doing nothing
else, watching Netflix, reading books.
When you and me are off to work or, you know, got jobs and
families to be content. We're not sending Tom Evans.
That's a wonderful family now. But yeah, don't be afraid of
rest detraining. It's just as important as as
training. And you know, if you follow me
on Strava, you'll see. And I post a little bit on
social media about it. That post Kate Rath, I took
nearly like 3. I took two to four, two weeks
off and then nearly three months of easy running and just messing
about. So yeah, embrace rest.
See it as such an important part of your training week because
important is your long run. You're speed sessions, you're
easy ones. I think there's a lot of theory
that it's, it's the rest is when you improve, that's when your
muscles are building, so. Absolutely, Yeah, absolutely.
You know, you and and and it's same psychologically as well.
You know, we don't build resilience when we're fatigued,
when we're tired. That's how we, you know, we
don't we, we build it when we are out of that moment and
reflecting how we overcame that moment.
So, you know, if you could say you have one more, it would be
tell runners that you don't need to learn to suffer.
Nobody needs to learn to suffer. No way.
You know, running should be fun. There's enough suffering we
endure in life. Things will happen.
Bad luck, certain situation, circumstances.
And yeah, I do not buy into this fallacy there.
We need to learn to suffer, to run on from reference.
Oh, not to go. So yeah, rest, rest, rest, rest.
And then you can always cream on as well.
Yeah. I love that point about not
suffering Marcus. I had a good friend and former
guest on the podcast and what I was most inspired about from
Alice was she pulled out of a 100 Miller race, 30 odd miles
because the weather was terrible and she chose not to suffer.
She just wasn't having a good time.
And she says I, I, she knows all like, you know, it's a privilege
to suffer and you know, the courts like that, which, you
know, do help some people. But for her, she says I chose
not to suffer that day. So that really inspired me.
Yeah. And that to me that also shows
such a high resilience as well. You know, I think it's shows
more resilience to pull out of the race, to recognise that it's
not a positive situation than to legitimately push on to
potentially put yourself in more harm or come just more miserable
situation. So.
Yeah. You know, there is this horrible
fallacy in the sport that, yeah, it's about, it's about
suffering. It's hard.
No question of that. Like you were just saying,
Nikki, about your experience. It is.
It is hard, but but that's because, you know, it's physical
and there's a real distinction from pain and suffering.
You know, pain is the physical manifestation what's happening.
Suffering is is mental. It's a mental manifestation
what's happening. So we we choose if we're
suffering or not and we can reframe it.
We can use other psychological tools to take us out of that
situation. But we then need to be in
training and going well. I need to do a really horrible
hard long run or back-to-back long runs to learn to suffer.
No, don't do it. Please enjoy your running, have
fun. I feel you've got to learn to
suffer because you'll just end up in a really horrible,
miserable place. And if you have runs which are
unpleasant, all you're doing is taking yourself up.
Running is unpleasant. Yeah.
And you're running, you're not suffering, you're not not
dealing with that. But what are you thinking about?
What was what running in races are all the time or so the last
the last five runs I've been thinking about tonight.
Those questions you sent through so training runs will either be
filled with writing assignments like how am I going to finish
this conclusion? Oh my God, this is like getting
really annoyed about trying to write some.
Yeah, or an introduction or, or even sometimes I can be trying
to take a paper apart as a chapter I cut or a passage I've
not got my head round and I'll just take it out on a run.
So there'll be a mixture of that.
Sometimes I'm thinking about some coaching aspect comes in,
sometimes I'm visualising about race coming up, you know, the
training I want to be doing. And then the other time it's
just filled with me being quite mindful of focusing on my
breathing, my movement and the scenery.
Just, you know, we've got Monroes on our doorsteps up
here, we've got 800 metres of mountains in our back garden.
And I just feel so privileged just to be running beneath such
grandeur just so often just looking at those.
I am just so fortunate, so grateful.
So yeah, it's a real kind of mish mash.
But then if I'm doing sessions, then it's a different world
focus of what I'm doing in that session saying racing, you're
racing. It becomes very singular minded,
very focused. But yeah, yeah, it's really
interesting when I read it, when I read your question, why not?
Oh my. Well, this is what I'm thinking
about the next. Few months circular question
answer. You are thinking about the
question that's just been asked. Yeah, You know, I mean, I think
it's like, well, how a lot of athletes describe it as well
when asking why do they run? Is that opportunity to be
disconnected? You have not got emails and not
got text messages. I don't run with any technology,
don't run with headphones, don't listen to music.
I I just love hearing my own thoughts.
I just love it. I'm really, you know, it's such
a privileged time to have be on my own, to have no other
distractions, but then to be kind of really mindful of that
environment around you because again, I think that's something
really important. And I think, you know, again, a
lot of drones talk about that kind of always the theory and
experience of being in that environment and an equity with
that. And yeah, look at the trees,
look at the flowers, look at the Moss on the words.
You run past it, you'll notice some of those small details of
what's around you. Because it might be that, you
know, you've what you've the root you're doing so often you
suddenly see a tree you've not seen before, you suddenly
noticing other bits. And if you start noticing those
around you, you start noticing what's going on in certainly as
well, how your breathing sounds, how your footfall sounds, how
your movement is. So yeah, it's just a real
privileged time, isn't it, to be out there.
Have you always been like that, Marcus, with the no technology
and no music or anything? With it on him, yeah, yeah, Oh
yeah. I remember years ago.
So going back-to-back, kind of 94 and 95, trying to do wrong
with headphones on, running along the canal in Leicester and
hating it because I didn't sense it was around me.
The the music was dictating my pace.
And yeah, I just felt like I was so enclosed and wasn't alert to
what was around me. But, you know, weirdly, when I'm
driving or when I take a dog for what kind of headphones on, I
listen to music and I listen to music so many other times.
I don't know, music is always in the background.
But running? Yeah, Just what about
yourselves? Do you run the music or
podcasts? Books.
For years I did, I was like yourself.
I didn't run with anything. Weirdly is since I've started
doing backyard ultras. I run listening to podcasts
because it slows me down. If I want to speed up, I'll
listen to music. In particular, kind of we
talking more kind of dance, metal, high beat, you know?
I've got a 15 hour playlist that the one I don't necessarily need
to like the music that's on the playlist.
It's just it's not allowed to be depressing because if I listen
to it during the race, I I do not want to be depressed.
So it's happy music. It can be metal, anything.
There's some of my 7 year old daughter's music on there.
But Taylor Swift? No.
But yeah, it's just as long as it doesn't get you down.
So no Nick Cave in there then? No.
Is. The Macarena on that playlist
like. No, and it's not going to be.
No. You put it on for your backyard
in future. That that, that that would make
you run too fast, and then that would just make you run away
from it. Get away.
But it does like near the start of the race when you want to
slow down, you listen to something that'll slow you down.
Then during the sort of middle 30 hours of the race, you're
calming things and then once time is getting shorter, you
want to speed up. So use it as a tool, not
necessarily need it. Yeah, that's a great way of
saying that, isn't it? What about yourself, Nikki?
I'm a bit strange in that way, as we all know anyway.
But for tempo runs and of all sessions, I like dance music
because it gets you moving. Longer runs depended on my
mindset. It'll be a podcast or something,
or this is a bit of a. It's a bit of a sad, honest
admission, but if I'm feeling a bit down or low, I'm very, very
privileged and fortunate to know a lot of the running community.
So I've got a lot of friends that do podcasts and if I, you
know, I don't have my favourites and a playlist so I'll just pop
that on. It'll be like running with
friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
It's that conversation in the background.
It's. Just that comforting.
It's when you speak to people, it's like having them on the
phone but you don't have to talk and you're just heading there
running stories again. And then for races, a lot of my
friends are actually there so I don't need to listen to
anything. Brilliant.
It's great. It's a wonderful how kind of
we're all so different and then we all have these little
different nuances that connect to us in different ways.
And yeah, I remember back it was at 2010 when we had that really
cold wintery spell and all the roads had frozen.
There was that amazing kind of aerial photograph of Scotland
completely covered in in snow. And I ended up training on a
treadmill for like a week in a race gym.
And I was trying to find the kind of right music to keep it
powered for doing. I could just do 10K on a
treadmill. That was as much as I could do.
But yeah, it was either kind of prodigy or pendulum, which is
brilliant that right, kind of one 45150 beats per minute and
then I could get going. But like, you know, if it was
too slight, like say my it was like, Oh no, I just can't.
I'm like so. Any Prodigy song in particular?
Smack my bitch up where invade invaders must die as well.
That's yeah. I'm going to get to see them in
April. They're over in April and
finally get to see them live. So it's it's taken over these
years to finally get to see them.
I had a privilege many, many years ago at Tea in the Park to
see Prodigy, James Brown and Foo Fighters all at the same
weekend. That it's a good lineup, isn't
it? That really is.
Yeah. I've never.
Yeah. It's been a long time since I've
been to a festival built Pilton Pot Festival as it used to be.
Good. Everybody's known as something
else now. Yeah.
Brilliant. Excellent luck at the time.
We've been chatting for ages. This is Marvel.
This episode has turned into an ultra marathon, and it's.
Not, not at all. This will be great for my next
long run. If you've made it this far, you
get a medal. Well, whether you're listening
and if you've got this far listeners, well done.
And if you're still running, keep going.
We only have a handful of questions left.
You'll be happy or not happy to know if you've still got another
three hours left to go on your SO to.
Short answers now please Marcus. You've done, as we've said, so
many incredible races already. Do you have any dream races or
adventures? Fastest known times on your
radar? On the bucket list.
Yeah, there's 2 has always been on my bucket list, one which I
think is well and truly about my grasp.
Now, unfortunately it's Western states, always wanted to do
Western states, it would have really suited me.
So that was always on my bucket list.
The Barclays have always been on that.
I've tried getting into it twice now been unsuccessful and partly
because it's the first time I sent ISA in too early.
I mean, you get an e-mail from Laz.
It's really exciting. It's like an e-mail from that.
Oh no. So yeah, those those two in the
in the states, I'd love to have a a go at and what I wish I'd
done years ago when I was a little bit younger or had the no
trial ability that does now is depend on way.
But John Kelly, annoyingly, is just destroyed that time.
Just absolutely, yeah. To get close to that, it's going
to take an exceptional performance.
And I was really fortunate to pace him from Westington to
Edel. And it was an absolute privilege
to see him. I mean, to see him destroy
himself, but to see if just a way he was able to keep pushing
and how deep he was able to go. Yeah, I was just, yeah, so
fortunate to see that I'd be part of.
But you know, I was telling him to slow down a little bit.
And rest but. Yeah.
And rest yeah, those would be. And there's, I mean what's
great, there's still so many races in the Uki haven't got
round to do, which I'd love to do.
I am meant to be doing the West High and Way race this summer,
but it does look like I might not be able to do it now,
unfortunately, because of some work commitments and that's
always been on the bucket list. There's a race to do.
But yeah, so much isn't there. It's just so fortunate, so many
great routes as well. I say FKTS, yeah.
It's just shame is so much in in choice in some respects because
it's just difficult to be able to fit them in and she said.
I haven't been fortunate to do so many amazing races and I'm so
grateful. And you said, just said there
that you had the privilege of running with John Kelly.
The the next question that might be the answer.
Who is there anybody that you would want to run with, either
alive or not, fictional or real? It's it's when you said about
what I think about what I'm running.
I have spent way too long thinking about this one
question. Absolutely.
If we was doing this with Jen, she would be laughing her socks
off because she would quite be very honest in saying that I run
with very few people. I mean, I used to have an
amazing training partner, lived in Leicester and we did a lot of
our training together. But now if you do kind of stalk,
be on stride, you'll see I am a very lonesome brother.
And I just enjoy that, that time on my own.
So I think if I was to run with somebody, it'd have to be
someone who maybe was either very quiet or was just allowed.
So I'm, I'm, I'm allowed two people, yeah.
You can have an energy one. Oh, I mean, it's like, well,
goodness, how long we got left. So if I'm like, OK, if I have
three people, I would have, I thought about this and so one if
it'd be really nice and quiet. So I'm not a Buddhist, but do
quite like a lot of Buddhist philosophy.
I'm really interested in philosophy.
And there's a brilliant Buddhist teacher who fortunately passed
away a couple of years ago, Thick Nat Nahan, who's written
loads of great books about mindfulness meditation.
And I think the privilege to go for a run with him, that'd be
more quite walking. It would just be quiet.
I just know there wouldn't be any conversation to be
brilliant. It would just be like just so
connected then just to sit and do some meditation with somebody
about him afterwards where if he did have something to share, it
would just, it would just be so beautiful because some of the
things he wrote, it's just, if you've now come across some of
his writing, I really recommend having a look at some of his
books. And yeah, and there's a
brilliant film about the Plum Village retreat centre he had in
France. So that would be why kind of
silent choice. If I could then go over somebody
more poetic, it would be Robert Frost, who's my favorite
American poet. And he wrote a lot of poetry
which is quite suitable for runners.
He wrote the great poem about kind of the road, less travel,
taking the path. And also one of his poems he
talks about saying I've got miles and miles to go before I
can sleep. And I think that's just a great
culture running kind of quote, isn't it?
So it'd be it'd be great to go from him and just his
description of landscapes as well.
Is is beautiful, like Mary Oliver, just so wonderful.
And then the third, if I really could get if he's then it has to
be a runner. You have to go run with a a
famous runner. I don't have you ever come
across the ghost runner John Tarrant.
So again, really good. Another good book
recommendation. John Tarrant.
He was running back in the kind of 40s and 50s and based in
Buxton. Well in Buxton in the Peak
District where he used to live. And unfortunately when he was 17
years old he was paid to a boxing match or won some money
in a boxing match, which then meant he was in class as a
professional athlete. So he then could not compete in
any road races. Wasn't air label.
So this is when there was a real Blazer brigade in that time.
And the reason why he was called the ghost runner was because
like Manchester Marathon or these other races when it's
quite low key, his brother would pull up near a start on the
moped and literally just drop him off as a race starts and he
would whip his jacket off and he would run the race.
And he was a phenomenal runner. He should have qualified well.
He ran time qualifying for the Olympics and then he get into
gets into ultra running and sets 100 mile record runs down in
South Africa, comrades and tubes.
It's a it's a wonderful book. Like old man.
He has several flaws, but you know, it's a real kind of story
of frustration to a degree, but also of what how he was able to
train and overcame those as a real story of resilience as
well. And, you know, pushing against
the societal norms on that kind of blaze brigade.
And then how even though we had all those struggles against him
and barriers, he overcame them and settle a record at 100 mile
and kind of was almost funded for his running for a period of
time as well. But yeah, check out the Ghost
Runner. It's a fabulous, brilliant book.
Highly recommend it. Be good on the audiobook if you
went into audiobooks on the runs as well.
So there we go. Yeah, sorry.
It's. Getting handed to my last no.
If you've not come across, yeah, I mean, it came out I think in
about 2018 or something. It came out pretty locked down.
It did win an award for kind of one of the best sports books of
that year. It's a good question, isn't it?
It's a really interesting question, isn't it, who you're
wrong with Because it's just, I mean, I've been so fortunate to
run with John Kelly, Steve Birkinshaw, Amy and Hall.
I've met Killian, yeah. He's just, yeah.
It's a tricky 1, isn't it really?
I can imagine Killian being quite a quiet training partner.
He's a very quiet, yeah, short for me, yeah.
So for the rest of the year and going forward, what is next for
what's coming up for you running wise?
So next next key race is Inverness Half Marathon back on
the halves, not yet cope with a full Yeah, it it completely
egotistical. It's a Scottish half marathon
championships again against defend my Vet 50 title.
So I'm going to go back there. To have a stab at that and then
go back to probably your your favorite race, Nikki the Devil
Highlands. Oh, fantastic.
Yeah, doing that at the end of April and then all being well,
hopefully the fling at the end of August.
Oh, you're. Not going to see well.
May get to see you. Yeah.
But you know, I've got a busy year with assignments and
dissertations. As part of my PhD, I'm having to
do a master's in education research, and that comes to an
end in the end of August, September time.
So that is going to be a bit more a priority than the running
to the degree. By the racing, I mean the
running's still going to need it to get that headspace and for me
to be able to write my conclusions and other parts of
assignments. But you know, This is why when
you know saying what's kind of bit of one of the most momentous
moments having that shift in my life to somebody go actually
this is far more important opportunity of being given to do
a PhD. Yeah, definitely.
To be going off doing like Rath again or some of the ultra.
We've got one question left on the question set, but I've I've
got two other ones written down and you, you just mentioned your
PhD. First question, what's your PhD
in? Right.
You strap yourself in. If you've got a running coach,
you've got somebody's a running coach.
Somebody had done was doing a master's in sports performance
coaching. What do you think that PhD might
be in? I, I shall be as well on this
too long folks, because you've been sat around for quite a long
time. So my PhD, it's in the card game
bridge. The theory behind it or.
No. So let me take that apart a
little bit more as well for you. So I'm looking at how the card
game bridge could be used in primary school education, which
is where it gets really interesting because I do have a
background in school chaplaincy, outdoor education as well.
So yeah, it wasn't like if you said you can go and do a PhD,
you know, what do you want to do it?
And it'll be like, yeah, kind of running or coaching, wouldn't
it? But it's a fully funded PhD at
the University of Sterling where I was already studying.
And to get a fully funded PhD and a really rare I sort of
advertised was I was doing my masters in sports when I was
coaching. It was like this could be a
great opportunity and yeah, kind of applied and even I don't have
a degree was successful and but really, really privileged that
I'm being in this opportunity to.
I think it probably suits to my slight eccentricity, doesn't it
without running to to be looking at bridging in in schools.
It's really absolutely, that's why there's a pack of cars on my
shelf behind me. But you know, to be able to have
what hopefully could be a real positive impact upon education.
You know, it's not that we want every school or every pupil to
be be playing bridge, but it will hopefully give us quality
data or evidence based data that we could say how certain
different activities, certain games, but especially maybe
certain aspects of bridge, because there's different
versions and types of bridge you can use, can just change to
classroom and how young people learn and somebody who didn't
enjoy school. And if I'd given the opportunity
to maybe play a card game or something different, it could
really change the the dynamics how young people learn.
And you have a great thing with bridge.
It's a collaborative game you play in a partnership to playing
at 4:00. So again, it's a different
dynamic of one-on-one. It's, you know, it's two against
2. So yeah, the the the more I
reflect on it, the more kind of, yeah, privileged and exciting.
I'm off next week to the Netherlands to Uter expert have
kind of four day seminar and conference to be fully bridge
immersed. But yeah, so if you see me back
posting it online, that's why I'm posting about Bridge online
now. I'm sure there's something about
game theory and how that improves or changes the way that
people think. I guess that is applying to
children as well. Question.
Can you apply that to runners? Yeah, and I think there is a
huge kind of crossover with like gamification and, and, and all
the different kind of mental skills involved in, in, in
playing bridge and running. Because even though you've, you
know, a game of bridge doesn't take very long, it's still a
very kind of small ecosystem with the same emotions,
interactions, winning, losing, gauging what is success, what
isn't successful. And it's the same when we're
running, you know, we can put all those similar sort of
expectations outcomes within, within running.
Same with kind of coaching, you know, you're trying to help
athletes overcome a problem or solve a problem or see somebody
doing in a new way or trying something different.
So I think, you know, there is, it's so wonderful blended.
I think it's one of the reasons why I got picked out the 46th of
an applicant who applied for, for the post because I, you
know, I bring that kind of coaching lens to the research
rather than somebody who's just an academic background.
So yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm still, well, including my early days,
still trying to find ways to explain my, my PhD.
I've got my head around my title, but at the moment I've
been writing a dissertation. We're using a very child
friendly version with student teachers at the university.
So yeah, it's interesting. It's different, and it's nice to
be doing something different than.
It definitely sounds interesting.
No, I'm genuinely my my wife's doing PhD and she's doing it in
soil physics. So what you're doing is is
interesting. I've got a bit more interaction
than this class. Remember that in soil.
And it's just, it's just just so how many years has she been
doing? She she's doing it part time so
she's on year 7. Oh wow, yeah, I'm so glad.
My, I've heard that. It must that that really is
needing resilience, isn't it? Yep, funding runs out in August
so it has to be done by then. She currently writing
dissertation up at the moment then.
Yep, right, talking about education, going right back to
the start of the podcast which is 2 hours ago.
Wow, sorry. Thanks.
No, don't, don't apologise. This is what's.
Happening to the traitors and everyone just text me what's
happening to the traitors. I thought that was going to be
your answer for what you were thinking about when you said you
were thinking about tonight. Like what's happening with
traitors with your? Mother, let's just qualify this.
We only got into the trades as well as it was a celebrity one
because the celebrity traders was funny.
We aren't really watching the current one.
It's just a little background. We don't until last year we
didn't have ATV. We only got ATV last year so we
could watch the darts, but that's another story.
If we start talking about darts, we'd be here for another hour.
The The gamification of Luke, Luke Littler.
And why are people booing him when he's doing well?
No, we're not getting into that. What, what, what?
What's the similarities between running and darts?
I tell you, I've got that one. I'm truly sussed out.
What? I only got into darts 3, we have
that. On the next episode.
Yeah, Gemma, Gemma, you have to get very fun with me and Gemma
anyway, sorry. No, the actual question was
right back at the start. You mentioned you had two
choices. You could either do sports
science or go to drama school. Yeah.
What happened at drama school? Oh.
I scratched that itch back in 2014 and 15.
By doing. Acting.
Tell us more. Oh my.
God, this could be another hour. So a friend of Jen's is an art
director in TV and I always had like this, yeah, desire to get
into acting and performing as if you wouldn't guess how long
you've been listening to this way.
And so I jokingly, why not jokingly, but said to Jen, can
you ask Phoebe if there's any work or essay work, sporting
artist work coming up on a programme?
And yeah, she got me on a three day job on Houdini and Doyle,
which was on ITV four I think with Stephen Magner and an
American actor. And I did 3 days on there.
And from there I got an agent straight away.
And that agent got me on, got me a really good walk on part on
Jericho, which was cut, which was hilarious.
Just really good part. It's a really good scene.
And went to sit and watch it. My kids going, hey, that's going
to be on TV. So we sat down ready to watch
this final episode. Here we go.
Here's the bits going to come. Hang on a second.
What? No, what?
No, no, this scene was meant to be in this bit here.
So I got cut like Toby Jones getting cut out of Notting Hill.
If you've ever heard that story, Toby Jones getting cut.
So yeah. And then from that one, I then
probably got one of my most memorable roles was getting in
Peaky Blinders and yeah, Season 3, Episode 2, I think playing
one of the Cossacks. It's the when the Russians get
involved, one of the Cossacks in the line of a big beard.
So I came back as well looking really mean.
I think it wasn't in the orgy scene, wasn't available for that
day of shooting. But then I'm down in the
basement with Tom Hardy as well when we go down into the
basement. So yeah.
And then I, I did kind of quite a few bit of, I started off
doing background work. I got a couple of featured
roles, had a name character on Brief Encounters playing Nigel
the hairdresser. I got to be on the Lowry stage
with National Ballet. He's a background artist.
And Jeff was like, what the hell have you put on your CV?
My agent contacted me, so yeah, no.
And then during that period I did apply for drama school in in
Manchester and got accepted to do a foundation course at drama
school. But again, I just weighed it up
and was like, I was busy doing sports therapy.
Busy. Yeah, I wasn't coaching full
time then because it I was doing sports therapy until maybe
kicked in and clinic had to close.
And acting is act as a real to be an actor you really have to
have a high degree of resilience because it's such an
unpredictable career. Yeah, I would go from casting to
casting and just not be successful.
I could just make a living out doing essay work, supporting
artist work, background stuff. But in the event you'd probably
get like 80 quid, £100 a day depending on the job.
So, yeah, I remember my last casting was to play Vincent van
Gogh, which interestingly, my first job of Houdini and Doyle,
the director kept calling me Vincent.
I was like, that's Marcus. I was like that Vincent,
honestly. Like I said to like the AD, I
was like, why does the director keep calling me Vincent?
This is can you look like Vincent?
Hang off. OK.
I had a bigger beard, then bigger beard, a bit more hair.
So yeah. So my last casting was to and I
was on pencil for it, which means so in in that industry,
being on pencil means you're kind of semi booked and you go
from pencil to being booked. But yeah, so I scratched the
itch. I did it.
I'm so glad you didn't say Crime Watch.
Yeah, I think my crime watch. No, I don't want me for that.
Yeah, it was such a laugh. It really was such a any
problem. It just it ruins how I watch TV
now as you know how all the shots are done and different
takes. I also spent too much time
watching the essays in the background to see what they're
doing because of what direction they would have been given or
how I've ever told to make fake conversations.
Yeah, it's quite a few programs I'd like in the background.
I was played Duke and Norfolk in Victoria at the coronation as
well. But yeah, picky blinders is 1
people would go. So you're a Peaky Blinders.
Yeah, that's me. And what, what episode was that
again to remind us? I mean, it's just. 2.
I think, yeah, don't hold me to it because what was really
funny, I hadn't watched Peaky Blinders till a couple of years
ago. I hadn't seen it.
So I was on it and chatting to Kitty and Murphy through that
music. In between text was sat down
chatting and I was like talking here.
It's like when I went to this is This is why it's going to be 3
hours longest. So so you know, when they say if
you go to a job, you blag it. You don't always tell the truth
if you get interviewed for something.
Yeah. So I got a really good casting
for a part in Emmerdale, which would have been like over
several episodes. We didn't have ATV.
It's it's a bit like the big Ghostbusters, isn't it?
If somebody asks is your regard, you say yes.
So they were asking me about what I watched on TV and
actually I don't have TV. Big mistake.
Big, big mistake. I should have been, Oh yeah, I
love Emmerdale. I should have all my homework.
Should have kind of clued myself up to the eyeballs on Emmerdale.
So I could have talked all about how much I like Emmerdale, a lot
of different characters and the storylines.
But no, I knew diddly squat. I just prepped the character for
I'm going in. This is all about the character
I'm going into play, kind of like a DJ or something.
But yeah, I was meant to tell you one, but yeah, I had so many
castings. That's hilarious.
We've just got to the point you like.
Yeah, just on a conveyor almost. So there you go.
There you go. Sorry.
The final question, yeah, but wait if.
You've made it this far. Thank you, dedication is
appreciated. You know what, I'm sure I hope
the listeners have enjoyed it as much as me.
Can I have it recording it because what an episode this
says it's been so good. Eyes we've had.
Lows we've had. Tears about boredom without
about tea break in this. I mean, this is going against
all EU. Well, no part of the EU are we
but all against kind of health and safety work regulations.
A tea break comes at the start. I know, but you seem like I've
got yeah, you see, Yeah, I've got ace of spades.
But it does say yeah. Are we allowed to swear on this
podcast? Yeah, you can swear.
On anyone it does say fucking ace mug and my cup.
Anyway, sorry, last question. Last question.
It's so serious as well. It's so serious and
philosophical and ending ending the podcast on a philosophical
note. Sensible face and I'm not
acting. What would you say to runners
who doubt themselves more than they should?
It's. A great question, isn't it?
And I think it's one we can. We've all experienced if we're
really honest. And as a coach it's something
which I have to work with. Yeah, almost all the athletes at
some point in their running career or running journey.
And and again, trying to distillate into such a short
easy answer isn't really doing the question justice as well
because there's so many circumstances, contexts that
that come into play. And you know, and also
recognising that, you know, doubt isn't, isn't a flaw, you
know, it's something that to be kind of listened to and to
understand. So, you know, don't, don't be
afraid if there is that, that doubt there and kind of maybe
lean into it, kind of learn where it's coming from.
OK, What, what's the, the genesis of, of this doubt?
And, and is it, is it worthy? And sometimes that doubt is
there because of uncertainty, because of the unknown.
And I think that's when we're planning and being organised,
controlling the things you can control helps.
So that that's, that's one thing to, to be mindful.
And, and then it's also kind of working on that, that self
belief. So setting up some process
goals, again, the things we can control, we're working on the
areas, yeah, which we we can. Deal with and letting go things
we can't. So certain things in a race
which we have no control over how we're actually going to
feel, how we're actually going to finish.
So worrying about those or doubt isn't is nothing you can deal.
You deal with that. So you have to methodology just
let that go. The other thing I sometimes get
my athletes to do when going up to a key race is to look at
their training they've been doing up to the event and
highlight three runs of sessions that went really well that that
really give them, you know, concrete evidence of how well
that training has gone. And it might be the run where
they made a really kind of smart decision or it might be 1 where
that comes to them. It really showed them that it's
going in the right direction or they're really near their
fuelling. But by choosing O3, it can kind
of just give you that right? Yeah, I can clearly see how well
the training has been going. So kind of that that's one of
the tools that I tend to use kind of with with my athletes
when they're in that kind of place of of self doubt.
And it's amazing how powerful athletes and will feedback on
that when they're them performing on the race.
And then the final thing is, as as well as this, you know,
starting to doubt themselves is trying to to not put too much
emphasis on the importance of it, But it's about having fun.
And and if we're having fun, then that should like be taken
away, not, you know, suffering and stuff like that, then that
that that should be should hopefully kind of be encouraged
that we're going to be doing, I think, which is kind of
enjoyable. And that should motivate us to
kind of to rise over that that doubt.
But yeah, it's it's interesting one.
And then last year I came across this quote, which I used a lot
now of athletes. And that is this is probably a
timely way of, of ending the, the podcast in, in some respects
in that app, being ready isn't a feeling.
Being ready is a decision. And that you have to make that
that decision ultimately. And so if you're kind of not
feeling ready or you've got that doubt, actually, you've got to
switch that round and go, you know, I'm ready in, you know,
training there. I've had hiccups.
They may have been blips along the way.
That's OK. It's rest.
It's important. No training block is ever kind
of 100% smooth. But yeah, that would be kind of
my, it's difficult to distill it in such a short answer.
You can almost a whole 2 hours, 3 hours on that.
Can you really? But that would be my hair.
Don't look for a feeling. Have that.
Have that decision that you are ready and that you're worthy to
be there as well. Well, Marcus, we, we might not
be in the EU anymore, unfortunately, but we, we do
have to stick to the European Human Rights Convention and we
have to let you get a break. We have to let these poor
listeners go, don't we? We've got to let them be
released and disconnect from their headphones.
Your. Teachings was if you're not
having fun, why you're doing it and we we can we kept this going
because we were having fun. You apologized.
There is no apology needed. Hopefully everybody's enjoyed it
as much as we have and we're at we're at the end end of the
race. So thank you again, Marcus.
Thank you Nikki for being Nikki and it's goodbye from me.
Thanks, Marcus. Thank you so much for having me.
I've really enjoyed it. It's yeah, it's been a wonderful
chat and good luck for both of you in your next ranges and
adventures. And thank you to all those
who've listened.