New Zealand distance runner
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PodChatLive 129: Beighton threshold for hypermobility in children, wax baths for plantar fasciitis, and pes planus & hip arthroplasty Contact us: getinvolved@gmail.com Links from today: Rod Dixon winning the 1983 NY Marathon Variability of joint hypermobility in children: a meta-analytic approach to set cut-off scores Effects of cassava wax bath as a new therapeutic approach on patients with plantar fasciitis Planovalgus Foot Deformity in Patients Undergoing Total Hip Arthroplasty Is Associated with Increased Risk of Falls, Implant-Related Complications, and Revisions
On this episode of the podcast Beards and Dun sit down with the one and only Rod Dixon. From his start in running as a 4 year old, to initially making an "enemy" of Steve Prefontaine, helping to inspire a new generation as he was personally inspired by Sir Edmund Hillary, to helping shoe company's learn what the needs of runners are. The stories are pure gold. [Please forgive us for some unforeseen technical issues that lead to less than ideal recording qualities.]
Olympic medals, brotherly love, NYC Marathon Ws & sinking beer with Rod Dixon. Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/ To donate and show your support for the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9K9WQCZNA2KAN
A man who knew Sir Murray Halberg better than most, Rod Dixon talks with Staf about his memories and lasting legacy of Sir Murray Halberg.
On Sportstalk tonight we remembered the legend Sir Murray Halberg. The 89-year-old Olympic gold medallist passed away last night. Rod Dixon was inspired by Sir Murray as a kid to go on to become an Olympic runner himself, he spoke to D'Arcy Waldegrave on Sportstalk LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tonight's edition of Sportstalk looks back on the life and legacy of Olympic great and charity founder Sir Murray Halberg. Highlights include- Olympic bronze medallist Barry Magee on the death of Sir Murray Halberg Olympic bronze medallist Rod Dixon on Sir Murray V8 Supercars driver Broc Feeney ahead of the last race of the season LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 6: ASHES Lisa is in the dark heart of Smile Club. It will take everything she's got to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Content warnings: Strong language. References to terminal illness, blood, self-harm gun violence, torture. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Jude and Margaret by Rachel Morris Hallie and Reporter by Stephanie Rutherford News anchor by Matt Lewney Anthony by Luke Dickson Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. This production is presented by Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 5: TURN Lisa finds herself in a power play with Hallie and Paula, but who will turn the tables and win the game? Content warnings: Strong language. References to sexual assault, sexual harassment and self harm. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Hallie and Reporter by Stephanie Rutherford News anchor by Matt Lewney Dr Mason and Caleb Laurence by Luke Dickson Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. Graphic Design by Mat Lazenby (LazenbyBrown) This production is presented Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022 Smile Club is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 4: SPONSOR Lisa meets her sponsor and realises that, while he is no ally, the real enemy is far more insidious than she ever could have imagined. Content warnings: Strong language. Misogynistic language. Scenes of tension, peril and gun violence. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Hallie by Stephanie Rutherford Jude by Rachel Morris Spruce and news anchor by Matt Lewney Caleb Laurence by Luke Dickson Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. Graphic Design by Mat Lazenby (LazenbyBrown) This production is presented Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022 Smile Club is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 3: ASSOCIATION Lisa is partnered with ‘head girl' Hallie. Secrets and lies are everywhere, Lisa visits Paula to demand some answers. Content warnings: Strong language. Disturbing scenes of implied violence and torture. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Hallie by Stephanie Rutherford Jude by Rachel Morris Issac by Matt Lewney Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. Graphic Design by Mat Lazenby (LazenbyBrown) This production is presented Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022 Smile Club is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 2: LESSONS Lisa comes face to face with old school friend Jude. Confronted by the ghosts of her past, Lisa begins to see the bigger picture of Smile Club. Content warnings: Misogynistic language. Strong language. References to sexual harassment, fatphobia, homophobia, racism and sexual assault. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton. Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Jude by Rachel Morris Man on the tube by Luke Dickson Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. Graphic Design by Mat Lazenby (LazenbyBrown) This production is presented Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022 Smile Club is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Smile Club: The Audio Series Created and written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Episode 1: SPARK The day from hell and a moment of violence sees Lisa Goodwin incarcerated in Smile Club, a government institution for the betterment of women. Lisa's situation comes into sharp focus with the arrival of Paula, a malevolent ‘Pro Smile Executive' who demonstrates just how things are done in this sinister organisation. Content warnings: Violence. Strong language. References to sexual assault and sexual harassment. Written by Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson Directed by Rod Dixon Recording, editing, sound design and original music by Ed Heaton. Cast Lisa and Paula by Andrea Heaton Margaret by Rachel Morris Hallie by Stephanie Rutherford Spruce and News anchor by Matt Lewney Caleb Laurence by Luke Dickson Additional voices by Lynsey Aldrick, Rod Dixon, Luke Dickson, Andrea Heaton, Ed Heaton, Matt Lewney, Rachel Morris and Stephanie Rutherford. Recorded at The Coal Room studio, Leeds. Graphic Design by Mat Lazenby (LazenbyBrown) This production is presented Andrea Heaton and Adam Z. Robinson in association with Red Ladder Theatre Company Smile Club: The Audio Series is supported by Arts Council England Follow us on Twitter @SmileClubShow Smile Club: The Audio Series © Andrea Heaton & Adam Z. Robinson 2022 Smile Club is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The shift to the network edge is transforming the work environment but there is so much information about it, including some confusing marketing messaging, that many are unclear about why it matters, what it costs, and how they should go about assessing and altering their own operations. The Sr. PMM for cloud-managed core networking solutions at Infoblox, Rod Dixon, joins this episode of ThreatTalk to update us on the shift to the edge, and provide some thoughts that can help anyone trying to make decisions about the transition. Tune in to the live broadcast on LinkedIn and Facebook every first and third Tuesday of the month at 11:00 am (PST). Subscribe to the ThreatTalk podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, or Stitcher.
Today's NZ Sporting History goes back the days of moustaches, short shorts and a time when New Zealand punched above its weight in the middle distance running world. For 17 years Rod Dixon represented New Zealand, winning and Olympic bronze, and dominating the cross country and road racing circuits.
Gear up to for a Marathon episode as we're are joined by Rod Dixon, 50 years on from his bronze medal at the Munich Olympics. He runs us through the highs and lows of his career from boyhood to boycotts and the beers inbetween.
Rod Dixon talks about the Munich Massacre and his memories of what happened 50 years ago. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Fifty years ago, eleven Israeli athletes were killed at the Summer Olympics in Munich after being taken hostage by members of the militant Palestinian group Black September. The massacre on 5 September 1972 is one of the darkest chapters in Olympic history. All of the hostages died, either during the initial raid on their sleeping quarters, or else killed during a firefight with German police at a nearby airfield as the hostage-takers tried to spirit the survivors out of the country. Among those with the clearest view of that day's opening events were New Zealand athletes housed 50 metres away. Long-distance runner Rod Dixon spoke to Susie Ferguson.
Rod Dixon is a Kiwi long-distance runner who won Bronze at the 1973 Olympics in Munich. Rod joins Staffy to chat about the Commonwealth Games, how Athletics has changed over time and what he's up to now.
Catch the Afternoons with Staffy Podcast for the 4th of August 2022 on SENZ. Featuring; Michaela Sokolich-Beatson, Rod Dixon, Jeremy Paul, Zoe Hobbs and Nick Davis. Don't miss the Afternoons with Staffy Podcast.
Catch the 'Best Of' reel for Afternoons with Staffy on the 4th of August 2022 on SENZ. Featuring; Rod Dixon, Jeremy Paul, What's Making News, and Zoe Hobbs.
Pursuing your passion takes a lifetime of dedication. Sometimes, you might feel that you're not reaping what you sowed. But the road to success is neither easy nor short. Many successful people needed to work hard and ceaselessly for years before getting a breakthrough in their careers. In this episode, Anne Audain shares her incredible journey as a runner. Throughout her career, she broke many records, won many races, and inspired many significant changes in the sport. Even back then, when there were fewer opportunities for athletes to earn money and go pro, she was able to break the norms and earn a living with her passion. Learn how Anne triumphed over all the obstacles and made history as an athlete, and as a woman. If you want to learn more about Anne's incredible journey and be inspired to set out on your pursuit of greatness, this episode is for you! Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover how running became a professional sport. Find out how Anne overcame challenges as an athlete. Be inspired by her story. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year's time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle? Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research, and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health Metabolic Health My ‘Fierce' Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Episode Highlights [03:17] Anne's Childhood When she was a child, her parents noticed she walked on her heels. Bone deformities grew on her feet, but she couldn't get surgery until she was 13. After her surgery, she wasn't given crutches or a wheelchair; instead, the doctors gave her an orthopedic boot to push her forward on her feet. When she took off her cast, she found that it was easier to run than walk. [06:30] The Start of Her Running Journey She joined the Otahuhu Athletics Club in South Auckland at 14 years old. She tried high jumping and long jumping but ultimately found that she loved running. She finished third in the Auckland Senior 800m Champs and was recruited by her first coach into his athletic squad. When she began running, the longest distance in Olympic Games for women was 800m. [10:06] Progressing Into the Major Leagues She started racing cross country in the senior races at 14 years old. At 15, she won the New Zealand road championships and Auckland vs. Waikato. Then at 16, she raced in the New Zealand championships in the 1500m but wasn't able to go to Munich though she qualified for the Olympics because she was too young. She finished ninth in the World Championships in Belgium at 17 years old. Listen to the full episode to hear more about how she got to represent New Zealand and travel for free many times! [14:08] How She Started Road Racing In 1981, she left New Zealand with her husband and headed to England. Anne got her airfare to England by getting into a New Zealand cross country team to go to Madrid in March 1981. She had no intentions of pursuing the sport, but Rod Dixon told her to try road racing. Anne then came to the United States and finished third in a 10k in New Orleans. [19:58] The First Professional Race Back then, they just raced and won trophies; but road race directors wanted the sport to go professional to stop the under-the-table payments. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, also supported the change so he can sponsor runners. In June 1981, Anne won a 15km race in Portland, Oregon — the first professional race — where there was equal prize money. Despite the consequences, she believed she deserved a chance to earn money, too. Because she was only in the United States on a visitor's visa, she got in trouble since it was illegal to accept money and those who do can get a lifetime ban from the sport. [25:28] How Her Career Took Off The United States road race directors ignored the ban, and allowed her to continue her sport. She was able to race at the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta and continued road racing. By the end of 1981, she had earned $22,000. She also signed with Nike, becoming the first female runner to sign with the company. She eventually chose to become an American taxpayer and deal with immigration. [28:02] Helping Athletes Grow Races becoming professional shook up a lot of sports and gave opportunities for student-athletes to get sponsorship agreements. Becoming a full-time athlete allowed her to get better accomplishments. She was one of the first to get the H-1B visa, which is now used by many athletes. She was only reinstated a week before racing in Brisbane at the Commonwealth Games. Anne believes that athletes should get opportunities to grow when they're young. [36:15] Anne's Many Achievements She set the world record in the 5000m at Mt Smart Stadium. In 1982, she was undefeated in the United States and broke the course records of each race that she ran in. Her two biggest decisions were going pro in the United States and changing coaches. Listen to the full episode to hear all about the amazing races and accomplishments that she garnered in her running career! [36:15] Transitioning Out She retired due to mental reasons since she started losing focus and discipline. Once she made her decision, her coach, John Davies, said she just needed six months of sabbatical, but she knew she was done. In 1993, she founded what became the largest women's only event in the United States. She put her passion into building that event and empowering women to participate in the 5000k race. [45:16] The Biggest Lesson Her sport taught her how to live a focused, calm, and healthy life, which was particularly useful during the pandemic. Learning to live a simple life is the greatest gift. 7 Powerful Quotes “Every dream is to go to the Olympic Games and you can always look back and say, ‘It might have been my one and only chance.'” “So what I was getting out of my sport then was a whole bunch of world travel free, which was absolutely amazing. But who knew where it was all going to go? So I split my career into [...] 11 years as an amateur, and then things could have gone backwards or forwards.” “If I can earn money out of my talent, then I want the same chance.” “And so all these people go, ‘Well, they should be doing it for the love of their country' and so forth. Well, I did it for the love of my country for 11 years, and I was almost lost. I wouldn't be sitting here with another 11 years of even better accomplishments if I had not been proficient.” “How do you grow athletes if you don't give them a chance when they're young?” “In ‘81, I was two weeks away from being gone from the sport; and in ‘82, I had a world record, a gold medal, and was unbeaten. So here's the difference my decision made in my life.” “I think if you can learn to live a very simple life, which we do learn to live a very disciplined, focused, but also a very simple life as professional athletes, that's [...] one of the greatest gifts that you get.” Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Anne Audain: Running Her Way Uncommon Heart: 1 Woman's Triumph by Anne Audain Connect with Anne: Website | LinkedIn | Facebook About Anne Anne Audain, the first professional female distance runner. Throughout her career, she has set records and pioneered professional running for women. She has been inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame, the USA Running Hall of Fame, and honoured with a Member of the British Empire medal from Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to her sport worldwide. She founded the Anne Audain Charitable Trust to support at-risk youth in Auckland in 1991 and the Idaho Women's Celebration 5K in 1993. Her autobiography, Uncommon Heart: 1 Woman's Triumph, was published in 2000. If you want to know more about Anne's journey and achievements, check out her website. You can also reach out to her on LinkedIn and Facebook. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can know how to optimise sleep. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa
Staffy talks to Kiwi running legend, Rod Dixon
You've heard it before: go hard, go long. But do we need to go hard all the time? Many people think that harder is better. However, overtraining and overexertion can reduce your gains and also be detrimental to your long-term health. Let go of this mindset and take on a healthier view of your body. Legendary long-distance running athlete Lorraine Moller joins us in this episode to talk about how training and racing should not be about winning at the expense of your own body. It's all about your personal journey of learning more about yourself and growing from it. With the Lydiard approach, Lorraine shares how her career was mostly injury-free. Her body's performance is stellar, proving the merits of her training! If you want to know how you can adopt a holistic approach to your training, then this episode is for you. Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics. Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year's time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle? Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health Metabolic Health My ‘Fierce' Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how the Lydiard approach to training is a safer and healthier way. Discover the ways we can achieve peak performance and how to remove the obstacles towards it. Understand the ways your body adapts and why it's essential to listen to it. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio. On the Wings of Mercury by Lorraine Moller Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes: Episode 27 - Gary Moller - Functional Nutrition Consultant, Elite Age-Level Mountain Biker Episode 189 - Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Episode 183 - Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Episode 194 - Inside the Mind of New Zealand Olympic Runner Rod Dixon Connect with Lorraine: Lydiard Foundation | Email Episode Highlights [05:19] Lorraine's Background Lorraine grew up naturally active and part of nature. She was engaged in the community and local athletics. At some point, Lorraine became more interested in her school running events and just kept going. During the 60s and 70s, being a professional athlete wasn't a career choice. It was commonly discouraged and seen as for men. When Lorraine's talent was discovered, she was brought to a neighbouring town to train. She competed against women a lot older than her. By 16, Lorraine was representing New Zealand. Listen to the full episode to learn about Lorraine's running journey! [14:37] The Lydiard Approach to Training The Lydiard approach to training is primarily based on endurance training. Building your aerobic capacity is the core of the Lydiard approach. In a way, Lydiard is the father of periodisation. He found what worked and incorporated it into training. Lorraine shares that you need to understand the principles first then apply your own perspective in training. [19:52] What's the Overall Picture? Some people get lost when looking at the details. You need to know the overall picture first. When you don't understand the overall picture, you may overshoot the mark and get burnt out. We have a culture that thinks more is better. But training can give you more than the capacity to win. It's really about the inner journey taking place and what you're learning along the way. [24:25] Take It as a Personal Journey As you're growing, you are influenced by external factors like other people's expectations. But you'll also reach a point where you start dismantling these expectations to uncover your true self. Running was a choice Lorraine made for herself. Through this, she developed a deep connection with her father. When Lorraine didn't do that well, she kept things in perspective. She always came back to being in love with the journey of the race. [28:51] From Track Athletics to Long-Distance Running In Lorraine's experience, long-distance running doesn't make you slower. You'll need to do the work to run faster, but long-distance running lets you sustain your fastest possible pace. The body responds to whatever stimuli it receives, which is why a holistic approach is vital for achieving the best results. The Lydiard training, for example, has different phases for training that consider more than just your endurance. Don't neglect the foundational elements of mobility, coordination, and strength. [39:51] Let Your Body Adapt The Lydiard training first started with helping people with cardiac problems fit enough to finish a marathon. The approach is considerably different from the ones professional athletes consider. But, the Lydiard training is safer long-term. People can adapt to different situations. You can direct your body into what you want to be. Pay attention to your body, especially when it gives danger signals. Learn to back off and give yourself recovery time. Burnout and overtraining usually come from a lack of confidence and trust in your own body. [46:46] What Keeps Us from Peak Performance Hard work is redundant. Things don't have to be hard — just do the work! Lorraine feels a state of flow and happiness in races. The flow state is peak performance manifesting as coordination of body, heart, mind, and spirit. People often don't reach this state of flow because of tension and excess energy. If you don't give yourself time to rest when your body needs it, it will become detrimental to your health over time. You need to identify the fine line between putting your body under strain to get stronger versus pushing it until you break. [56:22] Don't Let Age Stop You People need challenges and goals no matter their age. Invite new experiences and learnings into your life. Don't let age stop you from living your best life. As we get older, we also accumulate more wisdom. Society needs to acknowledge the value of elders more from that perspective. [1:08:11] The Strength and Beauty of Our Bodies You don't need to be perfect; you just need to inch your way forward on your own time. There is a way back even if you've beaten your body with overtraining. Your body is strong enough to regenerate itself. 7 Powerful Quotes from this Episode ‘What I did with the Lydiard system was look at what were the principles, not looking at the hard and fast rules. Because as soon as you start looking at rules you have limited yourself, and it doesn't work that way. It's an experiment of one. Your journey as an athlete is completely unique.' ‘I think the journey of the athlete is a wonderful way to get to know yourself and to be able to tap that in the knowledge and to learn.' ‘That's the beauty I think of the Lydiard training is that It is holistic. It puts all the energy systems and every type of training response in its rightful place. So that you can be at your peak on the day that it counts.' ‘And that's why you go on principles. So you look at what you're trying to achieve, and then how best to achieve it based on the level of that person.' ‘You want a cooperative relationship with your own body and it will give you the information that it has and which is better than if you're trying to perform to these external measures.' ‘We approach a lot of the things that we wish to do, or the things we wish to create in our lives from a state of fear… And then we can't get into this natural flow. ' ‘I think that as we get older, our world should be getting bigger, not smaller. You know, and, and I do think that a lot of what we attribute to old age is just bad habit.' About Lorraine Lorraine Moller is the only woman to have run all of the 20th century Olympic marathons for women. She is a 4-time Olympian, Olympic bronze medalist, world track and field finalist, multiple Commonwealth Games track medalist, and winner of 16 major international marathons, including the Boston Marathon. Lorraine's career started as an exceptional 14-year-old middle-distance runner, coached by John Davies. This continued into a 28-year stellar career as an undefeated master runner. Her wide range of accomplishments earned her title as ‘New Zealand's greatest women's distance runner'. Lorraine credits her mostly injury-free career and high-performance longevity to the Lydiard training approach combined with her unique ‘inside-out process' philosophy towards competition. Since retiring in 1996, Lorraine has helped establish charity running events in Cambodia, Mongolia and East Timor, served as vice-president of Hearts of Gold and NGO in Japan and co-founded the Lydiard Foundation, which educates coaches and athletes on endurance training. Lorraine also wrote her autobiography, On the Wings of Mercury, which became #2 on the New Zealand Best Seller List. “Sports is a powerful spiritual path. When one seeks their most excellent self, they invite the noblest of human qualities into their lives.” Interested in Lorraine's work? Check out the Lydiard Foundation. Reach out to Lorraine through lorraine@lydiardfoundation.org. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn why it's vital to listen to their bodies. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by www.lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Hello everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week. Today, I have another athlete to guest, for a change. It's not a doctor or scientist, it's an athlete. This is an incredible athlete. One of my role models from childhood, Lorraine Moller. Lorraine, if you don't know her, she's an absolute legend. She's a four-time Olympian. She won the Boston Marathon, that's a serious marathon, that one. She has won the Osaka marathon four times. She was in the first four marathons for women in the Olympics, which is an incredible thing. She also was a middle distance runner before doing marathon. She's also the sister of my good friend, Gary Moller, who I've had on the show previously. Lorraine, she has her insights on what it is to be an elite athlete. Lorraine is still training athletes today as part of the Lydiard Foundation. After Lydiard she came through that school, of Arthur Lydiard's training style. It was really interesting to talk to her and sort of go head to head on ideas around coaching. She is available there for help if anyone wants to find out more. Yeah, really interesting conversation with a very, on-to-it lady. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I certainly did. It's really nice when you get to meet your heroes from yesteryear, so to speak, or when you were a kid, and they're just as cool as you thought they would be. Before we go over to the show, make sure you check out our patron program. If you haven't joined already on the podcast family, we would love you to be a part of our VIP family. There are a lot of member benefits when you do, if you wouldn't mind helping us out. Keeping this great content coming to ear, we've been doing it for five and a half years now. It's a globally top 200 ranked podcast now on health, fitness and medicine. We need your help to stay there, we need your help to keep bringing this content out. It's a huge labor of love. 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This is a very powerful program that can help you sort of optimize that so go and check that out at www.lisatamati.com and hit the ‘Work With Us' button. We also have our NMN, our longevity supplement, an anti-ageing supplement that I'm recently started bringing into the country and from New Zealand or Australia. I've teamed up with molecular biologist Dr. Elena Seranova. This is an independently-certified, scientist backed and developed product. This is a longevity supplement that is aimed at upregulating the sirtuin genes, which are longevity genes in the body and science, it's too complicated to name here. But I would love you to check out those two episodes that I've done with Dr. Elena Seranova. Also, head on over to nmnbio.nz. That's N-M-N-bio.nz, if you'd like more information and more on the science behind it, or reach out to me and I can send you a whole lot of information around it. I've been on it now for over seven months and my mom's been on it too for that period of time. I've had huge changes. Actually my whole family has, and we've all had different things that it's really helped us with. It's working on a number of levels, so make sure you check that out. Right over to the show now with Lorraine Moller. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Pushing The Limits. Today, I have an amazing woman to guest, certainly one of my role models, Lorraine Moller, welcome to the show. Fantastic to have you here with me. Lorraine Moller: Thank you, Lisa. Fantastic to be here with you. Lisa: I'm excited for this conversation already. Before we got recording, we already dealt with some deep topics so who knows where this conversation is going to go, but I think it will go pretty deep. You are a legend in the world of running. You have so many, four times Olympian you've won the Boston Marathon, you've won the Osaka marathon three times, you're an author, you're still involved with running. Lorraine, can you just give us a little bit of your background for starters? When did you realize that you were this amazing, incredible athlete? What was your childhood like? Should we go back that far? Lorraine: Usually, not in my childhood, although, you know, we were brought up in a time where we were naturally active and very just a part of nature and engaged in the community and local athletics and swimming and you know, all those things. Walked their feet and just went to the beach on the weekends and got sunburned. All those sorts of things. So it was a very lovely, free, close-to-nature sort of upbringing in my little town of Putāruru, right in the middle of the North Island, and where everybody knew everybody and it was just pretty easy-living, and our needs were pretty simple. Those were the times when we had the quarter-acre section, with the garden out the back and like okay, go get a cabbage for tea. So you'd go cut one and bring it in. So it was, yeah, I suppose it sounds idyllic, but in certain terms that was. It was just a fabulous basis for growing up healthy. I had my trials as a kid. I was in the hospital a few times, and just that separation, and just the emotional eggs have been taken away from my family for long periods of time. It's very lonely. I think that was, I think, you know, we have things that happen to us, and they sort of set you up. They set your story up, and then it's like, okay, go see what you make of it. So I had, I think, running for me was a real freedom. Something that just, I don't think it was something that I really decided to do. I just think it's something that took me. Lisa: It happened to you. Lorraine: One of the key events was, when I went to high school, and we graduated from the little kiddies athletics, doing 50 yards, 100 yards, you know, yeah, I met all that was. We graduated to being able to do the full 40 yards. In my first full 40 yard race at the local club, I could beat the girls who beat me in the sprint. It took me a little bit longer, but I've got your number, you know. So I was really excited by that. So I started to get really keen and show up during the school events, and I won just about everything in the school events. Lisa: Just naturally talented at the event, sort of. Lorraine: Yeah, but you know, at that time, and that would be in the 60s, there was, it wasn't like the girl thing to do. It was nothing in your vocabulary. The four-bill athlete or woman-athlete, professional athlete, even, that just didn't exist back then. That was not a career choice, being an athlete. It was even discouraged, somewhat. It was considered as a man's sport. If you did too much of it, you would become manly and— Lisa: Your uterus might fall out, as Catherine told me once. Lorraine: That's universal, you know. People tell you that all across the world I think, that yeah, that was just a popular meme. You had to wear clean underwear in case you got run over and taken to the hospital, they find out you've got dirty underwear on. Those things sort of just become popular culture, but nobody really thinks about how true they are or whether they really apply. We just accept them. I accepted that as a girl, we didn't have longer events, that we didn't have official events. The cross country was unofficial, usually. So we would have a men's race. Then they would have a little short bill's race, but, you know, that's just the way that it was, I didn't think I was disadvantaged in any way. You just get on with what's available and go like it, and I loved it. Lisa: How did you develop, because even back in the 60s and 70s, there wasn't any official thing that you could go to. How did you actually get—I mean your later career was phenomenal. How did you actually bridge that? Was it a time change too that in the 70s, things started to open up, and or how did that sort of unfold? Lorraine: People were really kind and the club system was very nurturing. So as soon as they realized I had some talent, they took me in hand. I was taken to a neighboring town of Tokoroa, which was sort of like a big town, and introduced to John Davies, who was the bronze medalist from the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. They wanted me to have a proper coach. I was introduced into the Lydiard training theory, from about the age of 14, and for races, et cetera. My event was the 80 yards. I really loved it, and so laps of the track. I also did cross country. But those events I competed in, there were no junior woman. So I was competing against women who were probably 18 years my senior. I did go to my first national championships and the senior women's at the age of 14. Yeah, and I made the final. I came last in the final. We're like a mate. We're pretty darn good. You know? Lisa: Yeah. You were 14? Lorraine: Yeah, sort of, like hanging on, I can remember coming around the straight. I had two people behind me, and I could just see them going, ‘I'm not letting this kid beat me.' Yeah, threw me off, but you know. I was going—representing New Zealand from the time I was 16. That provided opportunity, and that was so damn exciting. Just to be going overseas, and wearing the silver uniform, and getting on a plane and going somewhere, and it was just the most amazing time, and I absolutely loved it. I was put into a competition at a time when I was young enough not to have any respect. Lisa: You had no idea what was coming at you yet. Lorraine: So I sort of figured I could run with the best of them. Yeah, so that was sort of part of my make-up or my set up. Which really, you know, it just went from there, until finally, I sort of took off on my own and went to the US and just sort of, seeking greener pastures. That makes a big wide world and yeah. Lisa: Oh, wow. So tell me a little bit, like Arthur Lydiard. What was he like? Tell us a little bit, you know, so I've heard you say on articles or something, there's a bit of a misrepresentation of how he trained. What was his actual philosophy as an athlete that was actually in under him for a while? What was he like, and what sort of training regime did you have, and how did that develop you? Lorraine: Yeah, I think I was really, really fortunate to grow up in New Zealand, and his system was pretty much adopted by the New Zealand running culture, and I think still has—is part of the culture, yeah. It's based on endurance training. So that's the first thing that John Davies did, was give me a training program. He used to write it, handwrite it on a— and send it to me by mail. So I would get a letter with my training program written down. It would be so exciting. I ran with my dad. So my dad didn't want me going out there by myself, or we ran on the bush a lot. We got lost a lot, but wouldn't have me there by myself. Although I'm sure if I'd navigated, we wouldn't have got lost, but anyway. Yeah, I mean, we just—and we had a great time. It was really fun for me to get to know my dad. I don't think I would have developed that closeness without having that running. It was just fantastic. So we just ended up doing longer and longer runs. It was just building up mileage, just getting some aerobic base, which is really the crux of the Lydiard training, is that you build your aerobic capacity, and that's the main engine. Lisa: Yeah. Because a lot of them, you know, like I had Rod Dixon on last week, on the show. He's also trained under that. Of course, a lot of the great runners that have come out of New Zealand, and there's been many, have trained on that system. Then, you know, was it a real high mileage system? Like, was it—is there anything that you do different now? Because I know, you're still involved with Arthur Lydiard? The groups that you're taking through now, is there any change in the approach that you've had? Because you know, a lot of the listeners out there are runners that are listening to this. So is there anything that you've learned along the way that you do differently now? Lorraine: No, no, the Lydiard system was sound. I mean, the only thing was, as an athlete, I'd come off a season and then I'd go, ‘I'm gonna just train harder than I've ever trained before,' and then I jump in and overdo it and sort of mess it up. That's what we do, we overtrain. So the Lydiard system itself, I think if you just take the way that he put it together, and the, he was the grandfather of periodization, we didn't call it periodization. The exercise physiologist came along a lot later and then just started to put the jargon onto it, and all there is. Arthur was very practical. So it's just what worked, it was about 60 years in the making. So you will find Lydiard, that he evolved it with just trial and error. Then, as more people started to do research, he started to incorporate other things. But he was really like, just what works, and what he put together worked really well. What I did with the Lydiard system was look at what were the principles, not looking at the hard and fast rules here, because as soon as you start looking at rules, you have limited yourself, and it doesn't work that way. It's an experiment of one, and your journey as an athlete is completely unique. You occupy your own place, and space and time that nobody else can occupy. If you can respect that, and get away from any sort of cookie-cutter staff. Lisa: I love that personalization approach. That's what I'm heavily into now. It's not like we have access to genetic testing and things like that now, where we can actually tailor things to people's genetics even. But back then that wasn't the case. But to make it your own, so here's the framework, and then you make it yours. That fits with you and your style of being, in your style of life, and in everything that fits to you, rather than just forcing yourself into the confines of just, this is black and white. I think that that's pretty insightful, especially back then. Yeah. Lorraine: Yeah. So what I'm teaching now, and I teach courses through the Lydiard Foundation, two coaches, on how to apply the Lydiard training. The big thing, I think, is to look at things and the overall picture because the, you might say the devils in the details, but the details can completely tell, like the devil, the wrong story So it's very easy for people to, and most common, I think, to overshoot the mark. To put in too much. Then if you put in too much energy into the task at hand, you will get the opposite of what you intended. Lisa: Yeah, overtraining and burnout. Lorraine: Also we live in this culture where we think more is better. He said also, we pander to outsourcing our information, and so not tapping into this incredible vehicle that we have that can synthesize and put the information together that is specifically tailor-made to you. That is there. It's innate within all of us. We're just not tapping it. I think the journey of the athlete is a wonderful way to get to know yourself and to be able to tap that in the knowledge and to learn. So the focus, and this happened to me, during my own running, there was, initially you're motivated by the—just winning or getting a faster time and all those kinds of things. Then you think, well, what is it really payback? It's pretty silly, you know, you're all just running around the house and in circles. Somebody goes, ‘Oh, I'm really great, because I finished in front of you.' You get all worked up. Does that really matter, in the big scheme of things? Well, in certain terms, it doesn't. The exercise is, and I just gave a talk to our advanced classes on the hero's journey. The hero's journey is that the focus is then on the inner journey that's taking place. Yeah, and is a path for us to get to know ourselves. Socrates said, ‘Know thyself.' It's really sound advice, because, I mean, what else are you going to do to see, you know, you go through life, and then suddenly you get to the other end? Lisa: You don't know what the hell it was about. I mean, this is, this is exactly in line with what I like to talk about, which is like, you know, that we, we learn so much when we do these, you know, athletic endeavors, and I don't care whether you're good, or you're really not talented, and you don't have any ability. It's all about yours—your personal journey. That's why any athlete who's just starting out and doing the first kilometer, you know, is on a journey, to get to know their own body, their own mind, what they're capable of, and we find it, you know, and it's, I hate comparing, you know, like, the actual winning of races and stuff is amazing, but how many of us are actually going to have a career like yours, where you're actually at the top of the podium? For 99% of the people, it's about what they learn along the way, the health benefits that they gather from the training, the strength—mentally. All of these aspects are just even more important, I think, than the, getting the gold medal put around your neck, or the silver or the bronze. It is much more about a personal journey for most people. I mean, you as an elite athlete, at the top of the pyramid, so to speak, did you find that as well? Has it had a bigger implication on your entire life and your life philosophies than just winning? Part of it? Lorraine: Oh, yeah. In the end, though, the inner journey became more important to me than the outer journey. In a way, I think with life, you have your experiences and you're influenced by your parents and your upbringing and your ancestors and all the rest. So we have all these influences that make up who we think we are I think then—and then we go into our older adult life, and we proceed accordingly with this concept of self, which then I think starts to happen. You start to dismantle that concept themselves, and you start gradually stripping it away, so that, hopefully, when you're ready to go out the other end, you have connected with the essence of who you truly are. Not just all these roles and the expectations and put on yourself, you know. Lisa: Was it for you,was there a lot of expectation, you know, like, I had a lot of expectation in my early years from my dad, who I loved dearly, and wanted to impress and wanted to please and so I had a lot of expectation all the way through. So a lot of the things that I did weren't necessarily what I wanted to be doing. They were things that I felt compelled to do, or expected to do. Was that a part of your journey with running? Or was that more, you just had this passion and actual, like Rod just loved running. You know? What was it like for you? Was it a cut and dried thing that this was a passion of yours, or was it more of an expectation that you would—because you were so good? Lorraine: Yeah. No, it was mine. I mean, it was completely driven by me, instigated and driven by me. My family was really supportive. My dad got on board with it. So my dad got into running because I was a teenager that got into running. He figured he was like the canary in the coal mine. If there was—if I was doing too much or overdoing it, you know, and he did the same as me. Well, then he would clog up before I would. That was very nice of him. He did, you know he actually died while he was out running. That was the way he wanted to exit. So he did. Lisa: Well, yeah, it's never a good thing to go. But if you're going to go, I suppose doing something and being healthy until the last moment is the way that most of us would like to exit this world. Lorraine: My parents were, oh, they were obviously proud. I mean, you get out there, and especially when you're in an Olympics, or Commonwealth Games, or something that's really big for your country, you do feel the expectation of your country and how you do and you know it really matters. It's quite personal. Sometimes when I didn't do that, well, and you get refreshed. Lisa: That's harsh. Lorraine: Yeah. Yeah, it is. You just, you know—I don't know, you get over it with pursued— you realize that you have to keep things in perspective. I think one thing I could always come back to and just be in love with the journey of the race and yeah. That it didn't go away. Lisa: That passion stayed right throughout you. So let's talk now a little bit about the actual—some of the highlights of your career because this is like for most of us, we're never gonna get to do these sorts of things at this level. What was it like to go to the Olympics? What's it like to compete in the first marathons that women were allowed to do in the Olympics? What was that like for you? Lorraine: Well, the first marathons, my foray into marathons was another thing. That was sort of serendipity in a way. It just sort of came to me, and maybe there was a certain, I don't know, maybe openness, the new experience, I think that yeah, that just led me into different sorts of places. But what happened in—when I left school, and I was already a nationally recognized runner as a high school kid, and what to do? I didn't know what to do, so I decided to go to phys ed school because it was the closest thing that I could think of that's for a woman. Lisa: It is, exactly. That's all we had back then. Lorraine: Yeah, yeah, you just, that's what sporty girls do, become a phys ed teacher. Gary was, my brother, was already at the phys ed school underneath. So it seemed really easy to hit off down to the need. I thought that was really great because it was really a long way from home. Yeah, you know, and I just loved being a student. I just thought that was so fantastic. So the first day I was there at the phys ed school I got, I was standing on the steps of the phys ed school, and I was sort of looking to my left and looking to my right, and I didn't know where anything was or which way to go for my run. This group of guys came running past. They were a bunch of lunchtime runners, and some of them are very good runners. One of them looked up and saw me standing there in my running shoes and shorts and said, ‘Hey, chick, you gotta come and run with the boys today.' Okay, there's an invitation I can't refuse. Down the steps, I glommed on to the back of this group, I could barely keep up. But we did this run. The next day, I was there again, and the next day, and so I became the girl that ran with this group of guys. Lisa: Crazy girl. Lorraine: Yeah, and they sort of took me under their wing. So I did all the rounds with them. Sunday was like the Needham version of the white tacori run, was the white Eddie's. It's just, just, you run out somewhere over a mountain and down the other side and you've gotten 20 miles, you know. So I started doing those every Sunday with the guys. As a 800-meter runner, you know, I was building this incredible base, and I just got stronger and stronger. Lisa: Did it make you slower doing the long stuff, for the actual short track races? Lorraine: I'm glad you asked. Yeah. No, that's not true, that. Yeah. Endurance running does not make you slow. No, it does not. Though, you do need to do the faster work to bring on your speed. But the endurance will enable you, eventually, to be able to sustain your fastest possible pace. That's the basis of endurance. So nearly all events over two minutes would derive their energy mostly from aerobic means, right? So the greater aerobic capacity you have, the greater capacity you have for any event over two minutes. Lisa: But what about, I've never been fast, that's why we're long. So I don't have a comparison really, of having lost speed because I never had any to begin with. But doing the super long stuff, you know, the ultra marathon distances, I got dreadfully slow when it comes to the shorter distances over time. I always put that down to my muscle, fast twitch fibers mainly tuned into slow twitch fibers. Now, actually, like, in the last five years, where I stopped doing the ultra marathons, and I've been concentrating more on shorter, sharper, I'm still not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm a heck of a lot faster than I used to be over the short distance. So even in your 50s, you can start to go back the other way. But it's interesting to hear you say that, no, you don't find that. Because that's—yeah, interesting. Lorraine: With some caveats in matters that, if you—your body will respond to what you give it. In terms of training, stimulus response, so what training is, you are giving the body a specific stimulus to get a specific response from the body. It will do that really well. So the thing about the Lydiard pyramid is that you build the endurance, but you don't do that ad infinitum. Right? So then you go on and then you go through the faster phases and you develop the muscles on faster twitch and the different ones, right through to your peak events. So, we have quite a few ultra runners who come and do our coaching courses. They get in and they get really excited about doing the phases and getting the full development. That's the beauty I think of the Lydiard training, is that it is holistic. It puts all the energy systems and every type of training response in its rightful place, so that you can be at your peak on the day that counts. What I find with a lot of ultra people is that they've just lost their flexibility and range of motion because they haven't practiced it. Lisa: That's definitely a big part of our training and how we coach—a lot of strength and a lot of mobility, in proprioception, work and coordination and drills and things that traditionally, when I, because when I started back in the dark ages to when we had no idea, and I certainly had no coaching back in the day, I just ran and ran long, because I wasn't very fast, so just run longer than everybody else and I was good at that. But now I understand and what you know, that whole mobility piece of the puzzle is absolutely crucial, and the drills and the form and the strength training or all the foundational elements, to be able to run the mileage, you know, it's like a pyramid for us, how we how we build it. So yeah, I totally agree, and I think most ultra runners neglect that part. That's where they come unstuck to some degree. You get very slow and stiff. There's reasons for that. But you managed to finish the distance, but the quality sometimes goes down with the length of time you're out there. Lorraine: Also, if you're out there for a heck of a long time, you don't want to spend much time in the air. You don't need a lot of upwards motion, or that long, beautiful stride, et cetera. You develop a bit of a shuffle, it's just being efficient at the distance that you're doing, yes. Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing The Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join the program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing The Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from: you can do it for as little as $7 a month, New Zealand, or $15 a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries and much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us. Lisa: Yeah, that's really fascinating. It is like, I did, like I said at the beginning, everything wrong that you could possibly do wrong, I think in my early career. It was just like, go long, go hard, though, you know, but no strikes, no mobility, no drills. I didn't know what running form was. I just ran. Incredible that you can still achieve great distances and that way, but it's certainly not healthy. It was very high mileage in those early days, and that has its own toll. Now we try to train people efficiently because most of the people that we training are also, you know, got careers and kids and jobs and stressors. So we find that you can't train them like you would a 20-year-old professional athlete when they're a 45-year-old mum with three children and a full-on career. Then you're going to break them if you have that high mileage model. So it's much more about time efficiency and getting the best results that they can get with the level of stress that they're already under. So yes, it's just really interesting to compare notes on all this, especially as you've come from the elite level, in a lot of the things that I find with people who are not in that elite group, don't respond the same way that elite runners would, like when you were doing your top level stuff, the amount of mileage and manner of training that you would have been able to cope with is not what your average person can cope with, because you would have been focused on that solely. Lorraine: I think if you look historically at Lydiard training, he started coaching the first joggers group in the early 60s. So the story is that he was invited, after his Olympic successes, to the Tamaki Yacht Club to talk to the businessman there about training, etc. He was asking them about their own levels of fitness. A whole bunch of them said, ‘Well, we can't do any, our doctors told us to take it easy, because we've had cardiac arrest'. And Arthur's like, you know typical, Arthur, you know, ‘That's absolute rubbish. If you guys want to start jogging with me, I will teach you how to run a marathon.' He had quite a group, of which quite a few of them were cardiac patients, and had this running group. He got them to run a marathon in about nine months. You're talking more than a couch potato? Yeah. Lisa: Exactly. He approached that differently than he would with his elite athlete, obviously? Lorraine: He had to, because if they couldn't start out on 100 miles a week and he realized that you can't expect middle-aged men getting run out to do that kind of mileage because they spend so much more time on their feet, that they're actually doing a lot more work than an elite runner, yeah. So then he changed the distance to duration. Lisa: Yes, that's what we do too mostly, duration, because then that's more of it. Because otherwise if you run your good marathons at incredibly fast times, but the person who is at the other end of the marathon is taking six hours, they're going to be athletes for twice as long or longer. That doesn't equate from an equivalent point of view. That's—yeah, so that's exactly what we do. Yeah. Lorraine: Physiologically, it's about the same based on duration. Not based on distance. If you spend two hours out there, and you're just jogging along, and that's as fast as you can go, you will have about the same effect as somebody who runs at the same effort but is heck of a lot faster. The system is adaptable to all levels of runner. That's why you go on principles. You look at what you're trying to achieve, and then how best to achieve it based on the level of their person, but, you know, the—we're all, physiologically, we all basically work the same. We all have—we metabolize fats and glycogen and have the same energy systems and they are invoked at the same perceived effort or level of effort and can be developed. We all have this system of adaptation. We all are losing cells and regenerating them all the time. That is basically so, if you're becoming a new person, like they say, maybe 95% of our bodies are replaced every year, just cells dying and new ones coming on. Or in seven years you get a completely new you. So it doesn't really matter, the point is that, can you direct who you are going to be in the view. Yeah, you can. Athletes know that. Lisa: Yeah. That's what our reputation is all about and why we do it, that's why we train so that we get that reputation. In heavier like—what do you do with people, because we get a lot of athletes who are just head through the wall, type A personalities who want to go harder than what their bodies, and I'm putting myself in this category, to harder than what their bodies can actually cope with, they're burning themselves out, breaking themselves and not actually reaping the reward that they should be for the amount of effort that's going in to their training. How do you try to get them to back off a bit? Lorraine: Yeah. Yeah. So, one of the key things that I teach is that we start right from the beginning, learning to pay attention to our bodies, and getting this rapport with ourselves and learning that you want to a cooperative relationship with your own body and it will give you the information that that it has, and which is better than if you're trying to perform to these external measures, which, there's so many of them because we can measure every frickin' thing that we do, and post it some way of where other people can look at, and they couldn't care less, because they're too busy putting their's up and wanting other people to pay attention to it. So this constant pandering to make ourselves into somebody that we think that's something on the outside that's going to approve of us. So people who overdo it have a lack of confidence, and a lack of trust in their own body and their own physiology. Because my goodness, your body does an incredible job to keep us alive, and to keep us going and to perform the tasks that we give to it so we can achieve the dreams that we have. Then that will bust itself, for you. But we do have sort of certain sort of measures, then that will also put into place when you're going to to kill yourself. But those that are well, I'm not doing this because yeah, our minds are incredible also. But most of them use our minds like a slave driver. Lisa: Yes. I certainly did. Lorraine: Yeah. You have to learn the hard way sometimes. But we have, being able to recognize, and to know where those danger signals are, and to be able to catch them and back off. Those, I started out my courses, were talking about the fallacy of hard work. Hard work is not where it said, everybody thinks, ‘Oh, God, you must be a really hard worker.' Well, you know, I can knock a knuckle down, but you know, why put in more energy than the task requires? So hard is redundant. Just do the work. Don't make it hard. Because then now, as soon as you say hard, people start to stress, they tense up, you know, okay, Lisa: It plops your brain and it becomes a negative, that you associate with, pain with your exercise and things and that it creates a negative loop. Lorraine: It's horrible. When I won big races, it was actually you get in the state of flow, and it feels wonderful. Lisa: Wow. So when you're actually at the top of your game, and winning these international events and things, you felt like—so it didn't feel as if you were killing yourself to get across the line on those days. Lorraine: I always get pretty tired of the marathon. Lisa: Yeah the in and out it. But you felt like you're prepared for this, but not overprepared for this, not burnt out and sorry about it. You actually enjoyed that, you enjoyed those top races that you really did well in? Did that feel like a flow state? Lorraine: The system that I teach, it's a performance system, right? It's good, so that you get the best you possibly can on the day that counts. So that's getting yourself into a peak performance state from wherever you're at. Right? Everybody can do that. That feels amazing. I'm sure you felt it, that you just get there and everything's clicking right. You've got it. So it is a coordination of body, heart, mind and spirit. It's just, they all come together and you reach that state of flow. Actually, for most of us, we don't get there because we are working too hard. We have too much tension. That getting into a peak state is actually an act of surrender. Yeah. So, when you hit it a few times, you go, ‘Man, this feels so good. I'm gonna try and figure out how I got there again'. As I said, when I was young, I'd just go on the on the train harder than ever before, and you know, and then it seems to sort of go away from you and then you get injured or something or you don't perform as well, because you're in the syndrome of hard work, you're overcooking it, you've got excess energy. That energy has to go somewhere, and all it does is that just messes things up. So that precision of giving the stimulus that is needed for the effect. The thing is that the effect of it takes place during the recovery period, not when you're actually doing the task. So, you know— Lisa: That's an important point. If you had a bad night's sleep, you're being under the pump all week with work, you've got kids who have slept in, everything's going to cast it, and then you go and smash yourself, because it's on your list today to do a really long, hard run. You're not going to get the adaptation, you'd have been better to go hang on, well, ‘Life, come at me this week, I'm gonna actually take it a little bit easier.' Having that confidence to do that, and back off, because I think a lot of people are like, ‘Yeah, but I have to go harder'. They congratulate themselves when they slave drive themselves, and they push them through the bad event. While that might make you mentally tougher, and there's some advantages of that approach for a while, it isn't going to get the adaptation that you're going to want, because actually, it's in the recovery, it's in the sleep, it's in the downtime that you're actually going to get that benefit. If you're not able to adapt, and then all that training was for nothing, or worse, it can be even detrimental to your immune system and to your health, your mental health. That's a hard sell, tough-minded athletes who think that they have to enter. I certainly struggled with us, and still do so on occasion, we, but I have to go harder, and I'm not, you know, doing enough, because I'm not getting the results, therefore, you know, a little is good, more must be better. That approach doesn't work. Lorraine: Yeah, look, it's a lack of trust. I think a lot of us are brought up to sort of think in the negative all the time, and to talk about what we don't want to have happen. We approach a lot of the things that we wish to do, or the things we wish to create in our lives from a state of fear. That's a real shame, because that immediately puts us on the backfoot. Then we can't get into this natural flow. Look, the world has set up for us to be creative beings, and for us to have, be able to manifest our dreams and make works that are worthwhile and contribute it, so when we leave this life, we have lived something better, we have used our own talents and things are more enhanced, because of our being here. I think most people have a very huge drive, I think all human beings do, to be of value in this life in some way. I think, you know, we started out talking about this, that we have these systems in our systems, they're not human, you know, they're just systems that are put in place that eventually become self-serving, and they don't serve us. So they will perpetuate fear, etc., because it just gets us putting our energy into the system, rather than putting it into ourselves and our own dreams. I think that what we need to realize is that it is set up in our favor. I'll give you just one really good example of that. When we train, and we give the body a training stimulus, so to meet that training task, that run or whatever we do, that workout, you have used this fuels in your body and you've broken apart all these bonds to provide energy to enable you to do the task, and then you stop doing it. As soon as you stop doing it, the body gets busy. It starts to reconstitute those energy bonds and etc. So all these adaptations are taking place. That brings us back to normal again. But it doesn't just bring us back to normal. It gives us more, it makes us stronger, more storage space, you know, stronger muscle fibers, better oxygenation. It actually adapts itself to better accommodate what we're asking it to do. Yeah. So nature has given you a bonus. I mean, if you can't see that everything is set up in your favor just by that little thing alone, it's like, ‘Wow.' Lisa: Yeah, biology is just incredible. These are hormetic stressors. So when we put our body under strain, we come back stronger. When we put ourselves under too much strain, we actually break it down. So that's the fine line that we have to, for us, for each of us individually, find where those points are. That will shift as we get stronger, and you'll be able to take on more training. But we have to honor the process, that honor the the hormetic stress, recovery, stress recovery, and then build on that so that we can then, you know, eventually you can be running at the best, if it's a training thing, but this is in every area of life, that we're more stressed, we're more resilient. Resilience, the word. We're more able to take on a load, this is just the beautiful thing of all these hormetic stressors and if we don't push ourselves at all, well then, we're going to definitely, the body is going to go well, this is a piece of cake, I can just keep being where I'm at, and then actually start to decline. What I'd be really interested in your take with older people. One of my passions in life is to empower older people to not give up on on their lives because society sees your past that, and that you've got a use-by date, you've passed, you know, all of these sorts of attitudes that are just insidious in our culture that, in the Maori culture, it's a little bit better, where we actually respect their elders, and we value their wisdom, but in general culture, it's pretty bad. We also have this thing—when I retire, then I'll recover and I'll relax. For me, that's the beginning of a downward spiral. So in the rehabilitation journey that I've been on with my mum for the last five years, you know, I set her tasks every day that she has to achieve. She has goals that we're aiming for. Of course, we have phases of recovery, and so on. But she's always on a mission of some sort or another, and she's 79 years old, and we're going forward. I will treat her like that until there is no hope, you know, to the end of her days, because I believe that humans need challenge. They don't need comfort. They don't need to be, you know, mollycoddled and stuck on the couch to watch telly all day, because you're older now. No. I'd like to see people having their challenge, whatever their challenge is, and it could be like, mum has offered art classes now and just loving the creative. She's got time to do something different and that's a goal that is helping her brain stay on point. What's your take on the way society sees people when they get older? How do you approach that from your personal standpoint? Lorraine: Well, from my own personal standpoint, they're getting older. Yeah, I'm with you 100%, Lisa. I think we need to continually be adding new stimuli, and you know, they can be stress, you know, stimuli stress, it's all just, you're asking the body to do new things. So then you're just inviting new experience into your life. I think that as we get older, our world should be getting bigger, not smaller. I do think that a lot of what we attribute to old age, it's just bad habit. Lisa: It's accumulating it for many years and makes it the typical aging things. I mean, we are all going to die at some point, but my goal is to live an extremely long life that is healthy until the end, that's my goal. None of us know what's going to come at us from left field. I've experienced an awful lot, I know that some things can still, but that's the goal. That's the approach that I take. So I'm doing everything in my life and in my family's life, to make that as best as possible. To have constant challenge and have constant goals that you're aiming for and new things that you're learning. It keeps you in this growth mindset for starters, and it keeps your body not knowing what's coming, so it's still having to adapt and go forward, rather than going backwards. As we get older, we get wiser, well, hopefully we do, most of us do, we've got more experience, we're more able to cope with, you know, all the, the emotional things that we probably weren't able to cope with when we were 20, we've got all these experiences. It's just fantastic if we can look to our older generations as the one who provide wisdom for the ones that are coming behind, and they're seen as a valuable resource in our society, because and not as being your past that because you're over 50, or you're over 60, or you're over 70, or whatever, you know, this demarcation line is that people have and they put on themselves, you know, partly because society does this. Lorraine: Yeah and it's a horrible thing for you to be made redundant and society in terms of your value to it. That is largely, I think, exacerbated by what runs the show is generally money. So people are not seeing older people as being contributing into. Yet we need to start valuing other things besides that. I think we are at the moment, just with the times and what it's for, the time of shifting, and there's an invitation here to make sure that we reconnect with our humanness, and start to prioritise what things we value as human beings, because we're in danger of losing a lot of them. We look at our older people, and we also look at our children. Now children have a life expectancy less than that of their parents. Lisa: Yes, horrific. Lorraine: It's the wrong direction, and you can't cut off your old people and your young people are not benefiting from the wisdom that is available, and that wisdom is something that you can't put a price on. We need to get back to, away from this sort of outside focus and measuring everything in those sorts of terms, and start to value our human relationships and our depth of experience and our connection to the divine spark which we all have within us. To value that journey and support each other on that journey. We're all in it alone, and we're all in it together. Lisa: That's beautifully put. I think we are in an age of change, and I hope things will gather some more momentum. We've got lots of problems in the world but we've also got lots of opportunities now to change things. In the areas that I'm working in, I'm seeing huge changes taking place within just the last few years and that's encouraging. Then there is lots of negativity, but I like to focus on the positivity. But I think, yeah, let's start valuing our elder, older population, and they have a lot to bring to the party. What we want to do is help people stay healthier, longer. That requires a bit of a mindset shift. When I take my mom to the gym, she's training her butt off there at 79 years old, and people know where she's come from, like being in a wheelchair for a few years, and not being able to do anything. Now she's doing all this, you know, crazy stuff, well, you know, compared to where she was there. That's a role model. She's a role model for so many older people who now have actually joined the gym, and, you know, we're doing stuff because they go, ‘Well, if Isabel can do it, I can do it.' That's, to me, the greatest, beautiful thing that's come out of that tragic journey that we've been on. It's empowering now, other people to not give up just because they're older. To have that attitude of, ‘I'm going to fight my way back.' Then it's a team event. I'm mum's coach, mentor and driver. She's the one who's willing to put in the hard yards and to do whatever I asked her to do to the best of her ability, and that's a winning combination. I'd like to see more people have that, if they've been on rehabilitation journeys. Even for younger people, that they've got someone in the corner that's willing to help them fight because when you're in a big health battle, you need people fighting with you and alongside you. Lorraine: Yeah. When you're down and you don't have the energy, that's what families are for. That's what families are for. To help you when you need to help and how you can all be putting in and bringing it together. I just think this divorcing ourselves from old people and just giving them a bunch of pills, then putting them in front of the telly, what a waste, what an incredible waste of resources. Lisa: Yep, and loneliness and despair, and all of those things, and the value of that person's life history is just disappearing, when it could be being impassioned, if they, if we can keep their minds active, and their bodies as strong as possible for as long as possible, they have a great value. It's not like, from a societal standpoint, it's often thought, well, once you retire, you're no longer adding value to society, it's measured in monetary value, and you're costing more in the health systems. Hopefully, you don't live too long. That's just an approach to me that is just horrific. The way that society treats its young, and it's old and it's vulnerable, as is the mark of a civilization, I think that is, you know, is that is what we should be measured by, not how strong— Lorraine: Yeah, and I think the example of your mum, is that, all we have to do is take care of what's in front of us and do the best that we can. That is being an example to other people, it just starts to, so she's going to the gym and other people see her and they go out, and they have a whole different mindset about the possibilities and what happens and, and that's all it takes. Lisa: You like the work that you're doing, that's imparting your knowledge. You could be sitting back on a beach somewhere and just enjoying life. Instead, you're still teaching, you're sharing, you're imparting that valuable knowledge that you have to other people, and that is gold. It's so important. Gary, your lovely brother, who I absolutely adore and admire, thinks he's crazy and awesome at the same time. Still world-leading mountain biker at his age, and he certainly helped me on my journey when I was broken and burnt out and came to him, a few years ago going, ‘But Gary, I'm broken, can you help me?' He put pieces of the puzzle back together again, and helped, gave me actually a role model, because he'd done the same thi
Becoming a championship medalist — or an Olympic medalist — is an ambitious goal that many athletes dream of. But are we training the right way? In reality, training to be an Olympic runner is more than just stretching your physical limits; it's also about your recovery, mental strength, environment and so much more. In this episode, famed Olympic runner Rod Dixon joins us to talk about his journey in becoming an Olympic medalist and his victory at the NYC marathon. He shares why creating a strong foundation is crucial, no matter what you’re training for. If you want to learn from and be inspired by one of New Zealand’s greatest runners, then this episode is for you! Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle? Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. 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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the necessary foundation an Olympic runner used to create a solid training base. Learn to believe in yourself and avoid being influenced by others. Understand how to build a strong mentality to handle self-doubt and hesitation. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limit Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for NZD 7 and NZD 15 per month, respectively. Check out the different benefits of each in the link. Rod’s KiDSMARATHON is a running and nutrition educational programme organised to help children in the United States and the world! Check out his website. Connect with Rob: LinkedIn Episode Highlights [05:01] How Rod Grew Up with Running Rod shares that his brother John was a significant part of his running career. John helped coach Rod while Rod was young. He fondly remembers his time growing up and always running from place to place. His father used to explore and travel around Australia by bike, while his mother played basketball and did gymnastics. [11:42] Early Years of Training Learn by doing. You can run the same race twice, but don’t expect a different result when you do everything the same. Run differently. Rod grew up loving cross country racing, especially the beach races through dunes. It was during this time that he was inspired to reach for the 1968 Olympics. His brother, John, immediately put him on a training regimen. Once you have a goal, you need to know how to reach it and what you’re prepared to do for it. Multiple amazing runners inspired Rod to keep going for his goal. Tune in to find out who! [19:13] Approach to the Foundations Get the timing right first, not the miles. The foundation is to start with running long and slow. Rod's brother, John, also helped keep a logbook of his training. This enabled them to narrow down what to improve and work on. Athletes don’t get better from training; improvement comes from rest and recovery. Learn to prioritise your health. This will bring more results than just pushing yourself too hard on your training all the time. Know that there’s a period for different types of training. There will be times when you’ll need to set your foundations and conditioning right first. [25:20] Rod’s Journey Towards Becoming an Olympic Runner Getting acclimated to an area is essential to planning an Olympic runner’s training regimen. With the help of John, Rod realised he was a strength runner. This knowledge became crucial in planning for his races. When you train with runners, it will be a race. Train with marathon runners, and it will be a long and slow run. Choose your training partners based on your needs. Rod’s training with runners helped him learn more than just racing. His nutrition improved, too. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s exciting account of his Olympic journey—from qualifications to his training! [36:47] Handling Self-Doubt Rod shares that he also had bouts of self-doubt. During these times, he would look for his brother John, his mother and his grandmother. Ground yourself and just run, not for training but to clear your head and be in the moment. In a lot of things, confidence matters more than ability. The more confident you are, the more it will bring out your ability. Don’t be influenced by bad habits. What matters is finishing the race. Finishing in itself is already a win. [42:02] Life as a Professional Athlete Training effectively resulted in Rod becoming an Olympic runner, medalist and breaking records. Rod shares that he works full-time in addition to taking on small jobs to balance the costs. Tune in to the episode to hear the ups and downs of being an Olympic runner and a professional athlete. [50:07] Transition from Short to Long Races After his experiences as an Olympic runner, Rod wanted to focus on cross country and longer races. Once you have your foundations, you will need to adjust your training for long races. It's not going to be much different from what you're already doing. Rod shares that he had to work towards the NYC marathon through conquering half marathons and many other experiences. Build on your experiences and learn to experiment. Rod discusses his training in the full episode! [1:04:47] Believe in Your Ability When preparing for a big race, you need to protect your mindset and remember that running is an individual sport — it's all about you. Don’t be influenced by others. Learn to pace yourself and run your own race. A race starts long before you set your foot on the track. Listen to the full episode for Rod’s recounting of the NYC marathon. [1:21:23] Build and Develop Your Mentality People will often hesitate when they face a hill. When you’re in this situation, just keep going. Sometimes, some things won’t happen the way you want them to. But certainly, your time will come. 7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘John would tell me. He said, ‘You know, you've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently.’ 'He said, 'You know, you set a goal, but I won't tell you how to do it. So, you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do. And I think, [it was] then [that] I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus.' ‘You don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover.’ ‘Just remember to learn by doing.’ ‘I just thought this [the race] is about me. It's not about anybody.’ ‘I learned all that in my road racing. That sometimes, you just can't run away from people, but you can find out their vulnerable moments. And when they would come into a hill, they would hesitate because they’d look up the hill. And that's when you try.’ 'My mother had said that sometimes, things won't happen the way you want them to. Sometimes, you know, you're watching this, but your time will come at another point or another time. And I realised then what she was saying when I had one that was my defining moment. It just took longer than average.' About Rod Rod Dixon is one of the most versatile runners from New Zealand. For 17 years, Rod continuously challenged himself with races. His awards include a bronze medal from the 1972 Olympic 1500m, two medals from the World Cross Country Championship and multiple 1500m championship titles from the United States, France, Great Britain and New Zealand. But most importantly, he is well-known for his victory at the 1983 New York City Marathon. Now, Rod is passionate about children's health and fitness due to the lack of physical exercise and nutrition among children. Through KiDSMARATHON, he helps thousands of children learn the value of taking care of their bodies and developing positive life-long habits. The foundation has since made a difference in many children’s lives. You can reach out to Rod on LinkedIn. Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn from the example of an Olympic runner. Let them discover how to achieve more as runners or athletes through self-belief and a trained mentality. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Your host here, Lisa Tamati. Great to have you with me again. And before we head over to this week's exciting guest, just want to remind you, we have launched our premium membership for our patron programme for the podcast. So if you are loving the content, if you're enjoying it, if you're finding benefit in it and you want to help us keep getting this good content out to people, then we would love your support. And we would love to give you some amazing premium membership benefits as well. Head on over to patron.lisatamati.com. That's P-A-T-R-O-N patron.lisatamati.com, and join our exclusive membership club, only a couple of dollars a month. It's really nothing major. But what it does is it helps us make this content possible. As you can imagine, five and a half years of doing this for love, we need a little bit of help to keep this going if we want to be able to get world-leading experts and continue to deliver such amazing content. So if you can join us, we'd be really, really appreciative of it. Head over to patron.lisatamati.com. And a reminder, too, if you are wanting help with your health, if you're wanting to up your performance. If you're a runner, and you're wanting to optimise your running, then please check out our programmes, we have our Running Hot Coaching Program, which is a package deal that we have. We make a personalised, customised programme for your next event. Whether it's a marathon or a 5k, it doesn't really matter, or a hundred-miler, we're up for that. And we're actually programming people for even much, much bigger distances than that. So if you want to come and join us over there, we'd love to see you at runninghotcoaching.com. That's personalised, customised running training programmes that will include everything, from your strength programme, your mobility work, your run sessions, your nutrition, your mindset, all of those sort of great aspects, you get a one-on-one session with me. You get video analysis of how are you running and how can we improve your actual form, plus your customised plan. And if you want ongoing support, then that's available as well. So, check that out at runninghotcoaching.com. We also have our epigenetics programme, which is all about testing your genes, understanding your genetics, and how to optimise those genetics. So, eliminating all the trial and error so that you can understand how do you live your best life with the genes that you've been given? What is the optimal environment for those genes? So right food, the right exercise, the right timings of the day, what your dominant hormones are, what social environments will energise you what physical environments, what temperatures, what climates, what places? All of these aspects are covered in this ground-breaking programme that we've been running now for the past few years. It's really a next level programme that we have. So check out our epigenetics programme. You can go to epigenetics.peakwellness.co.nz, that's epigenetics, dot peak wellness.co dot.nz or just hop on over to my website, if that's a little bit easier, at lisatamati.com, and hit the work with us button and you'll see all of our programmes there. Right over to the show now with an amazing guest who is one of my heroes, a hero from my childhood actually. Now I have Rod Dixon to guest. Rod Dixon, for those who don't know who he is, maybe you were born only in the past 20 years or so, and you really don't know. But if you're around when I was a kid, this guy was an absolute superstar. He is a four-times Olympian; he won a bronze medal at the 1972 Olympics. He's a runner, obviously, he won in the 1500 meters bronze medal. He's won multiple times championships and cross-country running, and who really one of his biggest successes was to win the New York City Marathon and absolute mammoth feats to do back in 1983. So hope you enjoy the insights that Rod Dixon is going to provide for you today. If you're a runner, you will love this one. But even if you just love interesting, amazing people then check out this interview with Rod Dixon. Lisa: Well, welcome everybody. Today. I have an absolute legend with me on the show. I have Rod Dixon, one of my heroes from way back in the day, Rod, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you on Pushing the Limits. Thanks for taking the time. Rod Dixon: Lisa, thank you. I mean, of course, I've known about you and read about you but this is our first time, and it's come about through the pandemic. So, some good things have come out of this. Lisa: There’s definitely some good things come out of it. And I've definitely known about you sort of pretty much my entire, since I was a little kid. So you’re one of my heroes back in the day, so I was like, ‘Oh, wow’. And the funny thing is, we got to meet through a friend in America who just happened to know you. And I was talking with them, and they're like, and I'm like, ‘Can you introduce me?’ Via America we've come, but to get you to Kiwi, so wonderful to have you on the show, Rod. Rod, you hardly need an introduction. I think people know sort of your amazing achievements as an athlete and runner are many, and we're going to get into them. I think one of the biggest, most incredible things was winning the 1983 New York City Marathon. And that iconic image of you with your hands in the air going, and that guy behind you not such good shape. That's one of the most famous images there is. But Rod, can you tell us a little bit about your story, where you came from, how did that you were such a good runner? Give us a bit of background on you. Rod: I think, Lisa, I started… I was born in Nelson, and living out at Stoke, which is just not far out. And my brother, John, three years older, he went to Stoke Primary School. And so, I was in a centre, I think. And my mother came out to check on me. And there’s a young Rod, and he sees, and he said in the centre, ‘I'll go and take my shower now’. And that was my chance to then put all the things that I've learned of how to climb over the gate. And I climbed over the gate, then off I went. My mother got the phone call from the Stoke school. ‘Where is your son, Rodney?’ He said, ‘Oh he’s at the back, hanging in the sand’, and she's, ‘No, well, he's down here at the Stokes school with his brother’. Because we used to walk John down to school and walk and go and meet him to walk him back. And so, I knew that way. And here is my chance, so I think, Lisa, I started when I was four years old, when I ran out. Lisa: When you are escaping? And your brother John. I mean, he was a very talented, amazing runner as well. And actually, he's got into it before you did. Tell us a little bit of his story, because he was definitely been a big part of your career as well. Tell us about John a little bit. Rod: Yeah, well, my mother's family were from Mishawaka. They're all farmers. And fortunately, they were tobacco farmers, hot guns, and sheep and cattle. And so, we would be over with the family a lot of the time. And of course, a big farm, and John would always say, ‘Let's go down and catch some eels’ or ‘Let's go chase the rabbits’. And so we're on, outside running around all over time. And I think, then we used to have running races. And John would say, ‘Well, you have 10 yards and say, for 20 yards, 50 yards, and see if you can beat me down to the swing bridge.’ And I would try, and of course he’d catch me. So, there was always this incredible activity between us. And my dad was a very good runner, too. And so, we would go down for our, from the north we’ll go down to the beach for swim. Pretty well, most nights we could walk and run down there. So we would all run down. And then we would run along the beach to the estuary, and run back again. And then my dad, of course, he would stride out and just make sure that we knew our packing order. Slowly but surely, you see John waited for his moment where he beat dad. And I think, dad turned around and came back to me and he said, ‘I won't run with John, I'll just run with you’. So, I knew what the story was that I had to do the same, but it took me another couple of years before I could beat my dad. So, running was very much an expression, very much part of us. We’d run to school, we’d run home. I would deliver the newspapers in the neighbourhood, most of the time I would run with dad. So, and then at 12 years old, I was able to join the running club, the Nelson Amateur Athletic Harriot and Cycling Club. There’s three or four hundred in the club, and it was just incredible because it was like another extension of the family. And so we would run on farms and golf courses and at the beach or at the local school, sometimes the golf cart would let us run on the golf club. So, there was this running club. So the love of running was very part of my life. Lisa: And you had a heck of a good genetics by the sound of it. You were just telling me a story, how your dad had actually cycled back in the 40s, was this around Australia, something like 30,000 miles or something? Incredible, like, wow, that's and on those bikes, on those days. And what an incredible—say he was obviously a very talented sports person. Rod: I think he was more of an adventurer. We’ve got these amazing pictures of him with his workers in those days, they have to wear knee high leather boots. He’s like Doctor Livingstone, explorer. And so he was exploring and traveling around Australia, just his diaries are incredible. What he did, where he went, and everything was on the bike, everything.. So, it was quite amazing, that endurance, I think you're right, Lisa... Lisa: You had it in there. Rod: ...there’s this incredible thing and genetically, and my mother, she played basketball, and she was very athletic herself and gymnast. So I think a lot of that all came together for us kids. Lisa: So you definitely had a good Kiwi kid upbringing and also some very, very good genetics, I mean, you don't get to the level that you have with my genetics that much. We're just comparing notes before and how we're opposite ends of the running scale, but both love running. It’s lovely. So Rod, I want to dive in now on to a little bit of, some of your major achievements that you had along the way and what your training philosophies were, the mentors that you had, did you follow somebody and started training? Who were you— so, take me forward a little bit in time now to when you're really getting into the serious stuff. What was your training, structure and stuff like back in the day? Rod: Well, it's very interesting, Lisa. This was after did, in fact, incredibly, he was working, and with Rothmans, and he would travel the country. And he would come to the running clubs to teach the coaches, to impart his principles and philosophy with the coaches. And my brother being three years older, I think he tended to connect with that more so, as younger kids. And but we were just pretty impressed, and Bill Bailey used to come in as a salesperson, and he would come and we'd all go out for lunch with Bill and he would tell stories. And we were fascinated by that, and encouraged by it, and inspired by it. So, I think what John did, as we started, John will get to Sydney in 1990. And he noticed that young Rodney was starting to — our three favourite words, Lisa, it’s learned by doing. So I would learn from this race and I would adopt something different. I would try. When I knew, I mean, John would tell me, he said, ‘You've run the same race twice expecting a different result.’ He said, ‘You've got to run differently’. And I would go out train with John and then he would say, ‘Okay, now you turn around and go back home because we're going on for another hour’. So he knew how to brother me, how to look after me or study. And so really, as I started to come through, John realised that maybe Rodney has got more talent and ability than I do. So, he started to put more effort into my training and that didn't really come to us about 18. So, he allowed those five, six years just for club running, doing the races, cross-country. I love cross country — and the more mud and the more fences and the more steep hills, the better I ran. And so that cross country running say I used to love running the beach races through the sand dunes. And I love trackless, fascinated with running on the grass tracks because of Peter Snell and yeah Murray Halberg. And also too fascinated with the books like The Kings Of Distance and of course, Jack Lovelock winning in 1936. One of the first things I wanted to do was to go down to Timaru Boys High School and hug the oak tree that was still growing there, 80 years old now, Lisa because they all got a little oak sapling for the end, and that is still growing at Timaru Boys High School, Lisa: Wow. That was so special. Rod: There's a lot of energy from all around me that inspired me. And I think that's what I decided then that I was going to take on the training, John asked me, and I said yes. And he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said, and I said, ‘Well, I just listened to the 1968 Olympics on my transistor radio’ — which I tell kids, ‘That was Wi-Fi, wireless’. And I said, I want to go to the Olympics one day. And he said, ‘Right, well, they know you've made the commitment’. Now, obviously, during the training, John would say, ‘Well, hold on, you took two days off there, what's going on? So, that’s okay’, he said, ‘You set a goal, but I told you how to do it. So you've got to figure out what you're prepared to do’. And I think then I realised it was my decision making and I had to focus. So I really, there was very, very few days that I didn't comply — not so much comply — but I was set. Hey, my goal, and my Everest is this, and this is what it's going to take. Lisa: And that would have been the 19, so 1972. Rod: No, 1968. Lisa: 1968. Okay. Rod: So now, I really put the focus on. Then we set the goal, what it would take, and really by 1970 and ‘70 or ‘71, I made the very, my very first Kewell Cross Country Tour. And I think we're finishing 10th in the world when I was just 20. We realised that that goal would be Olympics, that’s two years’ time, is not unreasonable. So, we started to think about the Olympics. And that became the goal on the bedroom wall. And I remember I put pictures of Peter Snell, Ron Clark and Jim Ryun and Kip Keino on my wall as my inspiration. Lisa: Your visualisation technique, is that called now, your vision board and all that. And no, this was really the heyday of athletics and New Zealand, really. I mean, you had some, or in the 70s, at least, some other big names in the sport, did that help you — I don't think it's ever been repeated really, the levels that we sort of reached in those years? Rod: No, no. know. It certainly is because there was Kevin Ross from Whanganui. He was 800, 1500. And then there's Dick Tyler, because he went on incredibly in 1974 at the Commonwealth Games, but Dick Quax, Tony Polhill, John Walker wasn't on the scene until about ‘73 right. So, but, here are these and I remember I went to Wanganui to run 1500. And just as a 21-year-old and I beat Tony Polhill who had won the British championships the year before. So we suddenly, I realised that — Lisa: You’re world class. Rod: First with these guys, I can — but of course, there were races where I would be right out the back door. And we would sit down with it now, was it tactics, or was it something we weren't doing in training, or was it something we overdid the train. And we just had to work that out. It was very, very feeling based. Lisa: And very early in the knowledge like, now we have everything as really — I mean, even when I started doing ultramarathons we didn't know anything. Like I didn't even know what a bloody electrolyte tablet was. Or that you had to go to the gym at all. I just ran, and I ran slow and I ran long. And back then I mean, you did have some—I mean absolutely as approach what’s your take on that now like looking back and the knowledge we have now that sort of high mileage training stalls. What's your take on that? Rod: Well, John realised, of course I am very much the hundred mile a week. John realised that and the terrain and I said, ‘I don't want to run on the right job. I just don't like that.’ He said, ‘Okay, so then, we’ll adapt that principle, because you like to run on the cross-country and mounds all around Nelson’. Yeah. And, and so we adapted, and I think I was best around the 80, 85 miles, with the conditioning. There would be some weeks, I would go to 100 because it was long and slow. And we would go out with the run to the other runners. And the talk test showed us how we were doing. At 17, I was allowed to run them, Abel Tasman National Park. And of course, the track was quite challenging in those days, it wasn’t a walkway like it is now. And so you couldn't run fast. And that was the principle behind bringing us all over there to run long and slow. And just to get the timing rather than the miles. Lisa: Keep it light then, the time is for us to use it. Rod: So, he used to go more with time. And then after, we’d come to Nelson and he would give John time. And John would, of course, I would have to write everything down in my diary. And John would have the diaries there. And he would sit with Arthur and I would go through them. And afterwards, we would give a big check, and say that ‘I liked it. I like this, I liked it. I like to see you doing this’. And because we're still the basic principles of the period with the base as the foundation training, as you go towards your competitive peak, you're starting to narrow it down and do shorter, faster, or anaerobic work and with base track. And John, we just sit straight away, you don't improve when you train, you improve when you recover. Lisa: Wow, wise. Rod: Recovered and rest and recovery. Lisa: Are you listening, athletes out there? You don't get better training alone. You need the rest and recovery, because that's still the hardest sell. That's still the hardest sell for athletes today, is to get them to prioritise the recovery, their sleep, their all of those sort of aspects over there. And like you already knew that back then. Rod: And I said once again, just remember to learn by doing. So, unless you're going to record what you've learned today, you're not going to be able to refer to that. Sometimes John would say, ‘Ooh, I noticed today that you didn't do this and this. Bring your diary over.’ And on those days, of course, it was a blackboard and chalk. And he would write the titles at the top. And then from our diary, he would put under, he would take out, and he'd put under any of those headings. And then we'd stand back and said, ‘Now look at this. There's three on this one, nine on this one, two on this one, six on this one.’ We want to try and bring the lows up and the highs down. Let's get more consistency because this is your conditioning period. We don't need to have these spikes. We don't need to have this roller coaster. I want to keep it as steady as we can because it's a 8, 10-week foundation period. So those are the ways that we used to be. And John just simply said, he would say, when you wake up in the morning, take your heart rate. Take your pulse for 15 seconds, and write it down. And then he would say ‘Look, the work we did yesterday, and the day before, yesterday, I noticed that there's a bit of a spike in your recovery on Tuesday and Wednesday. So instead of coming to the track tonight, just go out for a long slow run’. Lisa: Wow and this was before EPS and heart rate monitors, and God knows what we've got available to us now to track everything. So what an incredible person John must have been like, because he also gave up pretty much his potential, really to help you foster your potential because you obviously genetically had an extreme gift. That's a pretty big sacrifice really, isn’t? Rod: He was incredible. And I just saw him yesterday, actually. And he used to live in the Marlborough Sounds. And of course, now that moved back to Nelson and so it's wonderful. I mean, I would always go down there and see him, and I used to love—well, I wouldn't run around — but I was biking around, all around the Marlborough Sounds, Kenepuru Sound. and I do four- or five-hour bike rides in the head. He says to me, ‘What was your big thing?’ And I said, ‘Well, I saw three cars today, John, for three hours’, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, and two of those were in the driveway’. It was amazing. I just loved down there, but now he's back here we see each other and talk and we go through our bike rides, and we go for a little jiggle, jog, as we call it now. Lisa: And so he helped you hone and tailor all of this and give you that guidance so that you boost your really strong foundation. So what was it, your very first big thing that you did? Was it then, would you say that for the Olympics? Rod: I think qualifying — no, not qualifying — but making the New Zealand cross-country team, The World Cross Country Team at 1971. I think that was the defining moment of what we were doing was, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ And so, as I said, 1971, I finished 10th in the world. And then then John said, ‘Well, what are you actually thinking for the Olympics? Are you thinking the steeplechase or the 5000 meters?’ And I said, ‘No, the 1500.’ ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Oh, Jack Havelock, Peter Snell, John Davies’, and then, he said, ‘Good. You're committed, so let's do it’. Okay. Of course, once I have announced that, then, of course, I got all the — not criticism — but the suggestions from all the, ‘Well, I think Rod's a bit optimistic about the 1500. He hasn't even broken 1’50 for the 800 meters. He hasn't yet been broken 4 minutes for a mile. He wants to go to the Olympics. And I think he should be thinking, and John said, ‘Put the earmuffs on.’ Lisa: That is good advice. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Rod: Off we go. And then slowly, but surely, I was able to get a lot of races against Dick Quax and Tony Powell, and Kevin Ross, in that. And then I remember, in Wellington at Lower Hutt, I was able to break the four-minute mile, then I got very close in a race to the Olympic Qualifying time. And then of course, you look at qualifications. And a lot of those runners didn't want, they already realised that they hadn't got anywhere near it. So they didn't turn out for the trials. So John gave up any idea of him going to the Olympics. And he said, ‘I'm coming to Auckland to pace you. And this time, you will stay right behind me. And when I move over and say go, go’. And so because we've done a couple of these earlier in the season, and ‘I said that I can sprint later.’ And of course, I missed out at the time, but this was it. And so, he said, ‘Our goal is for you to win the trials and to break the qualification’. And he made it happen. He said, he ran in one second of every lap to get me to 300 meters to go. When he moved over, and he said ‘Go!’ I got the fight of my life and took off. Lisa: You wouldn't dare not, after that dedication order. And you qualified you got– Rod: I won the trials and qualified. And Tony Polhill had qualified in his and he had won the national championship. So he qualified when the nationals and now I've qualified and won the trials. So, they actually, they took us both incredible. He was an A-grade athlete, I was a B-grade athlete. You got everything paid for, be in your head to train. Lisa: Yes, I know that one. And so then you got to actually go to the Olympics. Now what was that experience like? Because a lot of people, not many people in the world actually get to go to an Olympics. What's it like? What's it like? Rod: So we went to Scandinavia, and to Europe to do some pre-training. And on those days, we used to say, ‘Well, no, you got to acclimatised’. I mean, nowadays you can kind of go and run within a few days. But in my day, it was three to four weeks, you wanted to have — Lisa: That's ideal to be honest. Rod: Yeah, if they were right. Lisa: Yeah. Get their time and like that whole jet lag shift and the changing of the time zones, and all of that sort of stuff takes a lot longer than people think to actually work out of the body. So yeah, okay, so now you're at the Olympics. Rod: So here we were, so and John gave me a written for a track that schedule every day, and this was a training, and he had bounced with knowing that I was going to be flying from London to Denmark. And then, we're going to go to Sweden, and then we're going to go to Dosenbach. And so he expected in all the traveling, all the changes, and really a lot of it was I was able to go out there pretty well stayed with that. Now again, I realised that that wasn't going to work. And but what he had taught me, I was able to make an adjustment and use my feeling-based instinct, saying, ‘What would John say to this?’ John would say this because those all that journey, we'd have together, I learned very, very much to communicate with him. Any doubts, we would talk, we would sit down, and we would go over things. So, he had trained me for this very moment, to make decisions for myself. Incredible. Lisa: Oh, he's amazing. Rod: Absolutely. Lisa: That’s incredible. I'm just sort of picturing someone doing all that, especially back then, when you didn't have all the professional team coaches running around you and massage therapists and whatever else that the guys have now, guys and girls. Rod: It was the two days he knew that I would respond, it would take me four to five races before I started to hit my plateau. I found early in those days that — see, I was a strength trainer to get my speed. I came across a lot of athletes who had speed to get their strength. And so, what I wrote, I found that when I would go against the speed to street, they would come out of the gate, first race and boom, hit their time. Lisa: Hit their peak. Rod: Whereas, I would take three, four or five races to get my flow going. And then I would start to do my thing. My rhythm was here, and then all of a sudden, then I would start to climb my Everest. I've been new. And so John said, ‘These are the races that the athletic, the Olympic committee have given us. I want you to run 3000 meters on this race, I want you to run 800 meters if you can on this race. If you can't run 800, see if you can get 1000. I don't want you running at 1500 just yet. And so, then he would get me under, over. Under, and then by the time that three ball races, now it's time for you to run a couple of 1500s and a mile if you can. Then, I want you to go back to running a 3000 meters, or I want you to go back out and training’. Lisa: Wow. Really specific. Like wow. Rod: He was very unbelievable. Also to that at that time, I had these three amazing marathon runners, Dave McKenzie, our Boston Marathon winner, Jeff Foster, who is the absolute legend of our running, and a guy called Terry Maness. And John said to me, ‘Don't train with quacks and all those other guys. Run, do your runs with the marathon runners’. You see, and they would take me out for a long slow run. Whereas if you went out with the others, you get all this group of runners, then they’d all be racing each other. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t race when you're training Rod: Your ego. With the pecking order, when you ran with the marathon runners, there was no pecking order. Lisa: It's all about pacing and — Rod: And of course, and I would eat with them too because I learned how to eat because they were better eaters than me. I would eat more carbohydrates and more organic foods because it was the long run. I learned to do that. It was interesting because Jack pointed out to me said, ‘Now you see those two guys that were at the track today. And they were doing, and you are quite overwhelmed because they are your competitors and they were doing this incredible workout’. And I said to them, I said, ‘Woop, that what I was up against’. And Jack said, ‘Put it behind you. I want you to come to the dining room with us tonight, and we'll try and see if we can sit with them or near them.’ And I’m sure enough, there they were over there and they were talking. And they were pushing their food all around their plate and they weren't eating much’. And Jack said, ‘Look at you, you've eaten everything, and you're going back for seconds and thirds. If they're not replacing their glycogen, they won’t be able to run very well in a couple of days because they're not eating right’. So that gave me the confidence. Oh, I'm eating better than them. So they may have trained better. And sure enough, you didn't see them at the track. And the coach had taken them off because they were obviously racing too hard, they were racing their and not recovering. Lisa: Recovering. Yeah, so don't be intimidated. Because it's very easy, isn't it, when you start to doubt your own methods and your own strategies, and you haven’t done it right, and so-and-so's got it better than me, and they're more talented. And this is — all that negative self-talk, and you found a couple of guys to go, ‘Hang on, you've got this part better than they've got.’ What a great sort of mentoring thing for them to have done, to put you in that sort of good headspace. On the headspace thing, how did you deal with the doubts? Did you ever have lots of self-doubts? I mean, I know I certainly I did, where you don't feel good enough. Like you're what am I doing here? The old imposter syndrome type thing? Did that ever rear its head in your world? Or were you able to focus and...? Rod: No, absolutely, Lisa. I mean, I would often, fortunately, I could go to John with any question. There is nothing, no stone left unturned. He was amazing. Because he sensed it too, by the way, that being that brother, playing and training. And he was very, very connected with me because he would train with me, and he would sense things. And he'd say to me, he said, ‘Oh, you’re a little bit down today, aren’t you?’ and he said, ‘What's happened?’ There are like bit of a bullying going on in school and this or that, or ‘That girl won't talk to me anymore, and I love her’ and that stuff. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, all that stuff. Rod: And so he was like Marian, my mother. She was very, very on to me, too. She would sit with me and talk with me. And her mother, my grandmother, amazing, amazing people. And I will say this, right now, when my mother was 95 years old, she asked me to come and sit with her on her birthday. And she held my hand. And she said, ‘You can call me Marian from now on’. And I said, ‘Wow, this is fantastic’. And that was my mother's gift to me because I've always called her mother. I never call her mum. No. Always ‘mother’. And that relationship with my mother was very, very powerful, and it came through in my running. And John would now and again have to kind of toughen me up a little bit — that was incredible balance. So I never had anything that I had, I took to bed with me, I never had anything that I would go out. Lisa: Get it all out. Rod: I would say, sometimes, if you're running through the Dan Mountain Retreat. And he said, ‘I know what you get yourself wound up’. He said, ‘Stop, take your shoes off, and hug a tree.’ Lisa: These guys is just so like, what astounds me is that your mom, your brother, these good mentors and coaches that you had were so advanced. And this is the stuff that we’re talking about now, like, I'm telling my athletes to take your shoes off and go and ground yourself every day. And go hug a tree and get out in the sunlight and get away from the screens and do all these basic sort of things. But back then there wasn't that, like, there wasn't all this knowledge that we have now, and they obviously innately just nurtured. It sounds like you had the perfect nurturing environment to become the best version of yourself. Rod: Yes, I think so, Lisa. I was very, very, — and wonderfully, even in the club, in our running club, get this, our chairman of our running club was Harold Nelson, 1948 Olympian. Our club captain was Carrie Williams, five times Australasian cross-country champion. And they took time to run with us kids. They didn't all go out and race. The club captain and Harold would come down and talk with us kids and we would run. And then, I remember Carrie Williams, when he took us for a run. And he said, ‘Right’. He said, ‘Now there's a barbed wire fence in, there's a gate’. And he said, ‘We've got the flag there and the flag there’. He said, ‘You got a choice of going over the barbed wire fence or over the gate’. He said, ‘Come on, you boys, off you go’. And of course, 9 out of 10 went over the gate. And a friend of mine, Roger Seidman and I, we went over the barbed wire. And then he said, ‘Why did you do that?’ And I said, ‘Because it was shorter.’ And they turned to the others, and he said, ‘I like his thinking’. And he said, ‘You've got to have, to jump over a barbed wire fence, you've got to have 100%, you got to have 90% confidence and 10% ability. Lisa: And a lot of commitment. That is a good analogy. Rod: Things like that, all started to, there's this big, big jigsaw puzzle. And all those pieces started to make sense. And I can start to build that picture. And when I started to see the picture coming, I understood what they were telling me. And once again, learn by doing — or another word, another thing that John had above my bed was a sign, ‘Don't be influenced by habits’. Lisa: Wow, that's a good piece of advice for life. I think I might stick that on my Instagram today, Rod Dixon says. Rod: And, of course, wonderfully, all these I've carried on with my programme that I did with the LA marathon, and bringing people from the couch to the finish line now. And when I was going through, we're putting through, I started off with five or six hundred. But I got up to over 2000 people. And basically, it's the matter that I used for my kids’ programme is, ‘Finishing is winning. Slow and steady. The tortoise won the race.’ Lisa: Well, that's definitely been my bloody life history, that's for sure. Finishing is winning and the tortoise wins the race. Yeah, if you go long enough, and everyone else has sort of stopped somewhere, and you're still going. That was my sort of philosophy, if I just keep running longer than everybody else, and whatever. Let's go now, because I'm aware of time and everything, and there's just so much to unpack here. I want to talk about the New York City Marathon because it was pretty, I mean, so you did the Olympics. Let's finish that story first, because you got bronze medal at the 1500 at the Olympics. Now, what was that like a massive, life-changing thing to get an Olympic medal? You did it four times, the first time? Rod: I mean, my goal, and I remember, I've still got a handwritten notes of John. And our goal was to get to the sideline at the first heat. And if you can qualify for the next thing, would we give you this, that, if you're there, this is what we've worked for. And of course, and I remember 1968 again, when I was listening to my transistor radio, to the 1500 meters with Keino and Ryun, Jim Ryun, the world record holder, Kip Keino, Commonwealth champion from Edinburgh in 1970. And here he was, this incredible race, and we were absolutely going in there, listening to it, and it was incredible. And to think they said that four years later, I'm on the start line, and beside me, is Kip Keino. Lisa: Yeah, it'd be, it’s pretty amazing. Rod: And then the next runner to come and stand beside me was Jim Ryun, the world record holder and here I am. And I'm thinking because I don't pick it out, when we got the heats, well you've got the world record holder, silver medallist, and you've got the Olympic gold medallist in my race, and only two go through to the next leap. So I'm going for it but I never, I wasn't overwhelmed by that because John has said to me, our goal is, and I wanted to please John by meeting our goal, at least get to the next round. Well, history has shown that Jim Ryun was tripped up and fell and I finished second behind Keino to go through to the next round. And then and then of course, I won my semi-final. So, I was in the final, and this was unbelievable, it’s no doubt is – Lisa: It’s like you’re pinching yourself, ‘Is this real?’ All that finals and the Olympics. And you ended up third on that race, on the podium, with a needle around your neck on your first attempt in a distance where the people sent you, ‘Yeah, not really suited to this tribe’. Rod: And what was amazing is that just after we know that we've got the middle and went back to the back, and after Lillian came in into the room to congratulated me and Bill Bailey. And they said, ‘You realise that you broke Peter Snell’s New Zealand record’. And I was almost like, ‘Oh my god, I didn't mean to do that’. Lisa: Apologising for breaking the record. Oh, my goodness. I'm sure that's just epic. And then you went on to more Olympic glory. Tell us from... Rod: So at that stage, we went back to… New Zealand team were invited to the Crystal Palace in London for what they called the International Athletes Meet. And it was a full house, 40,000 people, and I didn't want to run the 1500 — or they didn't actually have a 1500 — they had a 3000, or two mark, this right, we had a two-mark. And that's what I wanted to run, the two mark, and that was Steve Prefontaine, the American record holder, and he just finished fourth at the Olympics. And I went out and we had a great race — unbelievable race. I won it, setting a Commonwealth and New Zealand record. He set the American record. And that was just like, now, it was just beginning to think, wow, I can actually run further than 1500. Lisa: Yeah, yeah, you can. You certainly did. Rod: So we got invited to go back to Europe at ‘73. And so we have the called, the Pacific Conference Games in ‘73, in Toronto. So, I asked the Athletic people, ‘Can I use my ticket to Toronto, and then on to London?’ Because I had to buy—may they allow me to use that ticket. And then Dick Quax and Tony Polhill said they were going to do the same. And then we had this young guy call me, John Walker. And he said, ‘I hear you guys are going to England. And could I come with you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’, because he didn't go to the Olympics, but he ran some great races, we thought it was heavy. And he said, ‘Now do you get me the ticket?’ And I said, ‘No, you have to get the ticket’. And he said, ‘Oh, how do I do that?’ And I said, ‘If you, can't you afford it?’, and he said, ‘Not really’. I said, have you got a car? He said, ‘Yes’. I said, ‘Well, sell it’. And he said, ‘Really?’ So he did. And my reasoning is that, ‘John, if you run well enough, you'll get your tickets back again, which means you'll be able to buy your car back again.’ And that was John... Lisa: Put your ass on the line and forward you’re on, because this all amateur sport, back in the day. And it was hard going, like to be a world-class athlete while trying to make a living and how did you manage all of that, like, financially? How the heck did you do it? Rod: Well, before I left in ‘73, I worked full time, eight hours a day. I did a milk run at night. I worked in a menswear store on a Friday night. And then of course, fortunately, I was able to communicate with Pekka Vasala from Finland. And he said, ‘We can get you tickets. So the thing is, get as many tickets as you can, and then you can cash them in’. Right. But then, so you get the ticket, of course, there you wouldn't get the full face of the ticket because you were cashing it in. But if you got enough to get around. And you did get expenses, double AF and those rows you're able to get per diem, what they call per diem. Yep. But by the time you came back, you kind of hopefully, you equal, you weren't in debt. Lisa: Yeah. Rod: Well, then you go back and comment for the Sydney Olympics. Very good friend of mine allowed us to go do shooting and we would go out every weekend and then sell with venison. Yeah. And that was giving another $100 a weekend in, into the kitty. Lisa: Into the kid. And this is what you do, like to set, I mean, I must admit like when I represented New Zealand, so I did 24-hour racing and it's a ripe old age of 42. Finally qualifying after eight years of steps. And I qualified as a B athlete, I did 193.4 in 24 hours and I had to get to 200. I didn't make the 200, but hey, I qualified. And then we didn't even get a singlet, we, and the annoying thing in my case was that we qualified for the World Champs but they wouldn't let us go to the World Champs. And I've been trying for this for eight years before I could actually qualified. And I was desperate to go to the World Champs and then just on the day that the entries had to be in at the World Champs athletics, New Zealand athletic said, ‘Yes, you can actually go’ and I'm like, ‘Well, where am I going to pull $10,000 out of my back pocket on the day of closing?’ So I didn't get to go to the World Champs, which was really disappointing. So I only got to go to the Commonwealth Champs in England and got to represent my country, at least. Because that had been my dream for since I was a little wee girl, watching you guys do your thing. And my dad had always been, ‘You have to represent your country in something, so get your act together’. And I failed on everything. And I failed and I failed, and failed. And I was a gymnast, as a kid, it took me till I was 42 years old to actually do that and we had to buy our own singlet, we'd design our own singlets, we didn't even get that. And that was disappointing. And this is way later, obviously, this is only what 2010, 9, somewhere, I can't remember the exact date. And so, so fight, like you're in a sport that has no money. So to be able to like, still has, to become a professional at it, I managed to do that for a number of years, because I got really good at marketing. And doing whatever needed to be done — making documentaries, doing whatever, to get to the races. So like, even though I was like a generation behind you guys, really, it's still the same for a lot of sports. It's a hard, rough road and you having to work full time and do all this planning. But a good life lessons, in a way, when you have to work really hard to get there. And then you don't take it for granted. Now, I really want to talk about the New York City Marathon. Because there’s probably like, wow, how the heck did you have such a versatile career from running track and running these, short distances? It's super high speeds, to then be able to contemplate even doing a marathon distance. I mean, the opposite ends of the scale, really. How did that transition happen? Rod: Yeah, I think from ‘73, ‘74, I realised that John Walker's and then Filbert Bayi and some of these guys were coming through from the 800,000 meters. And so I knew, at that stage, it was probably a good idea for me to be thinking of the 5000 meters. So that was my goal in 75 was to run three or four 5000 meters, but still keep my hand in the 1500. Because that was the speed that was required for 5000. You realise that when I moved to 5000, I was definitely the fastest miler amongst them, and that gave me a lot of confidence, but it didn't give me that security to think that they can't do it too. So I kept running, the 800s, 1500s as much as I could, then up to 3000 meters, then up to five, then back to 3000, 1500 as much as I can. And that worked in ‘75. So then we knew that programme, I came back to John with that whole synopsis. And then we playing for ‘76 5000 meters at the Montreal Olympics. Pretty well, everything went well. I got viral pneumonia three weeks before the Olympics. Lisa: Oh my gosh. Didn’t realise that. Rod: Haven’t talked about this very much, it just took the edge off me. Lisa: It takes longer than three weeks to get over pneumonia Rod: And I was full of antibiotics, of course. It might have been four weeks but certainly I was coming right but not quite. Yeah. So the Olympics ‘76 was a disappointment. Yeah, finishing fourth. I think the listeners set behind the first. Lisa: Pretty bloody good for somebody who had pneumonia previously. Rod: Then I went back to Europe. And then from that point on, I didn't lose a race. And in fact, in ‘76, I won the British 1500 meters at Sebastian Coe and Mo Crafter, and Grand Cayman, and those guys. So, then I focused everything really on the next couple of years, I’m going to go back to cross-country. And I'm going to go back to the Olympics in 1980 in Moscow, this is going to be the goal. And as you know, Lisa, we, New Zealand joined the World Cup. And we were actually in Philadelphia, on our way to the Olympics, when Amelia Dyer came up to John Walker, and I said, ‘Isn’t it just disappointing, you're not going to the Olympics’. And I look at John and go... Lisa: What the heck are you talking about? Rod: No, and we don't? New Zealand joined the boycott. So at that stage, they said, ‘Look, we've still got Europe, we can still go on, we can still race’. And I said, ‘Well, I'm not going to Europe. I'm not going to go to Europe and run races against the people who are going to go to the Olympics. What? There's nothing in that for me’. And I said, ‘I heard there's a road race here in Philadelphia next weekend. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to go and run that road race. And then I'll probably go back to New Zealand’. Well, I went out and I finished third in that road race against Bill Rogers, the four-time Boston, four-time New York Marathon winner, Gary Spinelli, who was one of the top runners and I thought, ‘Wow, I can do this’. And so, I called John, and we started to talk about it. And he said, ‘Well, you really don't have to do much different to what you've been doing. You've already got your base, you already understand that your training pyramid’. He says, ‘You've got to go back and do those periodisation… Maybe you still got to do your track, your anaerobic work.’ And he said, ‘And then just stepping up to 10,000 meters is not really that difficult for you’. So, I started experimenting, and sure enough, that started to come. And in those days, of course, you could call every day and go through a separate jar. I had a fax machine, faxing through, and then slowly but surely, I started to get the confidence that I could run 15k. And then I would run a few 10 milers, and I was winning those. And then of course, then I would run a few races, which is also bit too much downhill for me, I'm not good on downhill. So I'll keep away from those steps to select. And then I started to select the races, which were ranked, very high-ranked, so A-grade races. And then I put in some B-grade races and some C. So, I bounced them all around so that I was not racing every weekend, and then I started to get a pattern going. And then of course, I was able to move up to, as I said, 10 mile. And I thought now I'm going to give this half marathon a go. So, I ran the half marathon, I got a good sense from that. And then, I think at the end of that first year, I came back rank number one, road racing. And so then I knew what to do for the next year. And then I worked with the Pepsi Cola company, and they used to have the Pepsi 10K races all around the country. And so I said, I’d like to run some of these for you, and do the PR media. And that took me away from the limelight races. And so, I would go and do media and talk to the runners and run with the runners and then race and win that. And I got funding for that, I got paid for that because I was under contract. And so I was the unable to pick out the key races for the rest of the set. And then slowly but surely, in 82, when I ran the Philadelphia half marathon and set the world record — that's when I knew, when I finished, I said, ‘If I turn around, could you do that again?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. I didn't tell anybody because that would be a little bit too — Lisa: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Praising yourself. Rod: So I just thought I'd make an honest assessment myself. And when I talked to John, he said, ‘How?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I couldn't’. And he said, ‘Well then, we’re going to look at that’. Lisa: We got some work to do. Rod: He said, ‘What we will do in 1982, you're going to come back and you're going to run the Pasta Marathon in Auckland, and that was going to be my trial. And Jack Foster was trying to be the first 50-year-old to break 2:20. So, I got alongside Jack and I said, ‘Now this is my first marathon. What do I do?’ And he said, ‘I see all these runners going out there and warming up and I don't want to run 29 miles... Lisa: For the marathon? I need to do some extra miles warmup. Rod: ‘Use the first mile as a warmup, just run with me’. I said, ‘That'll do me’. So, I went out and ran with Jack and then we time in, started down to Iraq, and we're going through Newmarket. And he said, ‘I think it's time for you to get up there with the leaders’. He said, ‘You're looking at people on the sidewalk. You're chatting away as if it's a Sunday run. You’re ready to go’. I said, ‘You're ready?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, go’. And so, alright, because this is Jack Foster. Lisa: Can't leave him. Rod: 1974 at 42 years old. Jack said, ‘You can climb Mount Everest,’ I would do it. Yeah. So, I got up with the leaders and join them and out to Mission Bay. And on my way back, and I was running with Kevin Ryun, he who is also one of our legends from runners. And Kevin, he said, ‘We're in a group of four or five’. And he said, he came out, he said, ‘Get your ass out of here’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You're running too easy. Make you break now.’ So I said, ‘Yes. Kevin’. Lisa: Yes, Sir, I’m off. Rod: So I ran one that and then that was when I talked with John, that was going to be the guidelines that maybe not another one this year, but certainly look at 83 as running a marathon at some point. Lisa: How did you work the pacing? Like going from such a shorter distances and then you’re going into these super long distances, where you're pacing and you're fuelling and all that sort of thing comes into it. Was it a big mind shift for you? Like not just sprint out of the gate, like you would in, say, 1500, the strategies are so very different for anything like this. Rod: Certainly, those memories of running with the marathon boys in 72. And I went back to Dave McKenzie and Jack Foster and talked to them about what it takes. And then, John, my brother, John was also too, very, very in tune with them, and he knew all the boys, and so we started to talk about how it would be. And he said, ‘So I want you to do, I want you to go back to doing those long Abel Tasman runs. I want you to do those long road aerobic runs, and just long and slow.’ And he said, ‘I don't want you going out there with your mates racing it. I want you to just lay that foundation again.’ And he said, ‘You’ve already done it’, he said, ‘It's just a natural progression for you’. So it was just amazing, because it just felt comfortable. And at that time, I was living in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I would be running out or out through the Amish country and the farms and roads, they're just horse and cats. Lisa: Awesome. Rod: I had this fabulous forest, Nolde Forest, which is a state park. And I could run on there for three hours and just cross, but I wouldn't run the same trails. I mean, you'd run clockwise or anti-clockwise, so. And then, but I kept — I still kept that track mentality and still did my training aerobically but I didn't do it on the track. Fortunately, the spar side, they had a road that was always closed off only for emergencies. And it was about a three-
John Gibbons is joined by Adam Smith, Karl Coppack and Alison McGovern to look back at the Real Madrid loss and ahead to the Aston Villa game. Also on the show Lizzi Doyle speaks to Director of Culture for Liverpool Claire McColgan on pilot events and things coming up for the city, and John Gibbons speaks to director Rod Dixon about Homebaked: The Musical. Subscribe to TAW Player for more reaction to all the news and events that matter to you, including interviewswith special guests and documentaries about players and staff past and present…
Kish & Jason talk to the former Olympian that Runner’s World named the most versatile runner in the world, Rod Dixon, about becoming the first athlete to win the marathon in shoes he designed himself, his incredible victory in New York City and how Saucony and his KiDSMARATHON foundation are inspiring kids to get active.A Goalhanger Films productionProduced by Jon Gill & Joey McCarthyExec Producer Tony PastorMusic by DJ SwerveTwitter: @Soleful_PodcastInstagram: @Soleful_Podcast#SolefulPodcastNote: This podcast was recorded remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
For over 15 years, Rod Dixon was among the world’s best middle distance runners, winning medals at the Olympics, World Cross Country Championships, 1500 meter Champion of the United States, France, Great Britain & New Zealand, and Champion of the 1983 New York City Marathon. What Rod experienced and remembered most as a boy, a visit from Sir Edmund Hillary to his school, that visit instilled Inspiration, Empowered Rod Dixon to Achieve success in running the hills and trails outside of Nelson, New Zealand, and that Inspiration, the thrill of competition, team work, fitness and health are the legs of the KiDS Running and Nutrition program he created in 1990 in New Zealand to inspire the next generation, a promise he made to Sir Edmund in 1972. KiDSMARATHON is designed as an “In-School” 8 - 10 or 40 week Run Club/Daily Mile program for elementary age school children. The essential components of the program, “Healthy Connections” nutrition education - healthy eating, training tips, and running skills for the duration of the program. The “Final Mile” is a celebration of their achievements where they are awarded a finisher shirt and replica medal from a race that Rod Dixon has participated in.
Episode Two - January 22nd. Paul and Danny meet every Wednesday for a pint after work. It has been a tradition for three years, and 2020 is no different. But 2020 is different. And as the weeks continue the reality of this new world dawns upon them both and we see how they react as the world starts to fall into chaos all around them… Paul and Danny are connected, and so are all of us. Connected was written by Chris O'Connor and Paul Fox, performed by Stevie Ward and Paul Fox, directed by Rod Dixon, with sound by Dom Smith and is produced by Red Ladder Theatre Company in association with Mantality. Music was composed and performed by Claire-Marie Seddon with lyrics by Chirs O'Connor.
Episode One - January 15th Paul and Danny meet every Wednesday for a pint after work. It has been a tradition for three years, and 2020 is no different. But 2020 is different. And as the weeks continue the reality of this new world dawns upon them both and we see how they react as the world starts to fall into chaos all around them… Paul and Danny are connected, and so are all of us. Connected was written by Chris O'Connor and Paul Fox, performed by Stevie Ward and Paul Fox, directed by Rod Dixon, with sound by Dom Smith and is produced by Red Ladder Theatre Company in association with Mantality. Music was composed and performed by Claire-Marie Seddon with lyrics by Chirs O'Connor.
This episode features the Artistic Director of Red Ladder Theatre Group, Rod Dixon. Rod was a great guest and spoke passionately about many subjects including austerity, the miner's strike, male depression and much more.He asks big questions about whether art can change things and can theatre be used as political activism. Rod has many funny stories too and explains his next projects and where you will be able to see them. Music at the end of the podcasts is Bleak House Fram by Paul Bryce as The Gordons. This episode contains some swearing.
Rod Dixon is one of the greatest runners in New Zealand. Nelson born and bred, he won a bronze medal in the 1500 metres at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. His versatility saw him on the podium in third place at the 1982 world cross country championships in Italy.His greatest victory came in the 1983 New York marathon, a win that took him all the way to the White House where he was congratulated by President Ronald Reagan. Now living in California he’s spoke to Simon and Phil about his programme, now in several countries, to keep kids active called Kidsmarathon.
Kia Ora Whanau. This week Eugene and Matt have the distinct pleasure of speaking to Rod Dixon. Rod is a legend in the sport of running - his highlight reel is simply incredible. Rod won an Olympic bronze medal in the 1972 Olympics in the 1500m and his incredible win at the New York Marathon in 1983 is a masterclass in running your own race, process, tenacity, and geometry. Rod also ran what was then the fifth-fastest 1500m of all time (3:33.89) in 1974 at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games (one of the best track races of all time); came a heart-breaking fourth in the 5000m at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, behind the unmatchable Lasse Viren; took 3rd place at the world cross country champs in 1982; and was a break-out star when road running began to take hold in the United States in the early 80s. Rod was at the vanguard of the move away from the amateur era, advocating for prize money for elite athletes on the circuit. Rod has often been named the world’s most versatile athlete. However, above all the shining light in Rod’s life is the KidsMarathon movement,which he leads with palpable joy. This is an exceptional conversation with an exceptional New Zealander. We talk about how motivating children through running a mile a day has massive flow on effects, we talk about Rod’s Ed Hillary moment, why his Olympic medal doesn’t look like everyone else’s, and that marathon victory. Enjoy.
082: Rod Dixon Part 2 Julian gets his volume up to scratch and has another run-in with Ballarat’s underside.Brad makes a big call on the direction of his running futureBrady rolls out another session with Andy Buchanan and gets a 10K locked in. Malcolm Hicks returns to talk about his World Championships marathon qualifier at Dusseldorf marathon, what the leadup of the race looked like with World Cross, Doha selection Dane Verwey and Bec Rosel take out the 41st Adelaide MarathonResults Runaway Noosa Marathon featured stack fields in the half marathonResults https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx4cll7HEk-/ Ben St Lawrence's Run Crew makes a challenge at Bankstown at the NSW XC RelaysNSW Athletics Report Moose picks another Kyle Merber Tweet of the Week: https://twitter.com/TheRealMerb/status/1122457578594762753 The interview with Rod Dixon continues from the Munich Olympics where he won a bronze medal and then onto the Montreal games where he competed in the 5000m. Using a mixture of tactics throughout leading into it, observing the differences in European and Kenyan racing styles and how it came to blows and friendship with Steve Prefontaine. Rod then talks about his transition to road racing after New Zealand’s Olympic boycott of 1980, winning his weight in beer in Adamstown to then getting courted by Fred Lebow after placing 3rd in the 1982 World Cross Country and making the decision after absorbing the atmosphere of the New York City Marathon. From that moment Rod made the commitment to getting absolutely focused on running the perfect race, training in Amish country and taking homemade gels to culminate in his iconic victory in the 1983 New York City Marathon.Rod’s interview concludes with the story of giving Sir Edmund Hillary a house call to remember and answering the challenge to inspire the next generation that became the genesis for the Kids Marathon Foundation, fundraising to save the local school and getting kids active while working with the Hillary Foundation, how it’s expanded over the years and why its importance is paramount to children’s development. You can find out more about Rod Dixon’s KiDSMARATHON here. Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com For shoes or running apparel contact Julian at: https://www.facebook.com/therunningcompanyballarat/ Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/ To donate and show your support for the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9K9WQCZNA2KAN
081: Rod Dixon Part 1Ellie Pashley fills in for Brad straight after her victory at the Sydney Morning Herald Half.Julian’s getting his next campaign underway while enduring the Ballarat Carsonist saga.Brady gets in a week full of jogging amongst some full-time teaching.Styx Brewery is this week’s sponsor, thanks for their support in both the podcast and running in general. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwyltkjg0Yu/In the Shanghai Diamond League, Georgia Griffith runs a Doha Qualifier in the 1500m - IAAF Report Great Ocean Road Marathon Nick Earl wins the 44km marathon in a new course record, while Rhiannon Snipe goes back to back Peter Kerr while Charlotte Wilson in addition to the 14km the day before Ash Watson and Tash Fraser Event Summary Ultra Trail Australia 22km won by Stephanie Auston and Ben Duffus. 50km Gemma Jenkins wins ahead of previous guest Lucy Bartholomew and Rhett Gibson. Marcin Sweric and Amy Lamprecht each took out the 100km crown. Full Results HBF Run For A Reason featured Matt Ramsden showing his range winning the 12km in a course record time over Nic Harman lining up for his marathon debut at Gold Coast. https://www.instagram.com/p/BxogtD4Js9m/?hl=en Sydney Morning Herald Half won by Liam Adams over Joel Tobin White and Matt Cox while Ellie Pashley runs clear of Melanie Pompeani, Millie Clark and Steph Auston who came off 22km on Friday. SMH ReportFirst listener question from Shane asks how hard should you go in a half marathon in the training for a full marathon and then Ryan asks how much does a U-turn cost in a race and how it affects your rhythm. Moose On the Loose campaigns for lights around Lake Wendouree in the interest of public health safety. Those in Western Australia in July 7th 2019 can find out about the Salming Bibra Lake RunningWorks Festival here. “I just want to drink beer and train like an animal.” The legend behind the quote Rod Dixon is this week’s guest, chatting with Julian in this first of a two-part interview about his athletic range from the 400m all the way to the marathon, starting with his prowess in the egg & spoon race.Rod remembers the inspiration felt from Edmund Hillary visiting his school and seeking something greater to aim for than Everest, having awareness of the great running culture within New Zealand, and comparing how the harriers club system in his time compares with today’s modern running scene.He talks about the importance of having his brother John guiding him to ‘learn by doing’, watching over him and adapting the Lydiard system as well as the impact on other athletes that John had as a coach and gives insight into why Kiwi runners have range. Rod talks about travelling with Dick Quax and John Walker, training together and targeting goal races and working on them together while with along John and also how the coaching structure in New Zealand worked at the time before going into the origin of bathtub beers, getting accommodation close to training and that infamous quote as well as how to manage yourself through the hectic race schedule of the elite racing circuit in Europe. The first half of this epic interview is rounded out with Rod’s experience of the 1972 Munich Olympics where he won the Bronze medal and broke the 4-minute mile on the way, then recounting the evacuation during the ‘Black September’ hostage situation before the heats took place and being next to the Israeli camp and the aftermath from the event. Patreon Link: https://www.patreon.com/insiderunningpodcast Opening and Closing Music is Undercover of my Skin by Benny Walker. www.bennywalkermusic.com For shoes or running apparel contact Julian at: https://www.facebook.com/therunningcompanyballarat/ Join the conversation at: https://www.facebook.com/insiderunningpodcast/ To donate and show your support for the show: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=9K9WQCZNA2KAN
This week we were joined by New Zealand Olympic hero Rod Dixon. We dive into the world of running! How do you love a sport that many people find boring and painful? We find out the answers that might inspire you to get out and hit the pavement... LISTEN TO THE FULL DISCUSSION WITH THE WEEKEND COLLECTIVE ABOVE
This week we were joined by New Zealand Olympic hero Rod Dixon. We dive into the world of running! How do you love a sport that many people find boring and painful? We find out the answers that might inspire you to get out and hit the pavement... LISTEN TO THE FULL DISCUSSION WITH THE WEEKEND COLLECTIVE ABOVE
This week we were joined by New Zealand Olympic hero Rod Dixon. We dive into the world of running! How do you love a sport that many people find boring and painful? We find out the answers that might inspire you to get out and hit the pavement... LISTEN TO THE FULL DISCUSSION WITH THE WEEKEND COLLECTIVE ABOVE
Red Ladder, which bills itself as “Britain’s leading radical theatre company”, this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, tracing its roots back to the left-wing agitprop theatre of the 1960s. To celebrate, instead of its usual fare of new political writing, it has turned to Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children, which artistic director Rod Dixon has staged as a promenade production in a warehouse in Leeds featuring Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle in classic sitcom Father Ted) in the title role. BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Rod when the production had been running for nearly a week about the production, the company's other work and philosophy and fifty years of creating political theatre. Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Lee Hall, opened at the Albion Electric Warehouse in Leeds on 28 September 2018 and runs until 20 October. (Production photo of Pauline McLynn as Mother Courage by Anthony Robling)
It was a sad start to my working day today.As I sat down to my desk at 10am I turned on the radio to hear that Dick Quax had died after a 5 year battle with cancerTheodorus Jacobus Leonardus Quax. Runner, councillor, scrapper.When I was a kid my Dad got me a book called Kiwis Can Fly by Ivan Agnew. It was about New Zealand’s golden age of athletics in the 70s and it focused on John Walker’s achievements particularly his achievement in Goteburg when he became the first man to run the mile under 3 minutes 50. I loved that book. The book’s magic was the way it concentrated on the three musketeers of athletics. Walker, Rod Dixon and Dick Quax. It was a boys own adventure as the trio travelled the world in the days of shamateurism. When athletes received pay for performance but it came in brown paper envelopes and under the table. My copy is signed by all three men.Couch surfing and making ends meet in Europe the 3 hunted competition and improvement. Walker’s achievements ware well known. Rod Dixon found his fame at the New York marathon. But Dick Quax was my favourite because what he did was amazing but always underappreciated.At the 1970 Commonwealth Games he was the first of the new generation to find success but it was a silver medal. At the 76 Olympics he also fell agonisingly short in the 5000 metres, pipped at the post for a gold by a Finn called Lasse Viren, who was widely thought to be blood doping. Viren always used to credit reindeer milk which was a terrible euphemism.But Dick Quax did get his world record, again in the 5000 metres, which was something Walker and Dixon never achieved. He is one of just 3 New Zealanders to get a world record over an Olympic distance joining Snell and Halberg.But he never joined the pantheon of those legends. It may be that he was a competitive and combative man. He was never the quiet hero our nation seems to prefer. Even in the book Kiwis Can Fly the dust cover features Walker and Dixon but not Quax.After athletics he ended out in council and again his combative nature rubbed some up the wrong way. But one could never doubt his passion and conviction and his dedication to public service.I met Dick numerous times. A fast talker full of energy. He always reminded me of a Jack Russell. But boy he had some stories. I didn’t support a lot of his positions but I loved his commitment and company.So today he passed away at the age of 70. An age which doesn’t seem so old to me these days.The world is now a poorer place without Dick Quax. This passionate, energetic, great New Zealander who broke the mould and took our country to the world.
Director of The Shed Crew, Rod Dixon chats to Darren on #GMY
Citytalk this week sees Neil Atkinson back from Utah and ready to take stock on the summer to date with John Gibbons and Gareth Roberts. What is happening with Liverpool's midfield this summer? And why has nothing happened yet? The three chat to Rod Dixon, theatre director about his forthcoming adaptation of The Damned United at the Unity Theatre and in the Edinburgh Festival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Olympic marathoner Rod Dixon believes in the transformative power of physical activity so much that he started the Kids Marathon program. He won the New York Marathon in 1983 and an Olympic Bronze, now his program trains kids to run as soon as they enter school. The schools are realizing that keeping kids active brings test scores up, improves student’s focus and brain power, and reduces the reliance on pharmaceuticals to keep the more rambunctious kids in line. What Dixon also found through his program is that the healthy habits percolate up to the adults. Lessons: 1. Instead of medicating kids in school, keep them active. 2. Physical and nutritional education are essential. 3. Kids are capable. Links: Rod Dixon's KiDSMARATHON http://www.kidsmarathonfoundation.org/ CREDITS Producer – Marion Abrams, Madmotion, llc. Hosts: Joe De Sena with Johnny Waite, Sefra Alexandra, Col. Tim Nye, Dr. Delle & David Deluca Synopsis – Matt Baatz © 2017 Spartan
The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-322 – Geoff Smith -1984 & 85 Boston Marathon Champ(Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4322.mp3]Link epi4322.mp3MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Hello there my strange running friends. How are you? I'm great. Fantastic. Nothing to complain about. Full of joy and abundance. Which, if I'm honest with you, takes a lot of work. It's officially the end of summer in New England. The nights are clear and cold. The mornings are crisp like a fresh, clean blanket. The sun sets later and comes up later, noticeably each day. When I was a youth in school I would hate this time of year. School starting meant the end of a summers' long and languid lethargy. The weather would turn but not enough to be interesting. There wouldn't be any snow to sled on or build with for weeks. The days would be short, dim, cold, windy, rainy and filled with work. Now, Buddy and I, in, perhaps the autumn of our own times feel somehow reborn into the crispness of fall. He roams the house wild eyed and vocal beseeching me to get up, get out and seize the leaf covered forest trails - for that is where we live if only for another year, another day, another fine afternoon or another run. We pad through the fall forests with the leaves crunching underfoot on the dry trail. The underbrush and weeds spent and brown hanging with their last offering of seeds to be blown on the wind to settle another generation. Only the wild asters weighed down by their purple froth brighten the trail. The bees harry them with suicidal intensity and a lack of humor that is to be avoided by the cautious runner. We run, man and dog, weaving through the trees with the sharp afternoon sun lancing through at us from an acute angle like a photgrapher's darkroom light. The motes of dust swirling in our mists and settling in our wake. The tang of wild grapes bites at the air and brings a smile to my heart. The apple trees in the orchard hang thick with fruit. Man and dog. Brothers on the road and trail. Buddy still gets along fairly well for an 80 year old. Like all of us he thinks he can do more than he can. He talks me into it and then he regrets it the next day. With the cool weather he feels a need to get out and play and move. What I often hear when I check in from on the road is “Your dog is crazy!” It's been a long autumn. I've traveled every week that I can remember. I'm doing ok. I'm getting my runs in for the most part and feel fairly strong. I've started to play with speed work and I'll talk about that a bit today. You can't just throw the switch. You have to build into the speed work when you've been away for a while. I've got a long chat with Geoff Smith today. Geoff won the 1984 and the 1985 Boston Marathon. If you know about the history of the race you may know that these were hard times for the Boston Marathon. It was founded by the BAA in 1896 as an amateur race. The prize was always a simple olive wreath. It was serious race, for serious runners and serious runners were thought to be the amateurs who ran for the love of the race. Geoff was the last person to win the Boston Marathon before there was prize money. He did it for love. The pressure of other big-city races offering prize money threatened to relegate Boston to a quaint artifact of the 19th century. A local financial institution stepped in and kept the race alive as they transitioned to a prize money structure. I didn't know Geoff was living locally until I got a tweet from him asking me to retweet one of his races. This chat gave me a chance to talk about what is for me, the golden age of US marathoning. I'll also chat a bit about the power of self-awareness. I've been feeling a bit pressed these last few weeks with the level of travel and the amount of stuff I'm trying to do. I also am thinking of mortality as I see my running partner struggle with age. This time of year is a bit of a whirlwind for all of us. The leisure of the summer passes abruptly into the intensity of the school year. Work gets crazy. Personal commitments pile up. People get over-tired. The kids bring home the first good crop of viruses to mix into the social fray. And so we find ourselves in October tired and sick and bubbling with stress. We have strategies to cope but our armor gets dinged from the continuous hits. The car needs work, the house needs repair the kids need new equipment and a ride to practice. We feel out of control and driven mad, losing that grip we thought we had on life. But, my friends, you are not alone. Don't let circumstance drive you crazy. There is nothing in the environment that you can't choose to live with and work with and, yes, even enjoy. Just take that time to close your eyes and take one long, deep breath. Exhale the stress and smile at the next person you see. They may need it more than you do. On with the show!Section one - Running TipsEasing into Speed Work - http://runrunlive.com/easing-into-speed-workVoices of reason – the conversationGeoff Smith Boston Marathon Winner 1984 & 1985https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Smith_(athlete)http://www.runnersworld.com/races/geoff-smiths-tough-1985-boston-marathon-winhttps://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/11/24/geoff-smith-finding-his-way-back-course/LyFubdvtqyokYV9aws3KMO/story.html1980 and 1984 British Olympian.1980 British 10K Track Champion.1982 Providence College Athlete of the Year.1984 and 1985 Boston Marathon Champion. Personal Records800 meters 1.511500 meters 3.401 Mile 3.552 Mile 8.235K 13.2210K 27.42Half Marathon 61.39Marathon 2.09.08 • Smith's best time in the marathon was 2:09:08, when he finished 2nd to Rod Dixon in the New York City Marathon in 1983. Smith only lost by nine seconds.• Smith was a senior at Providence College when he won the 1984 Boston Marathon.• Both of Smith's wins at Boston were by strong margins. His 1984 win was by over four minutes.• Competed in the Olympics for Great Britain in the 1980 10000m race and the 1984 marathon• Works as a middle school teacher and lives in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts as of 2004.[1]• Has not run at the Boston Marathon since 1990• Worked as a firefighter for ten years in the United Kingdom after his high school graduation. Entered Providence College in 1980 at the age of 26.• Ran a 3:55 mile in Wales in 1982• Was the last person to win the Boston Marathon before the race organizers began giving out prize money to the winners.[2]• Stopped running in the early 1990s having suffered hip problems since birth. Had both hips replaced and has started running again in June 2013. Is coaching local runners South of Boston.AchievementsYear Competition Venue Position Event NotesRepresenting United Kingdom 1980 Olympic GamesMoscow, Soviet Union7th (Q) 10000 m 30:00.011983 New York City MarathonNew York, United States2nd Marathon 2:09:081984 Boston MarathonBoston, United States1st Marathon 2:10:341984 Olympic GamesLos Angeles, United States— Marathon DNF 1985 Boston MarathonBoston, United States1st Marathon 2:14:051987 World ChampionshipsRome, Italy— Marathon DNF Well summer is over. Now it is time to think of fall running. We have a great new event on Shrewsbury street. Worcester. An Oktoberfest 5k October 11th www.of5k.com Our main charity is “Genesis Club an Accredited Mental Health program that provides education, employment, housing and wellness services to those in recovery Join me and let's make Shrewsbury Street rock. RACE INFONEW BEDFORD SANTA RUN OVERVIEWDate: Saturday December 12, 2015Youth Run Start: 12:30 p.m. for ages 14 and under.Santa Run 5K Start: 1:00 p.m.Start Location: TBD (Near Union Street) Thanks Geoff Smith Section two – Self-awareness – the smartest person in the roomhttp://runrunlive.com/the-power-of-self-awarenessOutro - Closing commentsMarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Feeling faster? Feeling more self-aware? Feeling like you have made it to the end of episode 4-322? Yes you have. If you're in the New England area consider Geoff's Santa run. That sounds like fun. And you get a Santa suit. Believe it or not we had our first Groton Road Race meeting. April is just around the corner. It will be our 25th anniversary. Wow. This old dog has run every one. It's my swan song race too. I'll be passing the baton over to another race director. I've learned a lot in my tenure. I'm grateful for the tribe that kept this race a grand and glorious spring ritual for my old home town. I'm testing myself a bit with some speed work. But I feel strong. I think my plan of a January qualification race with the Groton Marathon as a last long run is a pretty good idea. I'd love to get some of you out for the Groton Marathon. This is a self-supported 26.2 mile run that we invented for December because there weren't any good races around the holidays and we wanted to get a marathon in. Let me think on that some more. I'd prefer not to have to spend any money on it but maybe I can put up a web-page and make it official enough to have it recognized by the Maniacs or something. I'll probably run Boston. I'm not qualified but these things have a way of working out for me. If I get the privilege of running it again this year, and God help me, I can't how many I've run, I'm going to use my talents to do something really big for the charity and the community and the sport. The more I work through my self-awareness process, the more I find myself thinking that I've been playing a small game. I know people see me form the outside and maybe see untapped intellect and wonder why I haven't done more. At least that's what I wonder. I think that we all can do more than we think. I read a book by fellow runner Bill Dowis this week and his narrative is similar to my own and so many others and maybe yours. The narrative is that we are muddling along with our lives, doing ok, and somehow, somewhere, sometime find endurance sports. It catches us by surprise. It catches us by the shirt collar, slaps us in the face, stares deeply into our souls and says “you are capable of more than you think!” I think YOU are capable of more than YOU think. I beginning to know I am. I'm not talking about running a marathon. I'm talking about finding something in your life that you don't think you can do and going after it with ferocity and hard work. Not being afraid to fail and not being afraid to succeed. Go into that thing with only one object – to learn about yourself and what you're capable of. And maybe you'll be surprised. And I'll see you out there. http://wapack.freeservers.com/MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Http://www.marathonbq.comhttp://runrunlive.com/my-books
The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-322 – Geoff Smith -1984 & 85 Boston Marathon Champ(Audio: link) [audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4322.mp3]Link epi4322.mp3MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Hello there my strange running friends. How are you? I’m great. Fantastic. Nothing to complain about. Full of joy and abundance. Which, if I’m honest with you, takes a lot of work. It’s officially the end of summer in New England. The nights are clear and cold. The mornings are crisp like a fresh, clean blanket. The sun sets later and comes up later, noticeably each day. When I was a youth in school I would hate this time of year. School starting meant the end of a summers’ long and languid lethargy. The weather would turn but not enough to be interesting. There wouldn’t be any snow to sled on or build with for weeks. The days would be short, dim, cold, windy, rainy and filled with work. Now, Buddy and I, in, perhaps the autumn of our own times feel somehow reborn into the crispness of fall. He roams the house wild eyed and vocal beseeching me to get up, get out and seize the leaf covered forest trails - for that is where we live if only for another year, another day, another fine afternoon or another run. We pad through the fall forests with the leaves crunching underfoot on the dry trail. The underbrush and weeds spent and brown hanging with their last offering of seeds to be blown on the wind to settle another generation. Only the wild asters weighed down by their purple froth brighten the trail. The bees harry them with suicidal intensity and a lack of humor that is to be avoided by the cautious runner. We run, man and dog, weaving through the trees with the sharp afternoon sun lancing through at us from an acute angle like a photgrapher’s darkroom light. The motes of dust swirling in our mists and settling in our wake. The tang of wild grapes bites at the air and brings a smile to my heart. The apple trees in the orchard hang thick with fruit. Man and dog. Brothers on the road and trail. Buddy still gets along fairly well for an 80 year old. Like all of us he thinks he can do more than he can. He talks me into it and then he regrets it the next day. With the cool weather he feels a need to get out and play and move. What I often hear when I check in from on the road is “Your dog is crazy!” It’s been a long autumn. I’ve traveled every week that I can remember. I’m doing ok. I’m getting my runs in for the most part and feel fairly strong. I’ve started to play with speed work and I’ll talk about that a bit today. You can’t just throw the switch. You have to build into the speed work when you’ve been away for a while. I’ve got a long chat with Geoff Smith today. Geoff won the 1984 and the 1985 Boston Marathon. If you know about the history of the race you may know that these were hard times for the Boston Marathon. It was founded by the BAA in 1896 as an amateur race. The prize was always a simple olive wreath. It was serious race, for serious runners and serious runners were thought to be the amateurs who ran for the love of the race. Geoff was the last person to win the Boston Marathon before there was prize money. He did it for love. The pressure of other big-city races offering prize money threatened to relegate Boston to a quaint artifact of the 19th century. A local financial institution stepped in and kept the race alive as they transitioned to a prize money structure. I didn’t know Geoff was living locally until I got a tweet from him asking me to retweet one of his races. This chat gave me a chance to talk about what is for me, the golden age of US marathoning. I’ll also chat a bit about the power of self-awareness. I’ve been feeling a bit pressed these last few weeks with the level of travel and the amount of stuff I’m trying to do. I also am thinking of mortality as I see my running partner struggle with age. This time of year is a bit of a whirlwind for all of us. The leisure of the summer passes abruptly into the intensity of the school year. Work gets crazy. Personal commitments pile up. People get over-tired. The kids bring home the first good crop of viruses to mix into the social fray. And so we find ourselves in October tired and sick and bubbling with stress. We have strategies to cope but our armor gets dinged from the continuous hits. The car needs work, the house needs repair the kids need new equipment and a ride to practice. We feel out of control and driven mad, losing that grip we thought we had on life. But, my friends, you are not alone. Don’t let circumstance drive you crazy. There is nothing in the environment that you can’t choose to live with and work with and, yes, even enjoy. Just take that time to close your eyes and take one long, deep breath. Exhale the stress and smile at the next person you see. They may need it more than you do. On with the show!Section one - Running TipsEasing into Speed Work - http://runrunlive.com/easing-into-speed-workVoices of reason – the conversationGeoff Smith Boston Marathon Winner 1984 & 1985https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Smith_(athlete)http://www.runnersworld.com/races/geoff-smiths-tough-1985-boston-marathon-winhttps://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/11/24/geoff-smith-finding-his-way-back-course/LyFubdvtqyokYV9aws3KMO/story.html1980 and 1984 British Olympian.1980 British 10K Track Champion.1982 Providence College Athlete of the Year.1984 and 1985 Boston Marathon Champion. Personal Records800 meters 1.511500 meters 3.401 Mile 3.552 Mile 8.235K 13.2210K 27.42Half Marathon 61.39Marathon 2.09.08 • Smith's best time in the marathon was 2:09:08, when he finished 2nd to Rod Dixon in the New York City Marathon in 1983. Smith only lost by nine seconds.• Smith was a senior at Providence College when he won the 1984 Boston Marathon.• Both of Smith's wins at Boston were by strong margins. His 1984 win was by over four minutes.• Competed in the Olympics for Great Britain in the 1980 10000m race and the 1984 marathon• Works as a middle school teacher and lives in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts as of 2004.[1]• Has not run at the Boston Marathon since 1990• Worked as a firefighter for ten years in the United Kingdom after his high school graduation. Entered Providence College in 1980 at the age of 26.• Ran a 3:55 mile in Wales in 1982• Was the last person to win the Boston Marathon before the race organizers began giving out prize money to the winners.[2]• Stopped running in the early 1990s having suffered hip problems since birth. Had both hips replaced and has started running again in June 2013. Is coaching local runners South of Boston.AchievementsYear Competition Venue Position Event NotesRepresenting United Kingdom 1980 Olympic GamesMoscow, Soviet Union7th (Q) 10000 m 30:00.011983 New York City MarathonNew York, United States2nd Marathon 2:09:081984 Boston MarathonBoston, United States1st Marathon 2:10:341984 Olympic GamesLos Angeles, United States— Marathon DNF 1985 Boston MarathonBoston, United States1st Marathon 2:14:051987 World ChampionshipsRome, Italy— Marathon DNF Well summer is over. Now it is time to think of fall running. We have a great new event on Shrewsbury street. Worcester. An Oktoberfest 5k October 11th www.of5k.com Our main charity is “Genesis Club an Accredited Mental Health program that provides education, employment, housing and wellness services to those in recovery Join me and let's make Shrewsbury Street rock. RACE INFONEW BEDFORD SANTA RUN OVERVIEWDate: Saturday December 12, 2015Youth Run Start: 12:30 p.m. for ages 14 and under.Santa Run 5K Start: 1:00 p.m.Start Location: TBD (Near Union Street) Thanks Geoff Smith Section two – Self-awareness – the smartest person in the roomhttp://runrunlive.com/the-power-of-self-awarenessOutro - Closing commentsMarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Feeling faster? Feeling more self-aware? Feeling like you have made it to the end of episode 4-322? Yes you have. If you’re in the New England area consider Geoff’s Santa run. That sounds like fun. And you get a Santa suit. Believe it or not we had our first Groton Road Race meeting. April is just around the corner. It will be our 25th anniversary. Wow. This old dog has run every one. It’s my swan song race too. I’ll be passing the baton over to another race director. I’ve learned a lot in my tenure. I’m grateful for the tribe that kept this race a grand and glorious spring ritual for my old home town. I’m testing myself a bit with some speed work. But I feel strong. I think my plan of a January qualification race with the Groton Marathon as a last long run is a pretty good idea. I’d love to get some of you out for the Groton Marathon. This is a self-supported 26.2 mile run that we invented for December because there weren’t any good races around the holidays and we wanted to get a marathon in. Let me think on that some more. I’d prefer not to have to spend any money on it but maybe I can put up a web-page and make it official enough to have it recognized by the Maniacs or something. I’ll probably run Boston. I’m not qualified but these things have a way of working out for me. If I get the privilege of running it again this year, and God help me, I can’t how many I’ve run, I’m going to use my talents to do something really big for the charity and the community and the sport. The more I work through my self-awareness process, the more I find myself thinking that I’ve been playing a small game. I know people see me form the outside and maybe see untapped intellect and wonder why I haven’t done more. At least that’s what I wonder. I think that we all can do more than we think. I read a book by fellow runner Bill Dowis this week and his narrative is similar to my own and so many others and maybe yours. The narrative is that we are muddling along with our lives, doing ok, and somehow, somewhere, sometime find endurance sports. It catches us by surprise. It catches us by the shirt collar, slaps us in the face, stares deeply into our souls and says “you are capable of more than you think!” I think YOU are capable of more than YOU think. I beginning to know I am. I’m not talking about running a marathon. I’m talking about finding something in your life that you don’t think you can do and going after it with ferocity and hard work. Not being afraid to fail and not being afraid to succeed. Go into that thing with only one object – to learn about yourself and what you’re capable of. And maybe you’ll be surprised. And I’ll see you out there. http://wapack.freeservers.com/MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - http://www.marathonbq.com/qualify-for-the-boston-marathon-in-14-weeks/Http://www.marathonbq.comhttp://runrunlive.com/my-books
Sarah and Dimity welcome two guests to talk about getting kids active and healthy. First up is Olympian Rod Dixon, a father (and grandfather!) runner who founded Kid’s Marathon Foundation, an in-school running and nutrition program that gets kids moving. In his delightful Kiwi accent, Rod shares stories about his start in running and how his experience lead him to help “keep kids calibrated” by bringing running into their school day. This 1983 New York City Marathon champion shares numerous race-day tips, including the importance of slowing down in the first half of a competition. Next the gals are joined by Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Martin is prancing up and down Bournemouth beach front in his Rudolph budgie smugglers and Tom is on his lonesome. This weeks interview is with New Zealand running legend Rod Dixon. Don't forget to sign uop for Jantastic and a Happy New Year!
For 17 years, Rod Dixon was one of the best runners in the World. He is an Olympic Medalist; two-time World Cross Country Championship Medalist and the 1500m Champion of the United States, France, Great Britain, and New Zealand. And, to this day, his victory in the 1983 New York City Marathon remains one of the most dramatic finishes the event has ever seen. Rod is now a passionate advocate of the worldwide children's health and fitness movement. He knows that kids around the world are not getting the physical exercise and nutrition they need. It is Rod's goal to bring the KidsMarathon Foundation and program to thousands of children around the world, so they can experience the true value (and fun!) of exercise and nutrition, and develop positive life-long habits.
On the eve of The Boston Marathon, our guest Geoff Smith 2 X Winner reflects on past achievements as a World Class runner and the state of running today. What does The Boston Marathon mean to him, given the tragic attack on America's most important Marathon? Geoff Smith was the man to beat at all the major races back in the early 80's, having been edged out by Rod Dixon at the New York Marathon in 1983 by a mere 8 seconds after leading the race for 26 miles. He won Boston handily in both 1984 and 1985, a true running legend with a lot to share. This is a show you don't want to miss!
In the 1980s Rod Dixon was one of the most competitive runners on the American road-racing circuit. He set world-class times in the 1500 m (3:33.9) to the marathon (2:08:59), and won bronze medals in the World Cross Country Championships in 1973 and 1982. His 1983 victory in New York City Marathon was the most dramatic finishes the event has seen, when he came from behind to catch leader Geoff Smith at the 26-mile mark and win by 9 seconds. Rod Dixon's is the founder of the KIDS MARATHON FOUNDATION whose mission is to create a life-long commitment to good health and fitness habits in children at risk of obesity-related health problems. The program educates, empowers, and inspires 7-12 year old children to become and stay fit.
In this episode, we bring you a new interview from last September’s Spartan Podfest at the Squaw Valley Resort in Lake Tahoe - featuring 68-year old Olympian Rod Dixon. Rod Dixon is a legend in the running community. He’s an Olympic Bronze medalists and won the 1983 NYC Marathon in one of the most dramatic finishes the race has ever seen. Rod’s additional triumphs include: winning the national 1500m titles of New Zealand, France, U.S.A, and Great Britain; running the fifth fastest 1500m of all time 1974 at the Christchurch Commonwealth Games; a fourth-place finish in the 5000m at the 1976 Montreal Olympics; victories at the Philadelphia Distance Classic in 1980 and 1981 in course record times; victories at the Examiner Bay to Breakers Road Race in San Francisco in 1982 and 1983 in course record time; and a 10th place finish in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics marathon. What’s interesting and different about this interview is that Rod doesn’t talk much about himself at all. Instead, he shines the light on his current passion - helping kids get up and running through Rod Dixon’s KiDSMARATHON Foundation. We discuss why it’s so important to start kids running early, and the benefits that can come with parents running with their kids. Learn more about Rod Dixon’s KiDSMARATHON Foundation and how to bring it to a school near you at KidsMarathonFoundation.org.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/seasoned-athlete/donations