Running is BS

Amy starts spooooky season early this year risking the most heinous curse imaginable, while Stu has become the greatest runner in history and is playing it super cool. We also possibly quite badly insult 0.004% of our audience, Amy doesn't understand dimensions, we talk about the worst way to power through a night shift, when a marathon isn't a marathon, and have the annual worst London Marathon costume record discussion. 

Another mostly unfocussed scattergun of a podcast where Stu has done another bloody race and is all full of himself and Amy hasn't done a race and doesn't give a shit. We talk head injuries, Weird Al Yankovic, the start of silly costume season, races that don't exist, and have serous worries about our audience.

Amy grabbed a little lamb, it's fleece was white as snow, and when she lobbed it over the fence, on her merry way she did go. There are tales of personal growth, colonialism, getting lost in a field, public rights of way and when they should be destroyed, and we accidentally convince ourselves that £140 shorts are a fair deal.

Oops Stu did it again, got lost in the woods, endangered his friends... There's also plenty of running icks in this episode, Amy scales a mountain and wishes she hadn't, and we shit all over the Lisbon half, which by the sound of things is certainly not the first time.

Our 150th episode spectacular doesn't feature AMAZING guests, WILD stories, or HUGE competitions, it's just the same old nonsense. Stu has been questioning his sanity, nearly drowning in mud, learnt how to do CPR, and actually went to the gym while Amy went for a run. There's also another thrilling religious running update. 

We're joined by the Feminist Sociologist of Sport Bethan Taylor-Swaine who is right up our street doing research into all the awful things about running we love talking about. Meanwhile, we discuss an alternative fuelling method, running with the Mafia, Stewart's ego, and Amy talks for a long time about shoe colours insisting she doesn't care about them.

We're sorry about the title of the episode, and yes the story is pretty bad, even by our standards. Amy is being gaslit by social media, but in a very specific way, and Stu accidentally invents a new form of age grading at races.

Why is everyone doing shakeout runs all of a sudden,  and what happened to recovery runs? We don't answer these questions and more in this episode. We talk about our own fairly reasonable plans for 2025 and many of your stupid plans for 2025, and look forward when we hear the tale of how they inevitably go wrong.

The world's premier "nearly shitting yourself while running" podcast returns for the last time this year, and we're here to tell you 2024 was bullshit. We've got lots of your bullshit, lots of our own bullshit, and our favourite bullshit news of the year. Stewart sings.

This weekend Stu succeeded putting on a race and Amy failed to finish it. There's also toe nail cringe, polesplaining, Amy getting chased by a dog, more slagging off of influencers, and breaking topological news from Norfolk.

Amy has a tale to tell. It's not about running, but when has that ever stopped her? We celebrate the return of the Man, the Myth, the Legend at the New York Marathon, complain even more about influencers, do some racing and have a generally lovely times out on the trails, even if some of the trails aren't really trails.

We can't believe we haven't talked about menopause before, so we're putting that right with the fantastic Jane Pangbourne who is all about the no bullshit approach. There's also tales of a very sad race recce followed by the race itself, which was actually a lot of fun, some Australian things, "Ladies", and a very severe Code Brown, which led to Amy shaming herself (but not like that)...

Various illnesses might have delayed this one but don't worry, we give you all the fun details. We switch funny run club names for funny Australian names, wonder if everyone in South Korea wear moon boots, run up and down hills a bit, and really get into Strava's latest and most bizarre feature update yet.

So apparently Amy isn't the only one keeping track of her wild toilet stops while Stewart is still really into run club names combined with the inherent silliness of English place names. We also write a smash hit 90s teen film, break some amazing gossip from 2015, and just laugh at the idea of editing wikipedia to make yourself look good.

Amy has another fairly normal running story that she manages to make into a whole drama, which explains the tree on the episode cover. We get into some weird club names, weird places to run and race, and just plain fucking weird reasons anyone would pay someone else to run their Strava activities for them.

The road to selling out is almost complete as Stu officially becomes one of the fast bois, and Amy talks up how much fun she had doing hill reps and nailing her progression run. It's the twist no one saw coming... We get back to our core principles of insulting vast swathes of our listeners, laughing at your injuries and questioning all of your life choices.

GB Olympian Stewart Harding shares his story of running at the Olympics and completing the Olympic marathon unlike the so-called 'greatest marathon runner ever'.  Amy heads back to the middle boring bit of England, which has apparently got a lot nicer recently even if she inadvertently chased away all the local wildlife. There is also a long story about trying not to poo. Finally, and we can't emphasise this enough, do not enrage the sparrowhawk.

Huge BS merch news if you like your neck tubes to be multi-functional! We've had medals, we now have coasters, we ask what's next? We've got a complex story from Race to the Stones, mourn the passing of some trail running companies and add loads of great entries onto the injury list, as well as the 'definitely not injured' list. 

The running world has been shaken to it's very core with a massive revelation on this episode, and no we don't mean dark mode on Strava. We get into the peril of running on holiday, and dealing with wild animals, stubborn bowels, and horrible nice weather. We reveal how running through injury can only have good outcomes and mock multiple people becoming unstuck for using Google maps to plan their runs.

We speak to running coach Jemma Lewis on why she's only into coaching women, how she got onto a Marks and Spencer advert and how much she regrets camping in Wales. We also have far too much fun talking about things that are probably extremely normal in American races, have less fun talking about gross illnesses that children get, and celebrate pour listeners who are out of action especially if their injury was caused by something funny. Stu gives his review of Man vs Horse (tl;dr DO IT) and Amy delves deep as an investigative journalist to crack the mystery of running heels.

Hold onto your hats because Amy has done TWO things to report back on, including a big first in her running history. As she copes with a ton of raceday-related stress and staring into the abyss, Stu prepares for a very long race by running a very short race, and has a whole exciting new set of niggles and potential injuries to look forward to.

A BIG episode with plenty going on. We speak to author of our new favourite book 'In Her Nature', Rachel Hewitt about the surprising history of women's sport, and the insane ways men ruined it. We cover both sides of the same race, Amy slides her way away from some cows, and Stewart talks himself up and gets exactly what he deserves.

So it turns out Amy isn't just lazy and flaky, and we talk about the reasons why one week out of four is a near complete write-off. Yes, Stu feels very bad about being a dick about it in previous episodes...    Don't worry, we're only serious for a little bit, and then we get into massive Scottish bins, dangerous pina coladas, perilous hiking, supplement overdosing, and we still have to tell people not to cheat.

We uncover an extremely mild scandal at the heart of UK marathon running, which will almost certainly bring the entire sport to it's knees. GIVE US FOOD. Some amazingly unexpected news has completely ruined Stu's summer already, and Amy found glory running down the Mall in London, but a week earlier than most others did.

Let us know once you've done the thing yeh? We've plenty of top BS content from you lot this week, with falling over, seeing dragons, having a bad time in Scotland, and plenty of tangents from Amy's increasingly bizarre life.

Yes that's right, our guest is a dragon. That's how pioneering we are, going where other podcasts don't dare. Amy may have had a dream about tadpoles, we advertise spotify for some reason, Stu runs fast, Amy reveals a remarkable first, and we suggest that you don't shit yourself in Japan. Check out Puff's friend Dana Power for fundraising links!

We come in hot this week with some more takes on runfluencers and social media, as well as a few rants about running for charity. Which sounds a bit risky doesn't it? Oh well, we've had a good run, bye everyone... Amy nearly dies in a river, and dodges the snow. Stu's whole life is just mud.

There has been MUD this week. So much mud. We experience both sides of a race for the first time, and are both exhausted for different reasons. We learn a bit more about where you listen to us, lobster horse roleplaying, a lot more about men pissing in places they shouldn't, and of course a shed load about runfluencers and how no one should give a shit about what a stranger eats in a day, because it's all just fucking smoothies anyway.

Don't mention Strava! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it. We talk to Ian Williams who created Fetch Everyone, a massive website full of fantastic numbers for you to log your runs. There's also a surprising amount of piss related discourse, a fair bit of sweating, and a fantastic bit of cheating.

Amy has been on an exclusive hot weather training camp and Stewart is continuing to dominate local races. These things are partly true, which is good enough for podcast purposes. Also includes talk of absolute zero, flattering seams, dogging and the most adorable running shoes.  

We've got mixed reports of races from the end of last year and mixed luck with getting into some big name races this year! Amy got confused by an aid station, Stewart gets annoyed at Strava, and you all have set some really stupid running targets and we can't wait to hear how they go wrong.

What a bullshit year. At least for most of you, we actually had quite a nice time. We're cancelling race organisers, tricking you into buying tea, cursing cyclists yet again, and talking about all the horribly actually sad reasons why you can't run. What's the weirdest thing you've got from a race goody bag?

Stewart escaped Meriden! We can finally hear all about this race that has been over a year in the making. Good news, it was miserable. Amy's been taking advantage of her car-based freedom by going to one single new place over and over again, and still can't pronounce names.

Just one more episode until Meriden so we're getting into the best bits of any race, the map, the plan and the admin! We've also got some great ultra food ideas from our listeners which are uncharacteristically helpful. Amy also has the least scariest running story you'll ever hear, just in time to have missed Halloween.

We're on a roll with guests and this is a really good one! Louise Butcher had a double mastectomy but instead of shying away from her scars, she's running topless every day not just to raise awareness, but because it feels bloody brilliant! We also talk about running smells because we're 120 episodes in and have run out of things to complain about.

Seriously? FIVE years? Of this? Weird. We go back to our roots for this episode by interviewing a couple of people that we know, but one of them did the Dragon's Back Race, so that's pretty cool. There's also some nostalgia for how shit we were at the beginning, stories about actual shit, shit singing, and someone at a race who was a shit (allegedly).

We've saw some guy on instagram and we liked his posts so we thought we'd get him on the pod! Go check out @running.is.dumb Meanwhile we get into corporate fanboying, the uncanny valley of Stu's singing ability, unconventional cross training, inadvertent inspiration, epic levels of cheating, and swearing profusely at theoretical passers-by.

Well, there's no race report as expected so it's over to you for some of your gripes, moans and outright petty bitchiness about other people's running. Amy tells us all about what she's learnt from running nearly 5 ultras and Stu has once again gone to too much effort to record another song.

Finally it's Stu's turn to be suffering from a stupid long race, although Amy is feeling the long term effects too. We also talk more places that feel wrong to run in, watch PBs, why American race organisers hate you, dingoes, and a surprisingly sensible discussion about running with large breasts.

Did Amy finish her mega-ultra? Spoiler alert: no. The title gives it away. We ask the vital questions: Have you got a niche stat which makes you look good? Are there places you're not really supposed to run? Is your self-motivation super creepy? Can you spot a red flag? And most importantly, where do you keep your orange squash?

We prepare for our upcoming ultras by getting lost before the recce even began, and running track races. Can you guess who did which? A strange animal warning, sports days, more dehydration, getting injured by a plant, and a dinosaur.

May the trail gods bless your run and may you find happiness in a petrol station. This episode is a bit shorter so you're going to have to run quicker!

ANOTHER ultra. ANOTHER local race. MORE dog chat. The worst run Amy has EVER had. Getting lost, meetings, gravel, crying, very worrying PBs and the best motivation to run a PB ever.

Martinus Evans joins us to talk all about the Slow AF Run Club, which we feel lots of you would like to join! There's also tales of heat, hills, holiday, horses, Norfolk town names, potential penises, and the Natwest Fraud Team.  Martinus' book is out now in places that sell books so go get it and let him know who sent you!

Amy goes off-script, but staying on-script isn't exactly straightforward either. Stu wangs on about moving house, and while we haven't won anything we've been near people who have. Who wants a free race place? Email us and if you amuse us we might give you actual money to enter a race. We also reaffirm our support for trans runners, and all our LGBT+ friends going about their lives hoping the Daily fucking Mail doesn't turn up and start harassing you.

What do you want before a race to really get you in the mood? A banging tune, an anthem... opera? We talk about some very dodgy options as well as race reports which perfectly personify our individual styles. A chill ultra for Amy and two super intense 1 mile races for Stu. Also some of the stupidest and worst bullshit running news we've had for a while.  

What a load of bollocks! A strong start for this episode as we finally break the taboo on talking balls. Should your dog's instagram be first person? Is Garmin trying to cancel us? Should Stu blow his money on a coach? All of these questions and more left vague and unanswered as you might expect. Please look after your nipples though lads.

We've both done a race, and they couldn't have been much more different! If you like it hard or you like it slow, you're in the right place. We also deliver a lot of good advice to race organisers using our vast knowledge of how to put on a race, as well as chat on medals, squirrels both in the head and in the hand, Michael Flatley and how to steal a toilet.

There was a horse incident, but we lived to tell the tale. Stu almost didn't live to tell the tale of his race, and Amy nearly got stuck in the Brecon Beacons. Just normal running stuff, right? We're knackered but still manage to wang on for over an hour about running being stupid and hard and stupid.

Amy is appalled that her long run included so much running and Stewart got chased by bloodhounds. Standard weekend. We get into what elements make the very best and very worst race websites. We've all seen them, used them, and for some reason entrusted our bank details to them.

Apologies for the audio quality for most of it, that was Amy's fault. The cover photo is entirely Stu's fault, but we're not sorry about that. Otherwise we've got a Stu-heavy, fairly ranty episode including 'carpet-bag' race companies, European tea and running in snow. Don't worry, Amy's life of a series of random events continues with long run drama and instant karma.