Run Culture Podcast

It was an absolute honour/thrill this week to interview a man I’ve looked up to my whole running career! Chris Wardlaw/‘Rab’ is a runner and coach who’s impact/influence on the Australian distance running scene over the past 40 years is near on unparalleled. Chris came 12th in the 1976 Montreal Olympic 10,000m and competed in the marathon at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. He was the career coach/mentor to many, including Steve Monaghetti, Kerryn McCann and Craig Mottram(for the last few years of his career). He was the head coach of the Australian Track and Field team at the 2000 Olympics. In this interview Rab shares so much wisdom and great stories about his career and those that he has coached or been involved with. He talks about the the origins of ‘the pack’, ‘quaters’, ‘Mona fartlek’, the ‘Wardlaw System’ and some of his greatest inspirations! For any keen runner, it’s a must listen!

Today, I had a ball chatting to Dr Richard Hansen, head coach of Boulder Colorado’s @roots_running project! In this episode we talk about how the Roots running group formed, how they are going now, his coaching/training methodology (his learnings from Joe Vigil), sponsorship chat and how he tries to avoid injury and maximise performance with his athletes! Richard is a prominent Sports chiropractor, who specialises in treating distance runners. He certainly knows his stuff! So, like I said I absolutely loved everything about this chat, so be sure to tune in.

This weeks episode of the podcast is with renown Sydney physiotherapist, director of the Central Performance Physiotherapy clinic, head coach of the Central Performance Track group (an elite running squad in Sydney) and high level runner himself; Ben Liddy! I’ve known of Ben for a long while now and respected what he was doing from afar, so it was great to finally catch up and have a chat! Ben talks about his experiences as a runner, what he’s doing to prevent injury in the runners he is coaching, his ‘adaptable’ coaching philosophy, how his athletes are currently going and much more! It’s a great chat and follows on really nicely in a practical sense with Ben discussing many of the principles Michael Nitschke discussed last week when it comes to performance and injury!

For those runners struggling to get their heads around injury and poor performance this one is for you! This is ever green content. Being the running physio nerd I am this podcast is exactly the podcast I envisioned delivering to educate the running public on a concept I want more runners to understand. It’s absolute gold, some runners should listen to it three times over... it’s all about injury prevention and optimizing performance! So, listeners/fellow runners/coaches, forward this to any runner you know that is injury prone/ or has a tendency not to listen to training advice. Michael nitschke, is a sports podiatrist by trade but runner by blood. He completed his Bachelor of Podiatry in 2006 at University of South Australia. He’s now a Partner at the Sports & Arthritis Clinic (SPARC) in Adelaide, with some of the nation’s leading Sports & Exercise Physicians. He’s a Level II advanced running coach in middle and long distance running at the Adelaide Harriers Athletic Club. ‘It’s all about the wings!’ He’s also currently undertaking his Masters by Research at Adelaide University-his research is focused around the training characteristics of recreational runners and the relationship between performance and injury. Michael started his personal running career as more a high jumper and sprinter and over the years has gradually moved up in distance and volume! He currently has swift PBs of 15:05 for 5k, 31:23 for 10k, 71 for the ½ marathon and 2:33 for the marathon. He’s a man of so many hats!!!!!!! So, go to whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on and tune in!!!!! Reference: Wilt, F. (1972). Conditioning of runners for championship competition. JAMA, 221(9), 1017-1021.

Today, I chewed the fat with two of my closest running mates over the past 20 years, Zacca Newman and Matt Davy. We chat about some of the ‘key moments’ in their running journey, some of their biggest ‘learnings’, their most memorable running moments and at the end of the chat delve into their highly successful online run coaching business; Run2Pb (www.run2pb.co). Just like it always is with these two, I loved the free flowing convo in this episode, it felt like a ‘Sunday long run’! Some great yarns, plenty of laughs, stacks of lessons!

This weeks episode is with Tim O’shaughnessy. Tim’s life has been just so intertwined with running and athletics! He is currently a running coach at Wesley College and outside of this his running group works very closely with Nick Bideau’s guys at the Melbourne Track Club. In this episode I quiz him on the inner workings of MTC and why he believes they have been just so successful. We hark back to his own running career under Pat Clohessy, his City to Surf wins, what training was like with ‘the Pack’ with Chris Wardlaw, Ron Clark, Rob DeCastella and many others...We then also go over his roles in the football world; as a fitness advisor and coach and then his experience as the Athletics Australia distance running Co-ordination from 2007-2014. I loved how this episode flowed more alike a chat/conversation rather than an interview, as you will see Tim is a great story teller. I really enjoyed chatting to Tim, I’m sure many of you will enjoy listening in too!

With everyone’s lives in a degree of limbo and uncertainty at the moment. Today, I caught up with a couple of the Run Culture Owl athlete’s I coach; Peter Dutton and Damien Clarke. We discuss how their running has gone over the last few months, how the rest of the squad went and how we currently plan to tackle the uncertainty of the future. It’s the first time I’ve had 3 people on the podcast, we had some fun with this one. We certainly enjoyed it, I hope some of you do too!

Wow, it has been an indifferent week! I encourage everyone to stay safe, look out for each other. It’s a perfect time to focus on things outside of running or areas in your running that you wouldn’t normally! In this episode, I have the privilege to chat to coach of the Brisbane Athletics Academy: Jayden Russ. We go into his experiences as a talented distance runner, how he struggled with the transition from star junior to seniors, his view on the importance of running ‘teams’ and much more! This is a great episode for the juniors out there keen to make it into the senior ranks! Anyway I hope you all enjoy the listen!

Richard Huggins was recommended by 3 of the previous coaches I have interviewed on the podcast as a coaching mentor! Richard has an outstanding coaching record with an uncanny ability to harvest an amazing club culture down at Knox athletics track which has seen many Australian junior star distance runners stay in the sport to become senior superstars! Richard has coached amazing athletes such as: Jeff Risely, James Hanson, Zac Patterson, Tom Fawthorpe, Mellissa Duncan, Kaila McNight, Zoe Buckman and Vicki Mitchell. In this interview we go over how he got into coaching, his own marathon career, his coaching philosophies and some of his favourite sessions. It was an absolute pleasure having coffee and breakfast with Richard earlier this week; I loved how calm, easy going and approachable he was and he just had so many stories and experiences to share!

In this episode I firstly detail my last 2.5 weeks of my Canberra 50km preparation, as race day gets closer. Then I had the privilege to interview Lisa Verstraten, not only a lovely person but a highly credentialed distance running coach from Geelong of the past 20yrs. She was the formative coach of Isaac Hockey and Lachlan Barber! She has been the team coach on numerous Australian athletic and cross country teams! She also currently works in a coaching development role with Athletics Victoria. Lisa has so many pearls of wisdom when it comes to knowing how to coach the athlete in front of you. This one is a must listen for all running coaches out there! Thanks once again Lisa!