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[Music] Lydia odono welcome to my podcast oh thank you so much for having me it's an
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honor to be here actually yeah I feel like well you and I have been friends for such a long time now and I know
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we've been talking about having this conversation for a long time and I am very fleeting when I come to New Zealand
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so stoked we could finally make this work yeah it's been years in the making
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by the way you said we've been friends for a long time um yeah I was thinking
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about this when I was doing the research for this interview do do you know do you
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remember how we met embarrassingly I do it was probably like 200 N maybe I can't remember the year
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but I remember the event I'm just one want to match up stories to see if you've got the same yes so uh myself and
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my sister decided to enter a competition on the edge to win a mini and uh we knew
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that there would be a ton of people putting themselves forward to win the mini and I mean you win a mini which is
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worth I don't know like 40 or 50 Grand or something so it's like a decent price
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uh and so we decided to write in our submission that we would live in the mini which you had to live in the mini
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for like 3 or 4 days um that we would do it in our bikinis which I am somewhat embarrassed about
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this now my sister would be extremely embarrassed we've been talking about this I didn't remember I didn't remember
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you guys were in your bikini I remember the mini promo but I I didn't remember
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that aspect of it I think we tried to get like an upper hand on people and for some reason we thought being in our
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bikinis would do that but like now is this like very strong feminist I'm like
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we should not have done that that's all right but it's empowering though isn't
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it as a feminist like a yeah to embrace yourself yeah that's cool now but I remember um coming down and U meeting
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all the contestants cuz I think there was like four maybe four or five groups of two that were living in minis like
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little mini teams um and and we met and um you mentioned your run and I was like
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oh cool like what do you do you're like 10 10,000 M or whatever and I was like
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oh what sort of time do you do cuz I think I at that time I was maybe like 45 minutes 40ish minutes for 10K and you
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were like 33 minutes or something oh probably 35 maybe straight away I was like oh [ __ ] this chick's
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legit I remember like the the hardest part of the entire challenge was not being able to run I just sit in that
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mini for 3 or 4 days straight and like I'm you know nothing's really changed I
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can't sit still yeah so you've been um you've been like a crazy runner for a long time now
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um I I've so who do you do interviews and you say it's um like your identity
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is not tied up in it but it's kind of is in a way as it's mine I feel your
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identity I think can be whatever people think of it so I'm going to set my own
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identity but I feel like people probably have an idea of who I am based off what
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they see or hear of me and so I think definitely for other people they would see me as you know I'll L A that Runner
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um whereas myself I think I am I'd like to think I'm a lot more than just one
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who goes out and puts One Foot In Front of the other yeah I think it's an interesting one and I actually listened
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to the conversation you had with LV mtag and she's very similar around just keeping your identity you know away from
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Sport and being a person before you are an athlete I think is really important there's just so many dangers that come
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into play if you get too tied up in competitive Sport and you don't necessarily have a control of the
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outcome and so if you you know think you are a particular person and that you have to be achieving particular things
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to be that person if those things don't come true then you do lose your identity
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and you lose who you are and your self worth and I've been there and it's
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pretty hard to work through that and so yeah I think for me now it's just like I
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love running and everything I do is very much based on the sport of running but I
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also am someone away from the sport as well yeah I feel um quite similar similar to
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you uh obviously a lot slower Pace umow but I um I I love running and I love what it's given to me from a physical
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perspective and a mental perspective but the past um year 18 months I've had knee
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issues and I've had periods where I've been unable to run all together and I've
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had to sort of re-evaluate um things and it's um initially it's a terrifying
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Prospect thinking I may never better run again and this is a part of who I am and
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I'm a big ad for you what it's done for me but you do have to accept that it's
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it's a good thing and it's something that can be taken away definitely and
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honestly those challenging times and some of the hardest times that I've had
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with the sport have been some of the best for my relationship with the sport they've really like taught me who I am
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away from running and what running means to me and changed my perspective towards
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yeah towards running as well so I've definitely gone through periods of my life where I haven't been able to run or
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I've been chasing a mess of go and haven't got there and then had to go through kind of like this turmoil of
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like who am I away from it away from all these results and running and you we all
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like need to kind of go to those depths to figure out who we are cuz life shouldn't be about like results you know
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um there's so much more to life so I try to inspire other people to find themselves away from running too but
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running can help you get there but it shouldn't be your kind of Soul Thing m
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yeah uh your Instagram's amazing um and uh we're recording this a couple of days
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after the um Ro room marathon where you finished um Second Place yeah was second
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place it was actually national champs and that was like a massive reason well one of the reasons why I did it um was
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to compete in a national race which I hadn't done in probably like four or five years a long time so uh yeah it was
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cool to get out there and run and be here in Alo racing against other people so I love your caption you said um it's
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it's um it's not a personal best time but you had a personal best time which
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um I loved I thought that's really cool and um there'll be a lot of people that
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that listening to this that don't run or don't really understand running times
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but um just for a little perspective you broke three hours which is something I've done once
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I cool thanks J um I I I TR I even wrote it wrote a book about this my quest to break 3 hours so this was you having a
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shitty day out and you still managed to break 3 hours but I I love that post I love that post and I love the phrasing
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of it I thought that was really cool oh I appreciate it I feel like I try to be super aware of
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my um ability in running and try not to you know downplay the result like I I did run sub three I don't actually know
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the final time um and I got second place and that's amazing and I am incredibly
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proud of that um but when I compare myself to myself and what I know is achievable and what I have achieved
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before it's tough like it is it's it is tough to kind of be in that position be
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like I want to be running faster and I know that I can and I didn't reach my
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potential on that day but trying to find the middle ground of just accepting that
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being proud of where I am and like looking ahead and continuing to push I think is really important for me so
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yeah it's uh it's a hard one because I am super proud of it and anyone running
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a marathon anyone running at all is like super impressive it's it's such an
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amazing feat um so not downplaying that but also kind of like pushing to the next book yeah there's a little bit of
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disappointment there there is yeah there is naturally I think um cuz how how many
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marathons have you done now what what do you reckon 20 30 n no no no way like maybe 10 yeah or 11 yeah okay we we're
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talking yeah we're talking like formal official events but it's worth pointing
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out you do some Long training runs yeah I probably would have done a lot of marathons and training as well uh so in
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a training block towards Marathon I wouldn't really get up to 42k maybe maybe once but most of the time I'll get
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up to like 38 39 at the most um but there have been a few 40 plusk long runs and yeah there's a few others like I did
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an ultra last year so you can maybe take that as as a marathon but yeah I have raced 10 or 11 but I'm like pretty
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particular about the races that I do and so that those 10 or so have been spread
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out over the last nearly 10 years um which means I'm really only running a marathon maybe once a year but there's
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actually been gaps there where I haven't run a marathon for a few years and then
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I'd like load two or three marathons up into one one year so uh yeah I feel like
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I fluctuate a lot when it comes to the marathon but I love all running like 5Ks get me on the track like I love that
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love 10K half marathon's probably my more favorite distance um but the marathon is just such a challenge and
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it's freaking hard like it's so tough um which I do love the pancave yeah you must do even with the
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training that some that you do like you do love the pain cave like just your speed workouts and stuff like it's um
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it's exhausting do you do you ever run run n as without a watch uh uh I thought
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you meant something else that's what I ask all feminist do I run without a watch no I I
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love my watch I run with it all the time I run with my phone pretty much all the
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time un least I'm doing like a track workout but I um I'm not someone who gets super
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consumed by the data and I laugh with my best friend Esther who is someone who has extreme she either loves the data
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and will dive into it and like and analyze every workout or not wear a watch and not not even like collect the
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data whereas I will wear a watch I'll look at my runs I'll look at my Paces
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while I'm running I'll look at my total distance but I'll never go back and look
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at that run ever again uh which is funny I just don't get too consumed by it I
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just love training I love running I love how it makes me feel and uh I just also
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trust the process and know that if I'm doing the work then I'm going to get to
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where I want to go so no I'm prettyy much wearing a watch all the time yeah same I'm a I'm a straa [ __ ]
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boy that's funny I I uh have some quarms with straa but uh I can understand why
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people love it but I also don't think it's been built for woman oh real yeah
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why what do you mean um I think a lot of Fitness platforms have been very much been built by for men by men uh and
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particularly straver has been built on competition in comparison and I think a lot of men
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not to say women don't like it but a lot of men thrive in that environment of
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competition and comparison whereas women women not so much uh women are there to support each other and they
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want to feel supported but when it comes to a platform like straa uh we're constantly
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being compared to each other and so being put in a position where you're layering on top of that the ability to
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compare yourself after others I think it can be quite dangerous so I know for a fact when I was on straa for a very
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brief time I had so many women looking at my workouts looking at my runs my mileage and comparing themselves to what
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I was doing and then they thought if they could wanted to get to where I was they needed to do what I was doing
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without the context of like I'd been running my entire life and I've like
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gradually Built My mileage up and I've done all the right things to be able to
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condition my body to get here so if you're someone who's running running for
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2 years and you see what I'm doing don't go and do what I do because you will
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probably get injured or at the very least you'll get burnt out and so for me
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I'm just like yeah I'm here to support woman and I want to empower them and
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Inspire them to do what is right for them to get to where they want to go but like just don't compare yourself to me
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so I feel like with driver it's kind of just a tool to to do that to compare one
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another and I'm just not really here for it yeah I I think with running in with
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life like comparison it's just um it's not a good thing the only thing you yeah
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I've even got family members cuz on my mom's side of the family it's there's
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she's one of 14 and there's a lot of runners in the family and they're all
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very competitive and I've got like one of my uncles Uncle John he's like in a
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70s now he did a marathon in like the 1970s or the 1980s this is like pre-at pre- internet and apparently he did like
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a 241 and he he'll say to me 241 that's the that's the time to beat that's the
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family record and I'll laugh it off but I don't give a [ __ ] yeah I I what would
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it what would it mean to me if I broke that time I'm still 30 30 minutes behind
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the world's best yeah there still my best time ever was 2 hours 57 in Tokyo I
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I don't think I even made the top thousand yeah it's crazy isn't it so you
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it's dumb compare compare yourself to anyone else is dumb yeah exactly hang on
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o stop it sorry Kanye is being extra annoying yeah it's just it's just a it's
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dangerous game and you've um yeah you've you've got sort of muscle memory from
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years and years of doing this like you can you can handle what are you do on a big week at the moment I'm probably
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running like 120 to 130 which sounds like KS that is that sounds like a lot of KS and it is a lot of training but to
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where I used to be before I had this full-time job that takes a lot of my time I was running up to like 160 to
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170k so I have stripped my training back quite a lot but I'm just trying to be as
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realistic as possible and just do what is achievable and enough for me to continue to make progress but not burn
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myself to the ground yeah 170k is it's like 100 miles in a week that's massive
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that's huge by anyone's measure it's a lot of running um and another thing I've
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noticed about your Instagram you hardly ever me mention your your finishing times or anything like that yeah I don't
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know I why is that is that conscious it is I'm really proud of my times and I'm
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proud of what I've been able to achieve in my running career and I will continue
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to be proud proud of it but I also don't think again it's it's super helpful for
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me to just like be pushing those times in front of people and I want to feel like I can be relatable to women
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particularly like I really want women to feel like I'm one of them and I am one
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of them and I am on my own running journey and I want wom to feel like we're on that together and so yeah
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constantly talking about my own times and my own splits I feel like that can be intimidating to a lot of people and
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so I just don't think it's like that interesting either I just feel like
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we're all on our own Journeys and whether you're running a seven minute k
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or a 32 minute K like who really cares you know I I love that I love that so much yeah because your times your times
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are lightning quick um but then if say Bridget Cy sees your times she's going
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to think you're slow you know exactly there's always going to be someone
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faster and someone slower it just there's a lot of people faster than me um okay said let's go all the way back
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so you're from um toonga Mount monoi from toonga yeah grew up in toonga so and you run as a kid as a kid you like
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soccer dancing and running dancing was like kind of my first love I started dancing when I was like three years old
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loved ballet I think ballet in particular taught me a lot about discipline and hard work and I just
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thrived in that really competitive dancing environment and so I did that from a pretty young age and and then I
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found running when I was about seven so I started doing Athletics um back home Ina from the ages of seven and loved it
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also I was just a hyper competitive kid I think I just wanted to like give everything my all and see where it could
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take me and so once I got to high school I actually met a woman called Rosemary Wright who was a PE teacher at high
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school but also a commonwealth games 800 meter Champion she ran for Scotland I think um and she was just an amazing
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coach she like took me under her Wing at the ages of about 12 maybe even slightly
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earlier and just like taught me so much about running and like the importance of
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enjoying the sport especially as a young girl like not putting too much pressure
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on me I remember her always saying to me no one remembers a young athlete like wait till you're a little bit older and
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just like go out there and have fun with it and so at that time in the early 2000s most high schools didn't have
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running groups and so we were one of the only groups in New Zealand that had like
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a high school running team and so it was so cool because we just hung out with our friends we'd go after school go to
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the supermarket buy this huge bag of lollies like consume all these lollies go to training and have the worst
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stomach but it was just so fun because you with your mates and you didn't really think about the running at all
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and then we'd go to Nationals and none of us would ever win national titles but
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we would win the national medals because cuz we had just had such a solid team so
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it always felt like we were like making some really like massive gains and and we were getting that satisfaction of
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like winning but winning as a team and so yeah she just instilled so many values that I still hold with myself
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today and what we do it Fe me is very much about what she taught me around like sustainability in the sport and
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enjoying the process and having fun with it and like the the race is just the cherry on top you know and so I was very
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lucky to have her and and through my high school I ended up pulling away from dancing cuz I just couldn't do both um
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but I did play football I was terrible I literally played because I because I could run um but yeah she
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taught me just so much and I'm just so grateful to have had her as a coach because I was just so um and still am
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like dedicated to success that I think I would have done some pretty silly things
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if I didn't have her guidance at that time so I'm pretty pretty lucky to have
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had that experience how do you mean silly things I think I probably would have trained way harder than what I was
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training at the time I would have tried to win national titles at high school which awesome to do but as she said no
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one remembers the young athletes like patience is so key to being a successful senior athlete and so yeah I just so she
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H me held me back so much and then it wasn't until like my late teenage years
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that I actually started to train a lot harder and then by the age of 19 I won my first national title and that was
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like a moment for me to understand that I have huge potential in the sport if I do all the right things and I think
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that's where I really just like got hooked into being a a competitive Runner
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and um haven't really looked back so were you was there some natural Talent there I think look I think my natural
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Talent was probably more so in my mind than in my body what does that mean I think I have a pretty competitive mind
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and I think I'm pretty like dedicated to get the job done whereas I think uh I
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don't know I'm I talk about this quite often around like the balance of natural
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ability and not having that and learning the tools that you need to have to become successful in whatever you do and
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I think it's way better to not have a natural ability and to actually work to
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get to where you want to go because you learn the things that matter like dedication and how to work hard and to
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make sacrifices like you learn all of that through process whereas when you're
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naturally talented you just see the success for what it is but you don't actually have to do the work to get
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there and as an a senior athlete in whatever sport uh hard work is going to take you way further than natural
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ability so I'm kind of stoked that I didn't have I definitely had some I
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don't think I had like if you look at some of the athletes there are some pretty yeah I'm I'm a sucker for a good
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quote in this one I really like it um hard work beats Talent when Talent doesn't work hard exactly and it's one
00:21:01
thing I've found doing this this podcast and um I've had so many like high
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Achievers and high performers on hard work is the only cheat code there is yeah um you look at the absolute best
00:21:10
like the guys in the NBA like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan um they had natural talent but it was matched with a
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work ethic like no other actually I know you're good friends with um Jimma mcco
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she's one of your besties and yeah Richie is another example of that is he is a guy that works his [ __ ] ass off
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definitely and look where he's got to so like it is it is it's all about hard
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work there is no check codes you just kind of have to put your head down and stay focused and and be patient that's
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the biggest thing with running is like patience it takes so long to Peak as a runner um so you can't just like go out
00:21:44
and train really hard for six months and think you think you're going to be incredible it takes years and years they
00:21:50
say eight years to reach your Peak as a runner oh no I've been going way longer
00:21:54
than eight years yes iach definely are you what are you 30 33 33 so are you do you think you're at the Apex now you're
00:22:03
still getting better or you feel like you're sort of at that Plateau point now
00:22:07
I think for me I through 27 to 20 uh 2017 to 2020 2ish my soul Focus became running and I saw the progress I made
00:22:22
when I purely just focused on training and racing and it was awesome to see all the PBS that I
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broke I think within 18 months I broke every PB from my 5K to the marathon and there was many other things that led to
00:22:37
that point but uh I don't think I was satisfied I don't think i' got to a place where I was like
00:22:45
completely satisfied in myself not myself as an athlete I think I was definitely proud of what I'd done but I
00:22:52
just felt like there was something missing you know like I just don't think that running competitive running as a
00:22:59
professional athlete completely fills my cup and so since then and and building for me
00:23:07
which I'm sure we'll talk about has um taken a lot of my focus away from
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training and hence why my training has dropped down my KS have dropped down but it's just not my priority anymore and I
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think I know if I stripped everything back and just ran I don't think I've
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reached my complete potential I think I could run a lot faster but is that what I want to do probably really not right
00:23:29
now I feel like I'm having a way bigger impact in the work that I do right now
00:23:32
than being a a sole athlete um and so yeah who knows maybe I run faster than I run in the future that would be epic to
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run just as fast and to be doing and leading this company that we're building
00:23:47
and to to have both would be amazing but I just don't know if it's possible yes
00:23:51
one thing I love and um I suppose some of this is sort of ego based but you see you see some athletes and when they when
00:23:58
when they're no longer winning or they're no longer running the best times
00:24:01
that's that they they throw it away um and then you see someone like um slightly different sport but um Cameron
00:24:06
Brown who's I think 52 53 now he's no longer winning anymore but he still
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loves it yeah still trains like a Savage he's he's just getting out there and
00:24:15
doing it I think that's really awesome I feel like you'll be the same you just
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like like running for the for the for the for the movement aspect and the act of getting out there and doing it yeah
00:24:24
there's so many things that running has given me which is like yeah I guess connection to others is a big thing like
00:24:30
the friendships that I've been able to build through this water of running like
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it's changed my life and and it's given me my career and it's given me my
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confidence and so much like it is so much more about that than getting to finish lines and winning gold medals for
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me and everybody's different there are athletes out there who just want to chase gold medals and that's awesome for
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them but it isn't really why I do it I think the results are a on top and it
00:24:55
would be nice to win races again but I also so I'm just like will always be grateful to the sport and like just
00:25:03
stoked that I can be doing it I don't know I think I've always said growing up
00:25:06
like if I wake up one day and completely hate running I'll just stop you know but
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you do see some athletes who hate their sport but they just do it because they want to be the best and I just can't
00:25:16
imagine living like that yeah yeah yeah yeah it's funny that isn't it um okay so
00:25:22
so yeah so you're at school you're running you're good but not great
00:25:27
necessarily um you must be okay though because then you get a scholarship you leave school and you get a US
00:25:32
scholarship in Texas I do yes and that's a that's a terrible experience so you're
00:25:36
1 17 171 18 you go to Texas what happens there yeah so when I over to America um
00:25:43
I was like super excited to go over to the US on a scholarship because I just was yeah a real upand Go kid and I just
00:25:50
wanted to like try different experiences and so I got the scholarship to a place
00:25:55
in Texas and I just was super unaware super naive of like what I was going into I think my
00:26:03
parents probably were too and I kind of just like got on a Plane by myself went to the other side of the world and it
00:26:12
was just a massive shock I'd gone from this incredible coach that I was telling
00:26:16
you about Rosemary right who was just like so supportive was there for me wanted me to just like have fun and
00:26:23
there was no pressure to this intense environment the NCAA system is just like hyper intense it's all about competition
00:26:31
and who's winning your coaches uh essentially there and getting paid if the team is winning so there's pressure
00:26:38
on them and so I got put into that environment and my entire education at University was based on my running
00:26:47
training and so you'll find this funny but one of the classes that I got put
00:26:51
into was called Walking for Fitness so because it worked in my schedule I would go to class and would walk
00:27:00
around an inside track for an hour but that was just like did you pass you passed that class look I don't think
00:27:07
I've gave it enough time because I left pretty quick but um I would like to think I'd pass that one but yeah it was
00:27:13
just like my education to me was important and I wasn't getting it there and then the environment was not great
00:27:18
for me and I was home cced the the culture in Texas is so different to what we experien in New Zealand and that was
00:27:28
the biggest probably the biggest thing that turned me away from being there was just
00:27:34
like we're so lucky an out o like we have such an amazing country and it's um
00:27:40
the people are beautiful and everyone is like kind to each other and over there it just wasn't like that at all and as a
00:27:47
17year old it was just really eye opening and so yeah I can't imagine the level of homesickness um some sure some
00:27:56
people would thrive in that environment though right I think some people would I
00:28:00
think if I um I don't know I I want I want to say if I hadn't had such an
00:28:05
amazing High School experience maybe I would have gone more prepared into that environment but because I didn't have
00:28:10
that and then I came back and I was like I came back from to New Zealand after about six weeks and I was like I don't
00:28:16
want to run like that was horrific I don't if that's what running and competitive running is like I don't want
00:28:22
to do that so I actually ended up giving up running for about a year after that so you just lost the love temporarily
00:28:28
I think I lost the motivation to be an athlete because I had experienced what the toxic side of being an athlete looks
00:28:37
like and um my coach what do what do you mean toxic like how my coach over there
00:28:44
was just incredibly intense and I remember one training session after we had raced on the Saturday and we're
00:28:50
going out for a long run on a Sunday and she she cried when we got back from training because we hadn't run fast
00:28:57
enough on the long run which is as a coach that is passionate though you can't you can't
00:29:05
argue with imp passent I could never as a coach never imagine okay maybe if you're upset about
00:29:12
the training go and have your moment but I remember it being quite like obvious that she'd been upset about it so there
00:29:18
was that and there were other things I knew a boy in the team had a stress fracture or multiple stress fractures
00:29:23
and he was being made to run to make up numbers and just things that didn't sit
00:29:28
well with me at all so you you I mean under the 2024 lens that's that's pretty
00:29:32
bad even under at the time you thought okay this is not no no even at the time I was 17 and like I was also aware of um
00:29:42
what was going on amongst the woman in the team which yeah I guess I'm kind of
00:29:46
proud that I could pick this out at that time because it's everything we talk
00:29:50
about it Fe now but every woman by me pretty much were suffering disordered eating behaviors and it was very obvious
00:29:57
and they were this is not the fault of their own unfortunately it's super common amongst our sport but um they
00:30:05
were all suffering and no one was stepping up or doing anything about it and I as a 17-year-old I had never
00:30:11
experienced any of it I was just like this is not healthy and not what running should be about what what do you mean
00:30:16
like they were watching their calorie intake or they we had there was a woman on our te who was anorexic and um we
00:30:23
would go to the dining hall sounds so American but we'd go to these dining Halls at lunchtime and the girls would
00:30:28
all get salads and the boys would all be eating pizzas and I'm like I want the
00:30:32
pizza right yeah uh and I think that was like probably one of my kind of first experiences um around seeing the
00:30:41
pressure that female athletes get put under um as competitive athletes but also we know
00:30:48
now it's not just competitive athletes that are suffering which is sad but yeah
00:30:52
yeah it's um it was yeah eye opening to say the least and I escaped there as
00:30:56
soon as I could yeah six weeks six weeks got I can't imagine how homesick you're
00:31:00
very young as well at that point weren you I was I was young um I think I was a youngest of three and I think I was I
00:31:08
want to say quite independent and like doing my own thing but it was um now I look back as a 17 I was like damn what
00:31:14
was I thinking so young um so then you come back and you quit running for a while is this where
00:31:20
you have your party girlly era how how much fun was that what was L odonnell the party girl like um were you
00:31:28
naturally talented or hard work at it I I was neither no it's funny because you could
00:31:36
call it like a party girl ER era I definitely I quit running I wasn't doing a heck of a lot I lived down the mount I
00:31:43
was um yeah drinking quite a lot I was doing drugs I was not in a good mental space at all it's probably one of the
00:31:51
worst mental spaces I've been in my life and I actually haven't talked about this
00:31:55
very much before but yeah I wasn't in a healthy place I was not moving my body
00:32:01
and I just had no idea who I was and I think a lot of teenagers go through that process of trying to figure out who they
00:32:08
are what they want to do with their lives there's so much pressure as a late
00:32:12
team to figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life and that's
00:32:17
I think incredibly difficult to do and so I just didn't know and I lost myself
00:32:23
for a while I was on a pretty toxic relationship and things weren't really working for me at the time and so yeah
00:32:31
after about 12 months it was running that like pulled me back on track came back to it yeah you said do you think
00:32:38
your your mental health issues were sort of um like bought on or compounded compounded by the alcohol and and drug
00:32:45
use or or do you think um you started taking the alcohol and drugs to you know trying to escape feeling [ __ ] I don't
00:32:51
know I think I was just like a teen exploring what life was about and um yeah I'm super like super grateful that
00:33:02
I had experienced a really like healthy life where I felt confident in my body through growing up as a as an athlete
00:33:09
because that was what I missed and that's what I craved and and I firsthand witnessed and have witnessed throughout
00:33:18
my life addiction pretty severely and um yeah it's like have you heard friends
00:33:24
family uh my sister yeah really is she right now or is she still she is uh no no so me and her grew up like really
00:33:34
close we were um best friends she's only about 12 13 months older than me so like
00:33:40
super close in age and pretty similar like personalities as young kids and grew up playing sport together and
00:33:47
dancing and running and everything and um yeah about the age of 12 13 like I was starting to like figure out myself
00:33:54
as an athlete and started kind of taking that path with with my coach at high school and she just took the complete
00:34:01
opposite path and yeah she just like have hasn't been able to get off that path unfortunately and it's like pretty
00:34:10
um hard to think about because of the opportunities that we were both given and I said yes to these opportunities
00:34:19
and she said yes to these and it's just completely you know chalk and cheese
00:34:25
like taking us down different yeah Journeys and yeah it's um it's been pretty tough for my family to go through
00:34:33
it and I think that's what's affected me the most is just seeing like what my
00:34:36
parents have gone through to be able to support her through it and and uh yeah I
00:34:42
I guess for me it's just sport that saved my life and that's why I think I'm
00:34:46
so passionate about getting young women but all women also into Sport and into running because it it literally saved me
00:34:55
and it's given me this incredible life and I look at my sister who I don't have
00:35:00
a heck of a lot to do with now but I I look at her and I'm like if if only she
00:35:04
was like yeah she would she took those opportunities that I took or said yes to the things that I said yes to would have
00:35:11
changed who she is so I suppose um I mean it's never too late to turn things around so she's obviously like a
00:35:19
year older than you so she's 35 or whatever so and the big scheme of an entire life it's still still young so
00:35:24
she could turn it around yeah I mean ideally that would be incredible but I also know how unlikely it can
00:35:35
be when people are addicted to opiates it's it's pretty severe and it's pretty
00:35:40
hard to get off that once you're on it so um one day she might find running you
00:35:46
never know but uh for now it's just kind of like yeah accepting what has been I
00:35:51
mean there's a lot of people that do like there's a I know there's an
00:35:53
organization called speed freaks um I've seen them yeah which um you know you get
00:35:58
people that were addicted to one thing and they replace it with another addiction to distance running you know
00:36:02
there's a lot there are like a lot of reformed um yeah people that had drug issues that gravitate towards the pain
00:36:08
of running I suppose it's um you chasing that cheap dopamine versus you know yeah
00:36:12
chasing the um the hard earn dipine which you get from running yeah it's funny I think I saw a quote one time and
00:36:18
it said something like um when you take drugs you feel great in the moment and then [ __ ] afterwards but when you run
00:36:23
you feel [ __ ] in the moment but great afterwards and I think I know which one one yeah 100% it's funny that it's like
00:36:31
ice baths are you are you still in the ice bath Buzz or look uh not so much I'm
00:36:36
a BG WM in the car but I tried to every now and then I tried to do a ice bath but I wouldn't say it's the thing that I
00:36:42
do yeah that's so hard but they feel it's amazing though yeah it's like and
00:36:47
and you feel just electric for hours afterwards it's so good it is it's a bit
00:36:50
of a hit yeah I I should do it more often that okay so you you you um have your party G or your deil for a little
00:36:57
bit and then you come back to running um New York Marathon was that your first one in 2018 no it wasn't actually my
00:37:06
first marathon was in 2015 and that was mbour Marathon so between the ages of like 20 to 25 I was running a lot of 5K
00:37:14
10K and half marathons and then by the age of 25 I I can't really remember what
00:37:19
it was um why I decided to do the marathon I think my coach was kind of like I was running somewhat f in the
00:37:28
shorter distances but I think he could maybe see this potential that I could have in the longer distances and so yeah
00:37:33
I signed up to Marin marathon with just like so much naivity I had no idea what I was doing and there's so much Beauty
00:37:41
in that particularly in the marathon like the Beauty and the ignorance yeah like just not knowing what to expect how
00:37:48
much it's going to hurt I just remember last week going into I I was terrified
00:37:54
like I was genuinely so scared of the pain that was going to come because I knew exactly how much it hurt whereas
00:38:00
that first marathon I was just like cool I just get to go and run around Melbourne like that'll be fun and it's
00:38:06
the best Marathon I've ever had it felt so amazing I'd never really got to that
00:38:12
point of heading walls or feeling like incredible pain and yeah I ended up getting second which was just I think a
00:38:20
shock to everybody and ran a PB that I didn't break for another about five or
00:38:25
six years after so yeah it was an amazing race and I think um it definitely that was my first like moment
00:38:33
of falling in love with the marathon and then from there I've just kind of continued to chase that high which I
00:38:39
just have not had again like the same as your sister but way more noble yeah um yeah it's funny CU I suppose you do your
00:38:47
first one you've got nothing to compare it to so yeah you say you didn't beat
00:38:50
that time for another few years or whatever I suppose you do that first one then you're like oh that's that's I can
00:38:55
do that again I can do that better um and it's um you need so much to go right
00:39:01
so much to go right and I think I don't know exactly but I think every marathon
00:39:06
after that well the next six marathons I ran between 239 and 240 like six times or something which I think was similar
00:39:14
to you did you run like around the same time just over and over and over oh yeah
00:39:18
yeah you're way slower so like 3 310 to 3 set of 15 yeah yeah but you just kind
00:39:23
of repeat the same such a close time for marathon after marathon and you're like
00:39:29
I like I know I can take time off this and I mean my PB now is only 238 so it's
00:39:34
only like a minute faster than what I ran back in 2015 but it is um it's making progress so yeah by the way for
00:39:44
any um sort of non-runners or people that don't sort of have a perspective of
00:39:49
time that are listening to this or watching this so to do if you do a 2hour 48 marathon it's lightning [ __ ] quick
00:39:55
it basically means you're running 4E km pace for 42 km so 238 what's that like 3
00:40:02
minutes 45 per km I think so so next time you're on a treadmill in the gym or
00:40:07
somewhere you try doing 1 kilm at 345 that is quick yeah that is quick yeah here's me downplaying it again yeah and
00:40:18
it's it's running quick for a long time as well yeah it is it is but uh I can
00:40:23
see why you're nervous at the start cuz it's going to yeah it's going to hurt
00:40:26
but it's going to be for most people you know like it's all relative to like
00:40:30
where you're at in your journey but um it's uh it's a pretty incredible feeling
00:40:34
when you can hold such pace for such a long time yeah so yeah so the the new Marathon 2018 so that wasn't um wasn't
00:40:41
even a personal be or anything but you did really well you finished like 20th yeah 20th and U the New York marathon's
00:40:47
exceptional so I've done I've done New York and I was just in a Carell group
00:40:52
like you know people running between 3 hours and 3 hours 30 say so were you to to run 20th were you in like the elite
00:40:58
group at the start no so I was actually in the sub Elite Group which I'm so stoked that I was because the elite
00:41:06
woman left maybe like half an hour before the sub Elites and the sub Elites actually started with the elite men and
00:41:14
everyone else within that would have group would have been like three hours maybe and so we were right at the front
00:41:22
and the first mile or so you run from Sten Island over to Brooklyn and you cross the bridge and I was right out the
00:41:30
front so I pretty much LED like thousands and thousands of people over that bridge and I just
00:41:36
remember running across the bridge and looking up and the sun was rising and then there was thousands of people
00:41:42
behind me and it was just like a very surreal moment I like am someone who time stamps and I try and like imprint
00:41:50
memories because I have got a terrible memory so I have to like force myself to remember things and that was a moment
00:41:56
where I was like do not forget this moment forever because this is insane and that entire race was just Next Level
00:42:04
there was nothing in the world like it I had the best time out there it was just
00:42:08
like a a party on the streets the millions of people that come out and support you so much energy you get to
00:42:14
see so many different things it's a tough course like it's a really hard
00:42:18
course as you would know but uh yeah like it was definitely my my favorite Marathon today um and I I love to do it
00:42:27
again one day but yeah it's a it's a pretty tough one to get into it's
00:42:31
incredible a I I remember that bridge as well at the beginning um different experience to you but it was a windy
00:42:37
year that I did it and all you could hear was the slapping of people's shoes
00:42:41
on the on the ground which is a just an incredible sound when there's like 40 or
00:42:45
50,000 people doing that and um just the sound of numbers flapping on people's
00:42:49
shirts yeah and the faint the faint soundtrack of Frank SN with New York New York playing in the background and some
00:42:56
some water cannons and the the water below the bridge it's just magical it is
00:43:00
magical and you've just done rot on the weekend as we established it's quite
00:43:03
different like you do a New Zealand Marathon you might get a couple of people out with a god dad side but in
00:43:08
New York yeah the whole city shuts down and you have strangers out supporting you it's great I feel like in New
00:43:14
Zealand and even in Australia to a degree if you're running a marathon and if you're not running the marathon all
00:43:21
you hear is just like oh get these Runners off the road yeah yeah yeah you just you just
00:43:29
recently been to um Paris with my mom and they shut the whole the whole city down and in Oakland like they'll shut
00:43:34
one lane of the har Bridge down for an hour in the morning you know yeah yeah and everyone complains about it it's
00:43:40
such an inconvenience but we're in America every's just like oh my God like
00:43:44
you wear your medals around and everyone's so stoked for you I'm like damn you know I feel that energy over
00:43:51
there is we need some of that down here yeah 100% we do like um people will mock
00:43:56
you in New Ze if you wear your model your midal the day after the marathon over there you get free food and free
00:44:01
coffees and restaurants it's cool um so Gold Coast Marathon 2019 is that one of
00:44:08
the biggest fails of your life yeah don't rub it in no no no I'm curious
00:44:13
about that because um I mean failure failure is never nice but yeah I um yeah I suppose in the last 5 years or so for
00:44:22
me I've learned to embrace it a bit more because you realize that that's where
00:44:24
the growth happens so I um I've been following you on Instagram for a long time so before that your your buildup
00:44:31
looked insane you moved to LA why did you move to LA just had a good group over there that I wanted to train with a
00:44:36
good coach over there blue benad him so I got to go run with him and his team and I just needed some I needed some
00:44:43
guys around me who were not Elites um which meant they weren't like super selfish about their own training and
00:44:49
they'd be able to jump in and help me and that was just like the perfect spot
00:44:52
plus I love La I think it's a great City it's really good for running so yeah
00:44:56
over over there trained with them for a few months and trained harder than I've
00:45:01
ever trained in my life that's where I was getting up to 160 to 170k a weeks
00:45:06
and I was just I wasn't working so I was running an online coaching company which was
00:45:13
just like all on my own time no stress at all I'd come from this like pretty
00:45:18
stressful career i' spent the last 5 years in the corporate world just working with Nike and you know it was a
00:45:25
pretty high pressure environment coming away from that and and being able to just like run and that's where all my
00:45:33
energy and my stress came from went to and came from and uh and I just saw my performance just like Skyrocket like I
00:45:42
was able to turn sessions around like massive workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then huge long runs on
00:45:49
Saturdays and I felt so good um it's been the last I don't know my early 20s 20 to 26 I was battling like
00:46:00
pretty severe body image issues and disordered eating behaviors and I'd gone
00:46:04
through this journey of just like trying to figure myself out because I I'd had
00:46:10
so many uh external pressures put upon me purely based on my Aesthetics and so as
00:46:18
a young female athlete I was constantly being told that if I was smaller I would
00:46:23
be a bit OutRunner if I was leaner I would be faster and so really totally pretty severe
00:46:31
yeah you are you carrying too much muscle is that what people would thinking or no you like like yeah we've
00:46:39
known each other for a long time you've you've always had like a like a I don't
00:46:43
know yeah I don't know that's that should be it you shouldn't you know I
00:46:47
think um so many women women athlete in particular but woman feel pressured to fit into standards that other people put
00:46:57
upon them and so myself as a young 20-year-old that's when it really started I had male coaches after male
00:47:04
coaches telling me that if I would lost some weight I'd be a better Runner and
00:47:07
it wasn't like you're overweight lose some lose some of that it was like oh
00:47:11
just a few kilos here and there and to give them credit they had no idea that the words they were using and what
00:47:18
they were saying were going to impact me the way that it did there's just a huge
00:47:23
lack of Education when it comes to female physiology and psychology and sport so for those who don't know only
00:47:29
6% of sport Science research is actually done on women so when we think about the
00:47:33
ways that we train how we speak to athletes how we feel how we recover it's all been based on male Psychology and
00:47:39
Physiology and then just applied to women and so my coaches treated me like one of the boys and even saying that to
00:47:47
a boy is not okay you shouldn't be telling anyone that they should be changing the way that they look or or
00:47:52
commenting on people's bodies like commenting on people's clothes or shoes
00:47:57
or whatever is cool but like don't comment on the way people are built and so after being told that for many years
00:48:04
as you can imagine my mental health suffered my body image issues started and I just restricted my diet because I
00:48:12
took was I really trusted my coaches and my leaders and I thought because I wanted to be this competitive athlete
00:48:18
I'll do whatever it takes like if I need to do that I'll do it and so there was a
00:48:23
point in my mid 20s I cut carbohydrates out of my diet completely I was constantly restricting my food I felt
00:48:30
guilty if I was eating too much I you know I was actually put on diet supplements when I was about 53 kilos
00:48:37
and what are you now oh who knows no idea no idea and I don't care yeah and so it just got to a point where I was
00:48:46
under fueling severely and training to a point I wouldn't say overtraining I just
00:48:52
was training too much for what I was giving myself and I my health just crumbled and so at about the age of 25 I
00:49:01
fell into what is known now as relative energy deficiency syndrome in sport I've
00:49:07
you know what I've had um Rosa fenan from two Ro sisters on the podcast Zoe McBride different sport but AA same
00:49:13
thing isn't it horrific it's so common so I I suffered from reds I lost my
00:49:19
period And I celebrated I thought that not having a period as a female athlete was like Ed of Honor yeah the epitomy of
00:49:29
being a successful female athlete and that did not last long after about 3 months of had not having a period I
00:49:36
ended up in hospital my body was shutting down everything was kind of like out of order and I couldn't run I
00:49:44
could barely get out of bed and so I was suffering pretty severe fatigue and I thought that's what it was was just
00:49:50
fatigue and um I also was working that pretty stressful job so that didn't help
00:49:56
um and so quit my job quit running for a short period of time but came back into
00:50:01
it after a few months and slowly worked my way up but it took about 18 months to
00:50:04
get better and that's when I realized like everything I'm doing to myself is
00:50:10
based on my appearance and why do people care what my appearance is and how is that connected to my performance and
00:50:18
it's clearly not working because the key to being a good athlete is consistency
00:50:22
and if you keep getting injured or sick then you can't get consistency to make
00:50:26
progress ress and so I took a hard look in the mirror and realized like this is not good and ended up just starting to
00:50:33
learn about my female physiology for the first time ever it was around 27 28 I learned about my menstrual cycle and I
00:50:42
learned about the fluctuations of my hormones and I was just like completely shocked by how little I knew about
00:50:50
myself and not just myself as a woman but a woman athlete where my body is my tool and it's my care career and no one
00:50:58
had taught me about my period no one had taught me that my period and my menstrual cycle were two different
00:51:03
things I literally thought they were the same thing and you have to explain that
00:51:08
to me so your period is part of your menstrual cycle it is one of the phases of your cycle but it is not your entire
00:51:15
cycle your cycle is from day one of your period all the way through to your next
00:51:20
day one of your period but throughout that entire time whether it's 25 days or
00:51:25
30 days or 35 days every every one's different your hormones are changing every day so the way that you can
00:51:31
recover the way that you can perform the way that you could be fueling yourself can change because of your hormones your
00:51:38
female hormones that are constantly changing and so once I learned this I was like what the [ __ ] like why has no one
00:51:45
taught me this this is such an important piece of the puzzle that no one has even
00:51:49
acknowledged and now that I know it everything just makes sense like that's why I race well on that day and not well
00:51:55
on that day that's why some trainings I feel good and other trainings I don't
00:51:59
like I can stop beating myself up when I'm not hitting Paces or being able to
00:52:03
run certain distances because it's just my female body working like this is shocking but also really enlightening
00:52:10
that now I know this I can actually use it to my advantage and so that was year like 2017 2018 I started actually
00:52:19
adapting the way that I trained to my cycle and those hormonal fluctuations yeah I I I know nothing about this as
00:52:25
you can imagine but I I don't feel uncomfortable talking about it and I um yeah I feel like you and your friend e
00:52:31
and we'll get to the family stuff soon you guys have done a great job ldia Co
00:52:35
there was a thing I saw on YouTube Lydia Co I love lyia Co um some male commentator was talking about a
00:52:40
tournament and she was like I didn't play very well because you I'm on my
00:52:43
period or whatever and um just the guy's reaction it was like he was so awkward
00:52:48
about it so awkward I know and that just shows like how taboo the subject of menstrual cycles and period it's um
00:52:54
somewhat comical now but like it should be a normal conversation it's a bodily
00:52:58
function that 50% of the population have yeah 100% okay so explain something to me so say
00:53:04
um so so what happens if if um if you have your period And it's like on a on a
00:53:09
race week or whatever completely fine yeah yeah you know I grew up with the narrative that periods are a nuisance if
00:53:15
you're on your period sit on the couch and eat ice cream and like be kind to
00:53:19
yourself and like you don't need to like don't do any movement just chill and
00:53:24
actually during your period is when you're hormones are at the lowest both estrogen and progesterone female
00:53:29
hormones and uh you can actually train really well during that phase so everyone is different but for me in
00:53:37
particular I feel really good on my period and so I will go out and like smash 1K reps and do hard sessions if I
00:53:43
have a race on my period I'm like sweet whereas like so many women who haven't
00:53:47
been given this education they will freak and think that being on their period is like going to be detrimental
00:53:52
to their performance but actually it's fine you know and it's a good thing so
00:53:57
we're trying to change that narrative and stop speaking so negatively about it
00:54:01
because when you speak negatively about your cycle in particular as a woman your
00:54:07
cycle is a big part of your female physiology and that means you're speaking negatively about your body you
00:54:13
know whereas we need to start having like positive conversations about our bodies because we're been brought up in
00:54:18
this world to have such negative conversations with ourselves so trying to change that it's hard but we're
00:54:23
making some progress okay so if you look at training schedule and you've got like a tough
00:54:28
training week coming up and it falls with your period cycle you're not freaked out about it it's just business
00:54:33
as usual business as usual yeah there's definitely things in different phases
00:54:37
throughout your cycle you can um feel not as great and there's definitely things you can do to like benefit of it
00:54:44
um focusing on things like sleep and there's some particular supplements you
00:54:48
can take if you are someone who suffers more but yeah you you just don't freak
00:54:52
out you like you just celebrate the fact that you've got a healthy menstrual
00:54:56
cycle that's a sign from your body saying that everything you're doing is
00:55:00
good you're not overtraining you're not under fueling you're not under too much
00:55:03
stress like this is a good sign to say you're healthy and to be performing well
00:55:09
you need to be healthy so it's actually like a really positive thing uh yeah
00:55:13
we're trying to change change that yeah okay so um you so back to LA so you're train you're training like a
00:55:20
Savage and you're getting the results and it's the um the Gold Coast Marathon
00:55:25
2019 what was your what was your goal or expectation so going into that after those few years of focusing on running
00:55:32
and being like I'm going to give this give this a red hot crack and just like
00:55:36
see what I can achieve I had the goal of making the world team that year so um the world standard I think was 237 and
00:55:48
I'd run a 239 at that point so I was like with all this training and with how
00:55:53
I had been able to get by not working um I was super confident that I was going to be able to make that time yeah three
00:56:01
three seconds a kilometer quicker yeah not much at all and so being in La I was I I want to say which I know you can't
00:56:09
really say this cuz I never did it but I want to say I was in definitely low 230
00:56:13
shape like some of the sessions I was doing I was just I knew that I could run a 230 um and so I went to Australia
00:56:22
after LA and started to prep for Gold Coast and then I got sick a couple of weeks out
00:56:27
and that wasn't ideal but in those instances you just have to not get consumed by what is going on around you
00:56:34
and just kind of stay calm and focused on what's ahead and do what you got to
00:56:38
do to get there and so I tried to kind of ignore the fact that I'd been sick
00:56:42
and just like slept and AED and and did what I needed to do and then I got to the race and it was a pretty horrific
00:56:49
day I remember it was like really wet it was pouring rain at the start line it was really windy which is like very
00:56:55
unlike gold coast and like a pit Gold Coast is the the race I wanted to do flast yeah and um unfortunately it just
00:57:04
wasn't there and I got to I got to 25ks and felt somewhat okay and then by about 28 I was like feeling like the
00:57:17
whales were somewhat falling off yeah in 28 sort of in a marathon when it when it
00:57:20
begins where it begins and um the horrific thing about Gold Coast is that you run past the start line at about
00:57:27
30ks and so you do this big loop and then at 30ks you run past the start line then you've got another like 12K to go
00:57:34
and I remember at the 30k running past the start line and my mom was there and I was just like no like I'm not feeling
00:57:42
good and I remember her saying you can pull out like it's okay you can pull out
00:57:46
and I was like no I'm going to keep trying and then my Pace went from running whatever it would have been like
00:57:50
340s or something down to like 350s and 4 minutes and and then at about 3ks I think I dropped down to like 4 15s I
00:57:59
think I was like that I'm not going to make the time and like if I'm not making the standard
00:58:05
then what's the point really and I just remember stopping my watch like sitting
00:58:09
on the side of the road and just like balling and just being like because I'd
00:58:14
spent the last three or so years completely focused on running it was my identity it was what I did and then I
00:58:21
just like lost all of that in an instance and I was just like instant and then I was just like
00:58:27
who am I and what is the point of all of this you know and so I think that like I
00:58:34
was saying earlier was one of the most challenging times in my running career but it was probably the best thing that
00:58:39
happened to me because it changed my perspective towards running and it changed my appreciation for what the
00:58:45
sport actually is and what it can do for me and I only stayed in that kind of dark place for like 48 hours I was just
00:58:52
like you know I let it all go I went through the emotion of it all um and then within 48 Hours I'd signed up to
00:59:00
another Marathon which was like 3 weeks later and I promise short memory yeah shortterm memory and I promised myself
00:59:08
that I'm going to go and do that marathon without looking at my watch and just enjoy it because I want to prove to
00:59:12
myself that there is way more to the sport than just teams and times and places and
00:59:18
so uh yeah I went and ran the sunny Coast Marathon like 3 weeks later and and one it wasn't my goal it was a
00:59:26
pleasant Supply prize to win it got the record and didn't meet the time that at
00:59:32
that point um qualifying um times had actually shut so even if ID run it I wouldn't have made it but I didn't have
00:59:40
that pressure I was just like just go and run and and um my relationship with running has changed ever since then and
00:59:46
it's um for the good it's good yeah yeah it's funny because um before we started
00:59:50
recording today um we were talking about the road Marathon over the weekend and you told me you were feeling like [ __ ]
00:59:55
you your parents were there and they're like come on lyia you know get on with
00:59:59
it you're in Gold Coast did you your mom was saying if if you're not feeling good
01:00:03
you can just pull out yeah it's funny do you think it was like a mother's
01:00:06
instinct at the time or I don't know because my mom and my dad I think are both very competitive
01:00:12
and I have very high expectations of myself and I think particularly my mom has probably even higher expectations of
01:00:19
me and so seeing her in the weekend and she was just like keep going like you have to finish
01:00:26
yeah whereas in goco she was like I remember her saying like it's okay if you if you need to stop um I don't
01:00:33
really know where where her head was at in the two different races but I think um she's seen the evolution of me and my
01:00:42
running and my perspective of running and now being a founder and a CEO and she's seen the the expectation that I
01:00:50
put on myself in both those positions and I think um she wants to support me as much as she can and I think she knows
01:00:58
that I do Thrive under pressure and I think she wants to put the pressure on for me to just keep pushing but uh yeah
01:01:05
and the weekend I was just like Mom this sucks like do I have to keep going and she just wanted me I think to get the
01:01:12
middle so I was like okay I'll do it for you guys yeah and and that that Gold
01:01:16
Coast event were you um immediately after pulling out were you like were were you mad or disappointed at yourself
01:01:22
for not even you know hobbling it into the Finish or you just felt like you were done I was done I think I had so
01:01:29
much pressure put upon me leading into that race as well I remember my coach at the time saying to people he'd
01:01:36
introduced me to people and he'd be like oh this is Lydia she's going to the
01:01:39
World Marathon Champs and I'd be like haven't qualified yet that's how
01:01:42
confident he was in me and I was also there but I did feel a lot of pressure and so I think once I pulled out I just
01:01:49
remember I think they took me to the ambulance I didn't definitely didn't
01:01:52
need to be there well maybe for my head but I was um just balling and just like lost and I suppose because so much work
01:02:00
went into that moment so much work and money and there's not a lot of money in
01:02:04
running so it's all off my own back and I don't do it for the money at all but
01:02:09
when you're pouring your own you know your own savings into into the sport and
01:02:14
then not getting the result there is that pressure as well so yeah a lot a lot went into it but a lot more has come
01:02:23
out of it and um yeah I'm I'm glad I went through it and that pressure that
01:02:28
you talk about how much of that um do you think is um is is internal like pressure on yourself and pressure from
01:02:35
other people a lot of it is internal yeah I have pretty yeah pretty high expectations of myself I am pretty
01:02:45
addicted to success I think I like will do anything to see myself progressing I think it's the progress to success which
01:02:53
is what I like Thrive off so it's um it's hard because there's days where I
01:02:59
should just like relax and smell the roses as people would say but I just I just can't like I want to constantly be
01:03:06
making progress whether that's in my career or my relationships or in my work
01:03:10
and or in my running and I'm just like it's um it can be a pretty difficult
01:03:14
position to be in but I think it's exhausting you're always chasing something definely yeah but I think the
01:03:21
fact I'm aware of it is really good uh but making change I don't know how to do
01:03:28
that and I don't know how I can like be kinder to myself but still be content
01:03:34
because I wouldn't say that I'm like ever feeling the that content I suppose it's just pausing from
01:03:42
time to time and taking stock of what you've done and where you're at but
01:03:46
still keeping an eye on the future and being better yeah I think that's it yeah
01:03:51
being proud of where you are as well yeah um we haven't even talked about your career stuff so you you you don't
01:03:56
work for Nike anymore but you had a fabulous career career with Nike you were in marketing yeah I'm still with
01:04:01
the brand y uh I Nike hits to always and every Instagram yeah by the way um most
01:04:08
of your Instagram stories you're wearing almost like the Nike sort of bike shorts
01:04:12
yeah Pros why um yeah why do you wear them and not the not sort of like flappy flappy shorts just prence yeah I just
01:04:19
like them um yeah I mean I've been with the brand now for going on 14 15 years
01:04:25
years so I feel like kind of part of the furniture at Nike now and I've had such
01:04:31
an amazing career with them and I actually started with Nike as an athlete so back in 2009 or 10 um I got picked up
01:04:41
by them when I won my first national title and I was just like right place at the right time actually this is a pretty
01:04:47
funny story which yeah I think for me shows how powerful our minds can be and how important confidence in yourself is
01:04:55
for because I actually went into a Nike store um when I was like 19 and blessed myself but like asked the woman behind
01:05:04
the counter if I could get sponsored by Nike I like someone working like the St Luke's BR it was the new store please
01:05:13
pleas please pleas and I just you know the woman would have just looked at me and been like lady I'm just working R
01:05:21
there's no way that I can give you a Nike contract you know oh hang on I'll
01:05:25
just ring still night yeah yeah and so all the naivity that's gorgeous gorgeous and so I left the store
01:05:33
obviously and then I remember a few weeks later actually being offered a contract with another brand just to to
01:05:39
know I wasn't a great Runner like I won nationals but I wasn't performing on the
01:05:42
global stage or anything and anyway this other brand offered me a contract and I
01:05:45
remember turning it down because I was like adamant that I was going to get sponsored by Nike and um hang on yeah
01:05:51
we'll just take some of Tiger Wood's money away and Michael Jordan's little
01:05:55
little we teenage girl in New Zealand and um and so yeah I just had this belief and then I'm not kidding you
01:06:02
within about two months I want to say um I got offered a placement on a squad here in New Zealand and our main sponsor
01:06:10
was Nike and that was just like whether it was the power of the mind or just like the confidence that I deserved it
01:06:18
and was worthy of it I ended up getting that contract and I was an athlete for about 2 years and then I
01:06:26
I'm very much a yes scal so I'll say yes to pretty much every opportunity and
01:06:32
maybe maybe not so much yes now but definitely back then and uh I as an athlete got given opportunities as a
01:06:40
Nike athlete you kind of get asked to come along and like speak at events and be attendees at events and I just went
01:06:47
to everything and said yes to everything and I think the brand saw that in me and
01:06:52
they actually offered me a position in the marketing team when I was about 21 um and so that was like pretty amazing
01:07:01
to get that experience I was still studying at University to get the time and so it was the dream job like I drove
01:07:07
this massive Volkswagen van around with about 250 pairs of running shoes and go out to runs Park runs and the Nike run
01:07:15
Club I think was just kind of kicking off at the time and we just kit people out on running shoes and just talk to
01:07:20
people about running and it was just like so epic I think it was like my first experience
01:07:25
of community running like seeing Runners that weren't Elites and and mingling
01:07:31
with people who didn't just run and it was like so cool to see how they loved
01:07:37
the sport and what they did like how they could benefit off the sport away from just being competitive athletes and
01:07:41
so yeah I was very lucky to kind of be in that position and um and spent about five years in the brand Team um and
01:07:49
alongside being in the brand Team I took on the Nike run Club coach role which is
01:07:55
the title I still hold today um and have now been in the coaching position for about eight years wow and it's just yeah
01:08:02
again like amazing it's um yeah I think it's it was hard for me as a 22y old
01:08:08
working in the brand Team at Nike I ended up leaving University and just focusing on that
01:08:14
and I just remember thinking at 22 like I found my dream job like what do you do
01:08:20
when you found your dream job at 22 because I was traveling I was was like living and breathing running I was
01:08:28
talking about the best brand in the world like it was just so cool and um yeah I remember being like well this is
01:08:34
going to turn into a disaster because where can I go from here and uh I didn't
01:08:38
I guess I didn't have like huge Ambitions to become like directors of the brand or anything like that and um
01:08:44
yeah I think that's I I found myself in a position where my health was suffering
01:08:49
and um I needed to look after myself and I ended up leaving the brand Team but stayed with the brand and and in this
01:08:56
coach role until now and um it's been just like a whirlwind and I'm so grateful to the brand like I definitely
01:09:02
wouldn't have had the opportunities that I've had without the brands I'm just
01:09:06
like very very grateful it's good that you still like it because often you know
01:09:09
you you you have these goals or aspirations and then you know when you when you get up close and personal
01:09:16
that's when the cracks start to show in any sort of organization um so the fact
01:09:20
that you're still passionate about it I think that's really cool definitely I
01:09:23
think every company and organization has it's like pros and cons it's hard times
01:09:27
and good times and I think um I just I didn't come from like a brand marketing
01:09:32
background I just found myself in that position and I just learned so much um so yeah they've always been so
01:09:39
supportive to me and it's a mutually beneficial relationship we have with one
01:09:44
another and now with FEI like we are in partnership with Nike so we get to work together and we're all chasing the same
01:09:51
outcome you know we want to get people moving and we want people to feel good in their bodies and um it's just cool to
01:09:57
be working with a company with a brand that is so passionate about the same things yeah and you shared on Instagram
01:10:02
some stories um of you running around the 400 meter track at um um Nike HQ yes and Eugene is it Eugene Oregon yeah what
01:10:12
that track looks beautiful just 400 met track but it's surrounded by it's like
01:10:16
it's in the middle of a bush yeah yeah it's incredible it's the most beautiful
01:10:20
track in the world it's so cool the whole Nike headquarters is just like Dreamland it's incred
01:10:25
incredible the only problem with um a 400 met track in Bush how how do you know where your opponents are you
01:10:33
don't remember D we're out there just to have fun and focus on yourself and just
01:10:38
compete with yourself so no it's um I haven't raced on the track but it would
01:10:42
be quite hard to know like where everyone is at because you can't see across the track you'd see them every
01:10:46
like I don't know 100 meters or something like there is one section where you can see across but the rest of
01:10:51
it you're pretty lost but it's cool it's really cool amazing we we've been going
01:10:55
for over an hour we haven't even got to the FI stuff yet we'll get to that soon
01:10:58
I promise um one thing I wanted to know you you were stuck in Melbourne during Co Melbourne was like a [ __ ] show hey
01:11:06
Melbourne was like kind of similar to ockland I guess it felt like Melbourne had a worst lockdown yeah than anyone
01:11:12
else in Australia um how was that and how was your mental health during that time yeah it was it was challenging I
01:11:17
think early on in the lockdown I thankfully found myself in a position where I actually wasn't in the city I
01:11:23
was out of the city um up a place called ham which was just like really beautiful
01:11:27
and secluded um I ended up going there with an ex partner and it was just like good timing that we ended up being there
01:11:35
and then we were actually away from the city for the first kind of section of lockdown for a few months but the in
01:11:42
2021 um I think it was 2021 I was in a much more difficult position in my apartment I had an apartment in
01:11:50
Melbourne by myself and spent probably 8 months in lockdown Al lot own essentially and that was like really
01:11:58
tough yeah um I think that was 22 actually yeah it was really hard it was just like a lot of alone time and
01:12:06
running was my only outlet and it was the only way we could connect with other people but even running was like we had
01:12:13
60 minutes and if you ran for 61 you'd get told off by everybody and um there
01:12:19
were like policemen on horses that would stop you while you're running and check
01:12:23
your watch to make sure you weren't running for more in an hour which is insane but it is you look you look back
01:12:30
and it's only like a couple of years ago it seems crazy crazy I just can't
01:12:35
believe that that was like reality for a while um but yeah it was hard it was hard and and your your dad got sick
01:12:42
about the same time I remember you shared um uh I think it was a post from miq yeah um and you were running outside
01:12:50
by the way you were lucky the EMQ I was and we weren't even allowed to run if
01:12:54
you broke into a run in the exercise yard um there was a guy that would blow his whistle um so yes how is your dad is
01:13:01
he okay now um yeah he he is a fighter yeah so he got diagnosed with at the time they found the cancer in his brain
01:13:11
um and that's when we first found out that he had cancer and uh we soon after
01:13:18
found out that it had stem from melanoma so that was kind of the primary source was melanoma but had metes to his brain
01:13:26
by the time we founded and um that was pretty severe and that was 3 years ago now and he's he's fighting he is an
01:13:36
absolute Legend like he's super positive about the whole thing and um he wants to
01:13:42
be here you know so it was really challenging coming back and being put into demq by myself two days after I
01:13:48
found out dead head cancer and that was like one of the most challenging times of my entire life M so the you're locked
01:13:55
up for 14 days and there's nothing nothing you can do while Dad was going in for brain surgery yeah it was pretty
01:14:02
horrific uh but I think in those instances you really learn how strong you are and
01:14:12
like you really see your resilience and I think it's um yeah again like some of
01:14:18
the shest times in my life but has helped me become who I am today and now like running a business and all the
01:14:24
stresses that go on I feel like I don't really get too phased vatal because I
01:14:28
feel like I've been in instances where like life has actually been so hard and
01:14:33
and it feels like your world is crumbling um and you get through it you know and so I'm like you know what
01:14:38
things that work don't work out exactly how I imagined it it's okay because
01:14:42
we'll get through these tough times yeah one thing that you get from um from
01:14:46
following you whether it's like listening to you on podcast or listening to your own podcast on FY or following
01:14:52
on Instagram um you're you're very very positive of very glassful also um very
01:14:57
grateful is this um is this just like your your DNA or is this something you've worked on like do you do you
01:15:04
practice gratitude mindfully do you Journal definitely I think gratitude I think it really does come
01:15:12
back to my journey and my sister in particular and like seeing the journey that she's taken and where she's ended
01:15:19
up and like just being so grateful that I am here um and I think gratitude is everything like
01:15:27
honestly I feel like if you can't be grateful for where you are today then what what's the point you know um it
01:15:35
allows you to appreciate what you have and in a world where we are constantly finding ourselves comparing ourselves to
01:15:42
others and wishing we had what they had or looked what how they looked I think being able to stop and just like be
01:15:50
happy with what you have is like the most important thing to enjoy life and uh yeah I've definitely had my struggles
01:15:58
with it too but gratitude I think has like really saved me yeah well you think about your you
01:16:04
know your dad the day that he found out he had brain cancer he he would give anything to be feeling how he was the
01:16:12
day before you know what I mean totally um yeah it's it's hard the way sometimes
01:16:17
I don't know life life gets in the way or you just get caught up in your own
01:16:20
[ __ ] um yeah but it does take it does take if a it's like a musle and you have to train it the the whole gratitude
01:16:26
thing it is yeah and I think um it really plays into like building a life that you are proud
01:16:34
of and that you are you are happy to live you know like I think happiness is is a forever growing Beast it's not
01:16:43
something you can wake up and just be happy every single day but I definitely think like building a life that you can
01:16:49
wake up and say you know this is the life that I've always wanted to live and
01:16:53
like I don't know feel like um I was saying this the other day I think I put
01:16:58
up a post about it around um that it takes time to figure out like who you are and where you want to be but
01:17:08
uh like the the moments along the way are what really matter you know and so for me I'm just like I am really proud
01:17:15
of this life and I'm so grateful for the life that I live and some days are harder than others and that that's okay
01:17:22
just take it as it comes like I'm really yeah I'm just like I don't know I think
01:17:28
everything in your life does there's meaning behind it all and it's taking
01:17:32
you on this journey you know as wooo as maybe that sounds like I look back at my
01:17:36
experiences as a teenage girl and what Rose taught me and I then I think about the challenges that I've been through in
01:17:42
my life and they've all like kind of led to these moments and the work that I do
01:17:47
now and the impact that hopefully I feel like I'm having um yeah like I just
01:17:52
don't think I would be doing this if all of those challenges and things didn't
01:17:55
happen to me earlier so yeah I think you're in a great position too because um if you're a professional Runner like
01:18:01
it hasn't very very short window a an expiry date on it um but what you're
01:18:07
doing you can do for the rest of your life ideally fabulous yeah well it's not
01:18:11
really wrapped up in times or medals is it no it's not and I I yeah me and Esther talk about this too because
01:18:18
Esther was who's my best friend and also my co-founder like she was an amazing
01:18:23
athlete when she was a teenage girl she won World cross country Champs when she was like 14 or 15 which is just the best
01:18:30
in the world obviously like beating all these incredibly talented athletes and yeah and we try to think about like
01:18:38
if we had made the Olympics and fulfilled these potential dreams that we once had would we still be would we be
01:18:45
feeling like we've we're having the impact that we're having today you know
01:18:49
versus what we're doing through FEI and the work that we're doing and we would
01:18:53
both 100% take this path of like building building a safe and supportive environment for females and for female
01:19:01
Runners to connect to them to each other to learn about themselves to have appropriate guidance and to empower
01:19:07
women in movement like that is our goal and I just don't think you can do that
01:19:11
when you're just like this athlete focused on your performance it's really
01:19:15
hard to if you're going to be an athlete I suppose it's too much of a self
01:19:18
selfish Endeavor in a way you don't have the energy or the heartbeats for so
01:19:22
let's talk about F let's get into that now so so this this started with um
01:19:27
Esther who you're talking about yes the bestie the best is that what you call
01:19:32
each other the besty she doesn't quite have the same one for me but even yeah I
01:19:36
definitely refer to her as s the bestie oh wow it's loow hanging fruit so so
01:19:42
you're working at n how does this work so she's in um she's in toonga you're
01:19:46
you're in Melbourne you're working for Nike it seems like um it seems like a
01:19:52
[ __ ] show starting a business together when you're in different countries so at
01:19:55
the time this was in 2020 So Co obviously happened at the start of 2020 kicked off then went for a few years but
01:20:01
at the end more closer to the end of 2020 ether was in Melbourne and I was in Melbourne so we're actually in the same
01:20:07
place okay at the time ether had um been working as a personal trainer for a we while but she had lost her job because
01:20:14
of the lockdowns and I had at that point had been running my own coaching company
01:20:18
for about 3 or 4 years and it was um writing programs for runners all over the world and and uh it was awesome like
01:20:27
not a lot of stress and still felt like I was having impact on people so I was really enjoying it but I couldn't really
01:20:33
scale it beyond what I was doing to that dat like I couldn't really build a company off the back of it it was just
01:20:39
myself and so Esther and I had gone through this experience as as female athletes and come out the other side of
01:20:46
it and we' both just spent the last two years like learning about our bodies and we both had been coaching
01:20:55
and also working with the likes of Nike and other big Global sporting Brands and
01:21:00
we both knew there was a huge responsibility on our shoulders to take what we had learned through our
01:21:07
challenges and the education that we' gone through ourselves and spread it to
01:21:11
other people and we just thought if we if we build something to do that then we can impact
01:21:19
people woman more than just telling them how to run faster and so we kicked FY off in 2020 as a
01:21:29
onetoone coaching company and it was very much about providing woman Runners guidance around their cycle and adapting
01:21:35
their running training to their cycle and educating them about their bodies because almost all of us had just not
01:21:42
learned anything about ourselves and um that's where it started and I guess we
01:21:46
saw really quickly like the need for this type of service for women and we spent the last 3 years working on onet
01:21:54
toone coaching but alongside building the coaching company we realized that there was just like this huge lack of
01:22:04
software to support women in sport there's just like pretty much 99% of Fitness software is being built for men
01:22:12
so not taking into account female physiology is a massive mess and we just couldn't find a toour where we could
01:22:19
like get women to track the menstrual cycles get given the appropriate guidance around their side CES get given
01:22:25
them training guidance around their cycles and then just like connect women to each other and we like very quickly
01:22:31
realized that there was a huge opportunity for us to to build something that could serve women better and so
01:22:38
neither of us are techy at that point neither of us knew anything about startups the startup World raising
01:22:44
Capital none of it like we were so naive and we're like we just build this app um
01:22:49
and so we went on that journey and we first buil out prototypes and tested that with people and and we just had no
01:22:55
idea really where to go or what to do and so it took about 18 months or so before we actually got accepted into an
01:23:01
accelerator program called start mate which is the biggest accelerator program in Australia and New Zealand and they
01:23:07
have about 500 companies apply each um cohort and in our cohort only 12 companies got selected so we got
01:23:16
selected um in such a massive group of other companies that applied and and that was like just a huge confidence
01:23:22
boost for us cuz we were like not Ticky firsttime Founders building something that doesn't exist like there were a lot
01:23:29
of things working against us but we got in and that gave us confidence and it gave us our first investment so from
01:23:35
there we were able to make our first hires which Tagan and Stefan who are still on our team today and um and that
01:23:43
the build of the FI app started at the end of 2022 and so we launched in November 2023 um and now we've been in
01:23:51
the app store for about six or so months and um it's just just been awesome like
01:23:55
such a journey to be on and just to see the impact that we're able to have like
01:23:59
one of the um one of our users our community members came up to Tagan in the weekend at the road to a marathon
01:24:04
saying you know like the F apps changed my life and to hear that from women it's
01:24:09
just like so rewarding so it's pretty cool I'm just really excited about where
01:24:13
we're going in the future that's so humbling isn't it and you guys making
01:24:18
okay money from it no no not yet got the life of an entrepreneur eh it's it's
01:24:23
terrifying it's it's it's funny because I feel like a lot of um I talk a lot
01:24:28
about what being an athlete taught me around resilience and hard work and taking risks and like making sacrifices
01:24:35
all of it is exactly the same as being a founder and so uh no like the goal is to
01:24:40
Monday make money but right now we're just building the best possible platform
01:24:45
software app for women who run and we've got some incredible investors who are on
01:24:51
the journey with us and like are supporting us to get to where we know we can go but um yeah it's it's all new to
01:24:58
me like being a CEO and being a Founder is just like an entirely New Journey but
01:25:02
one that I'm like really enjoying so you're just learning so many new skills
01:25:07
so many new skills yeah is it's cool um yeah that's neat and it's it's how how
01:25:12
big is the community can you put a number on it oh it's hard to say we have at the moment 14 physical run location
01:25:18
so every Friday our woman meet and go for a run and get coffee and just hang out and they were just really like safe
01:25:26
supportive environments for women to meet um so we have that community and then we have our kind of wider Community
01:25:32
we have our podcast community so it's hard to say how many members are in our
01:25:37
in our community we've got thousands people on the app using the using the app and following our trading guidance
01:25:43
so it's um yeah it is humbling it's really cool and um you even um ambushed
01:25:49
cornered I don't know what the correct phrasing is Steven Bartlett from Diary
01:25:53
of a CEO yeah yeah how how did you accost one of the world's biggest podcasters it's so funny
01:26:01
so I've been listening to Steven butlet for like maybe like two no three maybe
01:26:06
three or four years ages and it's just hilarious when you listen to someone on
01:26:10
a podcast and you like feel like you know them um but I got the opportunity to go to his show in Oakland a few weeks
01:26:16
ago and he is an investor himself he is one of the sharks on Shark Tank and I know he's pretty actively invested at
01:26:24
the moment and so I as I said I'm a yes girl and I try and take every opportunity I decided to get a ticket to
01:26:32
meet and greet him and uh I don't know if you know his conversation cards he he
01:26:38
has conversation cards that he builds off yeah at the end of the podcast every guest has to write a question for the
01:26:43
next guest in a book and he tuned into a game Y and so we took the design of his
01:26:49
conversation cards redesigned it and called them the Fe conversation cards and pretty much had questions about the
01:26:55
lack of support women Founders and women and Sport G and um had a QR code there to go direct to our pitch deck and so I
01:27:03
gave them to him and said to him you know theel about F and cuz how long do you reckon you had I reckon I had 3
01:27:11
minutes at the most yeah so it was pretty quick but through all the accelerated programs that we've been
01:27:17
part of you definitely learn how to pitch quick so the experience was there helped heaps but immediately when I said
01:27:23
where got a fem tech company and we're building tech for female athletes uh and
01:27:28
women in sport he was like we're investing into fem Tech right now like gave me an email and um yeah I pitched
01:27:35
to their team last week so things are looking positive it's very exciting but
01:27:39
he was a legend like he as I knew he would be he's just such a genuine dude and I've just I've never seen someone
01:27:46
present the way he presented like he pretty much rattled off a speech 2 and a half hour speech word for word didn't
01:27:52
mess up at all I was just shocked by how well spoken he is you just don't get
01:27:57
that when you just listen to the interviews um on his podcast cuz obviously the guest is mostly speaking
01:28:02
but uh he's like he's he's an awesome guy and hopefully can become an investor
01:28:07
for us well that's amazing um you're very courageous on your part how nervous
01:28:11
were you like compare the nerves of so you're in line so you buy you can either
01:28:16
buy a g ticket or you buy a VIP ticket where you get to meet afterwards so you're in line in that line as he's
01:28:22
getting closer and closer how nervous were you compared to like say at the start line of a marathon oh way more
01:28:30
nervous way more nervous I thankfully in the line behind me was my friend Robin who owns a company called Hollow period
01:28:40
period cups and menr cycle discs and she's awesome and so thankfully I had her to kind of chat with and laugh about
01:28:46
the situation with her before I went up and spoke to him but yeah I was like as soon as I got up to him I'm I just like
01:28:52
I feel like I've met quite a lot of celebrity aletes through the work that I've done over the last 15 years and I
01:29:00
just don't really get that like wowed by too many people I think people are amazing but I don't get nervous as such
01:29:06
but I think for meeting him I was just like not so nervous about meeting him but nervous about missing the
01:29:13
opportunity for what it could be if I did it well um and so also not a fan girl situation just performance nervous
01:29:19
about getting your pitch right oh yeah like love him but I feel like I love our community more and the work that we do
01:29:28
at F That's What mattered to me was just like get the pitch so he sees the opportunity um get that right and then
01:29:35
you never know and I wanted to say to him CU everyone was getting photos and I wanted to be like we don't need a photo
01:29:40
because I'm going to see you again soon just give him the confidence is that
01:29:44
what you said I ended up getting the photo I know yes but we got it on Instagram and
01:29:51
actually his investment fund saw all of the content on Instagram cuz we posted about it um the day after and tried to
01:29:58
get well we asked the community to be involved and talk about how fies helped them and that was the most rewarding
01:30:05
thing was just seeing these comments these women are incredible and to see how Fe has helped them on their own
01:30:12
Journeys like I can't even speak about it like it was just it's mind-blowing and and then
01:30:19
flight fund his investment fund saw that and I think that's what got them excited
01:30:25
it's funny a because I suppose you do any sort of business venture because you
01:30:28
want it to be you know financially viable or you you know you want to better keep the lights on or however you
01:30:33
want to phrase it s like the same with me with this podcast I guess but ultimately even more important than any
01:30:40
amount of money is the impact you're having definitely so it's like the nice
01:30:43
comments that I get from people about the podcast means far more than any sort of financial reward you guys God you
01:30:50
guys must be so proud of what you've built yeah it's funny being in the St
01:30:54
world now because it is very much about how much are you raising how much are you valued at what is the potential what
01:30:59
are you going to be worth in five or 10 years and and I've never been someone to
01:31:04
be focused on the money and it's not a way I do it and I am very much about the
01:31:11
impact is how much impact can we be having and can I be having and and that's what matters to me and so it's I
01:31:18
find it difficult as a founder and CEO to like talk about the numbers because that's what the investors want
01:31:26
to see and I should I should be chasing that and and I think it's exciting to
01:31:31
think about if we could reach those numbers but it's more exciting to think about the impact we can have if we reach
01:31:37
those numbers that's that's really why I do it suppose they all go hand in hand
01:31:41
ultimately and you get to start it with your best friend that must have been um scary as well because um anytime
01:31:47
you I don't know would you say commercialize a friendship like it's It's A Dangerous Ground like you could
01:31:52
have a Fallout it is coulden it's a marriage you know like we're pretty much
01:31:56
married at this point and we are just so we're so lucky to have each other like I
01:32:02
could not be doing this by myself and I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else
01:32:06
and we have hard times and then we have amazing times but I think with Esther and myself we just know each other so
01:32:13
well and we know exactly what each other is thinking and we know what environments we thrive in and we just
01:32:21
compliment each other it's funny because I think there's so much advice you get
01:32:25
given as a Founder from you know successful business owners that have done it in the past and a lot of them
01:32:32
are men um and they're trying to give us guidance on how to run our business um
01:32:37
but ultimately Esther and I we know what we need to be doing and we know what's
01:32:41
right for our women in our community and so we're both just like really committed
01:32:46
to making this thing into what we know it can be and um trusting ourselves I think that's the biggest thing is like
01:32:55
trusting each other trusting our team I think is incredibly important and then trusting ourselves that we can do this
01:33:02
because female Founders are few and far between only less than 2% of venture capitalist money actually goes into
01:33:09
female Founders so most of the companies that have been built as startups have been built by men and men are great
01:33:19
Founders but so are women women are incredible leaders incredible Founders and have amazing ideas yet they're just
01:33:25
not getting back to the way that men are uh and we want to build a you know equal
01:33:31
future for everyone and we need females to be building that future as well and so we're both just like so passionate
01:33:39
about breaking down gender equality barriers not just in sport not just in Tech but in the startup world as well
01:33:46
because we just want the next generation of of girls to have the opportunity that
01:33:51
we didn't have or that people before us didn't have I've got no doubt you'll do
01:33:54
it too you guys have both got the passion have you had any um any sort of even shortterm falling outs it's yeah
01:34:02
yeah yeah with just like creative differences or whatever you get off a zoom with each other and I we we
01:34:10
actually haven't and I'm sure it's to come I'm sure there will be times that
01:34:13
will be really hard and there has been hard times but for sure yeah we care more about each other than anything so
01:34:22
what's the most important thing is our health and our friendship um and so we
01:34:29
will like if we need a pause meetings and step away from work to just like have a friendship discussion we'll do
01:34:35
that you know because it's it is the most without us getting along the company will fall apart so like it is
01:34:41
the most important thing um but we're just we're both very empathetic um and
01:34:46
maybe that's the hardest thing is we both like do both impath yeah oh that's
01:34:52
good though no you're both sensible people and you're both well adjusted so
01:34:56
um when you guys get together and run is this all you talk about I try not to I try to like not talk about work all the
01:35:02
time but um well you're both passionate about it yeah but like there'll be T
01:35:06
days when maybe is will start talking about work and we're out running and I'll just say let's not talk about it
01:35:10
now like we're just try and change the subject and neither of us take you know
01:35:13
offense to it we're just like yep cool we'll talk about dogs or something
01:35:17
instead so we both love dogs um oh you mentioned before some of the yeah when we about Steven Bartlett
01:35:24
some of the athletes you met through Nike and stuff um do you want to drop some names oh honestly like I just like
01:35:31
don't really get that wild I couldn't really even say tell you like who are
01:35:35
the most I mean the most famous person I've probably met she's not an athlete
01:35:39
but she's pretty well known as Ellie Golding I met her through Nike oh yeah yeah she loves her 10k run clubs she
01:35:44
runs yeah yeah yeah yeah but like athletes I'm like oh I feel like I've like encountered so many of them there
01:35:50
are some like amazing amazing athletes just in Australia there um we be at events together and like J was an
01:35:57
amazing Runner but she's I also consider kind of one of my friends you know um so
01:36:02
oh even yeah you're good mates with um Lucy Bartholomew as well who's an
01:36:05
Absolut Savage like an endurance when did she start doing endurance events like when she was ran her first Ultra
01:36:10
when she was about 15 that's right with her dad yeah yeah so she had to run with
01:36:15
her dad in order to get past the organizers yeah she's got some pretty crazy stories that one she's like wild
01:36:21
but she's yeah probably one of the most resilient people I've ever met she's
01:36:24
pretty amazing she hasn't um got you interested in urance events well I did my first Ultra last year it was probably
01:36:34
the worst race I've ever done no I wouldn't say worst but hardest it was
01:36:38
50ks and I think it was over 2,000 M of elevation and I just signed up the week before which is not recommended do not
01:36:46
do that um but I signed up ran this 50k through the back of Brisbane I can't
01:36:52
remember mount cther I think it's called and oh I remember it's just a different
01:36:57
sport like I remember calling James my husband and probably at about 40ks or so crying this sucks why did I do this why
01:37:07
did I sign up I don't want to be here but like when you're that deep into an
01:37:11
ultra particularly on those Trails you can't get out like you have to run so
01:37:15
you don't really have an option so poor James is just like I can't do anything
01:37:18
to help you and um and then I remember at like five case ago there was 1K climb which was like you're on your hands and
01:37:26
knees pretty much and I just remember looking at a race organizer there was a race organizer up the hill and I just
01:37:32
looked at him and I was like this is [ __ ] insane as though like it was his fault that I was on this hill at 45k or
01:37:40
something on my hands and knees and he was just like and anyway I got to the end and super proud I did it but I don't
01:37:47
know if I'll do I think I'd like to do a flat 50k but not the Hills I I've done a
01:37:54
similar sort of one I did one called the mot Tapo which is a 52k run goes from um
01:37:59
wanica to aot toown I thought it' be a good entry level ultra distance yes same
01:38:04
sort of thing lots of elevation there was even a period in there where the field is so separated I couldn't see
01:38:10
anyone in front of me couldn't see anyone behind me I had like a transponder thing but if I if I press
01:38:14
the button on that the helicopter comes in and unless you're severely injured
01:38:18
you have to pay for it so through my in my head I was just I was actually sort of drafting the in stag post of how I
01:38:25
was going to frame me pulling out of this event yeah that's funny and then I
01:38:29
feel like I've definitely done that and then I got to the next the next checkpoint and it was I had some jet PL
01:38:35
planes and some coke and the the volunteers were very nice so I kept on going it is a different sport like I
01:38:41
look at what that 50k and then I look at a road Marathon I'm like there's just no
01:38:46
similarities like I was walking so much of that 50k and I don't know it's Le about the watch
01:38:54
isn't it you're not looking at your splits you can't some kilometers might
01:38:58
take you eight or N9 minutes and it's like not a big deal but I just love running you know so I just remember
01:39:03
being like this isn't running like no offense doctor Runners it is running but
01:39:06
it's just different running and it's not the running that I like I would say that
01:39:10
I loved but maybe I'll be back there like Never Say Never but it was hard I I
01:39:16
feel exactly the same way as you I just love it it's given me so much like I
01:39:21
don't think I understood until maybe like the last 5 or 10 years the mental health benefits that I got from running
01:39:27
um but it's just the whole thing it makes me feel so good makes me appreciate so much stuff it's like 99%
01:39:34
of people I reckon would get out of bed in the morning turn on the shower have a
01:39:36
shower at 37 38 degrees and not even think about it if if you're out on a long run and you're drenched and it's
01:39:43
cold you appreciate that shower like nobody else oh oh my gosh I know yeah I'm such a routine person cuz I will
01:39:51
like get up have a coffee go for a run or have some toasts go for a run and the other morning or before the
01:39:59
marathon you know like just waking up the day before and not going for the run I'm like it's so weird to like not have
01:40:07
that but I do it because it sets my day up so well like whether I'm going out
01:40:11
for a 30 minute jog or a 2 and 1 half hour long run like it just sets my mental state up so well it's my
01:40:20
non-negotiable I just won't budge on that time by myself particularly now when work is so hectic I'm pretty much
01:40:28
every day I'm in meetings from like 800 or 9: in the morning till 5:00 at night
01:40:31
and back to back you know getting pulled left right and center and and there's a
01:40:36
hick of a lot of pressure in the work that we're doing right now and I just need that time in the morning
01:40:42
to myself and it is truly the only time where I can like disconnect from the chaos of the world and what's going on
01:40:49
and and just be super present in the moment and um yeah I I hope I can do it for as long as
01:40:56
possible God your life sounds stressful start your own business they said it'll
01:41:00
be fun go my mentor every time he calls me he's like running a startup is fun
01:41:03
isn't it and I'm like don't get me started it's um it's pretty long days
01:41:08
it's mess of days you got married recently like November last year you've
01:41:11
you've mentioned your husband a couple of times does is he a runner um did he
01:41:15
know what he was getting himself in for so when we first met he definitely claimed he was a runner on one of our
01:41:20
first dates we went running up a mountain cuz he told me that he ran um did he go right yeah or was it obvious
01:41:27
to you that he's hasn't run since he ran 15K up Mountain so that's really good
01:41:33
but um I wouldn't say he's done a heck of a lot of running since like he'll run
01:41:37
with me every now and then but he definitely sucked me in at the start made it out like he this big
01:41:43
Runner you're you're a big commitment like you like you have running holidays
01:41:47
where you be in a camper van and you'll get up and yeah like it's not it's not
01:41:51
for everyone I know feel for so does he run with you when you have these running
01:41:55
holidays or does he just stay in the van and last month we went to the South Island so I've actually only seen him
01:42:01
for like two weeks this whole year because of work but um last month we had a week together we went to the South
01:42:06
Island and one of the Mad campers which was so cool and yeah we pretty much just
01:42:11
went on like a running tour and he had no idea that that was going to be the case but good
01:42:16
communication he he did run with me yeah he did we ran the um we ran the AI track
01:42:22
um up Mount Cook and it's it's 10K so it's not a heck of a long run but it's
01:42:27
just like the most beautiful run in the world if you haven't done it you should
01:42:30
cuz it's just stunning so no he he can move well like he's he can run but um
01:42:37
there's a bit of complaining that goes on and I'm just like if you're not
01:42:41
having fun don't come complaining from you because you to run slower than what
01:42:46
you normally run no no no no the thing is he can run fast it's more just like
01:42:50
every like 5 10 minutes and we're like can we stop and like okay oh for [ __ ]
01:42:55
sake and and what about um what about um Jimma Flynn Jimma McCoy how how how do you guys know each other you're not from
01:43:01
a hockey background are you no I'm not I she sucked me into hockey when I was a
01:43:05
kid but I do you know each other through to so we we met when we were five she's
01:43:10
probably my longest standing friend yeah so we met as a really as really young girls she was like my best friend all
01:43:16
through Primary School in high school and she is like one of the most naturally talented speaking natural
01:43:23
Talent naturally talented athletes I've ever met she was so good with like soccer and hockey and everything When We
01:43:32
Were Young she could just pick up any sport and do it and do it so well um whereas I was like I can run but like I
01:43:39
don't have much coordination so she definitely pushed me she was like I don't know if you could tell now but
01:43:46
she was a real tomboy when we were little like we were both quite like tomboys but she was very much she two
01:43:51
brothers and she just like grew up yeah running around kicking at ball really um so yeah we both like just
01:43:57
loved sport and pushed each other quite a lot and we both fished quite a lot when we're little we'd go fishing quite
01:44:03
a lot our dads are best friends so um they're still best friends today which
01:44:07
is super cute they've got each other and um they still go out fishing which is
01:44:10
cool that's so cool what an enduring friendship and you and you've um I've
01:44:14
seen this on Instagram you do some like training runs with Richie you've done
01:44:17
some like 1K repeats with them and stuff Richie is uh he goes all right for big well I was down in Queenstown with them
01:44:24
a few years ago and um I was training for um a marathon and I had like a 5k I think it was a 5k repeat session where I
01:44:33
was doing 4ks at marathon pace and then 1K float and I think I had like maybe five or six of them so a big run and I
01:44:41
remember Richie being oh yeah I'll come just like real downplaying it you know
01:44:45
and I was like good luck at Hanging On he's like twice my way you know I was
01:44:50
like yeah how mean I feel like he's got um smaller as he's gone on with his um
01:44:55
endurance Journey but he yeah was he still playing rugby then he wasn't playing rugby but he was still quite
01:44:59
recently retired yeah so quite a big dude yeah and anyway he came out and like we were running the five the 4ks on
01:45:07
at probably like 345s maybe and um I was like oh he'll hang on for one maybe two
01:45:13
and I think he stuck around for like three or four reps and I was just like what that's insane like for a guy that
01:45:19
pig to be running that well so I think it's like as a kid more than anything
01:45:23
he's just mentally strong yeah I was going to ask you that because obviously
01:45:26
you need to be physically fit but um yeah mentally he it's feels like he's
01:45:30
made of something different right yeah yeah he's just like he will just work
01:45:36
work and work to like make progress but some of the stuff the two of them actually do I'm just like crazy yeah
01:45:42
they love their love their sleep deprivation it seems say like 48 hour Adventure races and stuff no thanks no
01:45:49
thanks hey well it's been wonderful today it's this long EST podcast ever
01:45:53
you I feel like it is yeah I got to run to meet an investor oh really if I Ki you no you're
01:45:59
fine it's um it's been so nice to chat with you AB absolutely absolutely I've
01:46:03
known you for a very long time and I'm just so so proud of the work that you
01:46:07
and E are doing um with f me and um like everything you do it's it's it's going
01:46:11
to be wildly successful and good than it's just it's just how you wired I
01:46:16
appreciate it all right and you with the podcast it's amazing to see I'm just
01:46:19
like super excited to see what comes out in the future thanks l yeah awesome [Music]