Brian: 0:00

So you're thinking about running but not sure how to take the first step. My name is Brian Patterson and I'm here to help. Welcome to Brian's Rompod. Welcome back to brian's run pod, and it's me, brian, talking to you about all things running. In the second part of my discussion with andrea, I delved deeper into how she coaches clients from the other side of the world. Plus Plus, we find out what it was like to run the New York Marathon. I know you'll enjoy listening to the second part of my interview with Andrea. So here we go, let's get into it. So with those online clients, you sort of like you're providing. Obviously you're doing an online program, but you know what's the. You know they come back with feedback about how that went. You know how does that sort of transaction work?

Andrea: 1:09

so I have a.

Andrea: 1:10

I have an app called training peaks, which I'm sure many of your listeners will be familiar with okay so it kind of operates a little bit like calendar or a desk planner where I can populate workouts, say on a Monday, a Thursday and a Saturday, for example, and it'll sync with the client's smartwatch and then, depending on whatever the session is, it'll prompt them through it.

Andrea: 1:38

So let's just say it's walk-run intervals, kind of beep at them when it's time to run and beep when it's time to walk, kind of prompt them or coach them through the session and then when it's finished they save it. Kind of prompt them or coach them through the session and then when it's finished they save it. The data feeds back through the Training Peaks app into my system where I can kind of look at the data and just make sure that we can see things like, you know, fitness and heart rates and fatigue and training stress scores and things like that are where they should be, given the client's goals. And then about once every two weeks or so, that clients and I will connect either by phone or by Zoom and we'll kind of have a look at things together and make sure we're both happy or what needs to be changed or what's not working or what's causing them to hurt. It's a constant kind of adjustment.

Brian: 2:17

Yeah.

Andrea: 2:18

And then we do also have a little online WhatsApp chat where all the online clients can kind of cheer for one another and share war stories, and so that's quite nice as well, yeah.

Brian: 2:30

Do you like that sort of remoteness type coaching? I mean, I know nothing will be able to take you away with you know one-to-one sort of thing. But I know it's a sort of a different aspect of coaching, that remoteness like you know, you can, like you said.

Brian: 2:43

You said you could, you can, you can coach someone and they can down. I think that's amazing. I mean, maybe it's because I'm a bit of a technology geek but that you can get their running data onto you know, onto your system, you know, and you're thousand thirteen, fourteen thousand miles away.

Andrea: 3:01

I think that's amazing yeah, I do, I do think it's amazing and I do like it and I think, honestly, with the glories of technology now, we're never actually all that far apart. It's easy to build rapport. We can see each other. If we need to video call, we certainly talk on the phone and we have usually, at the start of our coaching relationship anyway, the thing that has brought us together is the sort of synergy of personalities and the way that we look at running and the kind of things that we're wanting from our running journey.

Andrea: 3:34

So it's usually quite easy to bond over that and then and I do like it and I love seeing the rewards that it takes into their lives and then how that also ripples out into their families and communities so it's been really life-changing for a lot of people, but most especially for me.

Brian: 3:52

Yeah, yeah, because I know, I mean the way you present yourself on the website. You know there are so many boxes that were ticking in my head thinking, yes, I'm like that, I'm like that, I'm like'm like that. You know, and although I've never completed a marathon, I've done. You know, I think the most is 10 miles or whatever. But maybe it's because I mean, I'm 62 at the moment, so I, you know, I tend to every other day, every other week, it seems I seem to be suffering from injury or something like that, but it I think that's quite entrepreneurial of you, let's say the way you specifically what you've written on the website sort of does tick a lot of boxes with quite a lot of people in a particular, maybe, segment of the market, sort of thing. Yes, absolutely so. Now let's get on to New York before we. So how did you get? I mean, was this, were they your running community in Australia that went over to New York, and how did you sort of get organized that?

Andrea: 5:00

Yeah, well, a couple of years ago maybe a year, two years ago, not sure I watched a movie called I'm Not a Runner, which?

Brian: 5:11

I've watched, which I think is great. Brilliant movie, yes, absolutely.

Andrea: 5:15

So the woman who made that amazing documentary is a local Australian coach and runner called Anna Liptak. She has a company called Adventure Time Travel. She takes runners to participate in all the world majors every year. So I watched that movie. It just really sort of inspired me because in that particular documentary she tracked five or six of her clients and coached them to the New York Marathon. And it really resonated with me because a lot of the people who are featured in that movie have gone through divorces or some sort of grief or a real big kind of weight loss challenge or a physical illness.

Andrea: 5:54

Anyway, they've all got a very powerful reason for wanting to do this hard thing, which they do, and they were successful and anyway it just it felt like I was watching my own story in many ways and I guess I must've just talked about it to various clients, about the fact that I'd always dreamed of doing New York, and more than one of them said well, if you ever go, please tell us, we'd like to come with you. So I reached out to Anna and her team and I said well, you know, is there any chance that I could bring a group of slowleys and we could join you at the next one. She was gracious enough to say yes. So myself and nine clients there was a group of 10 of us tacked ourselves on to Anna's tour and we went over there and, yeah, it was quite wonderful.

Brian: 6:38

Oh, I see, and so you all went over there. So were you? What is it? Did you, you know, fix up an Airbnb, or were you staying in the same place, or that kind of thing?

Andrea: 6:51

Yeah, we were all in the same place. So the company sells you a kind of a package which includes, as overseas runners, we're fortunate in that we can buy this kind of guaranteed race entry.

Brian: 7:04

Ah, I see, okay, yeah, we're fortunate in that we can buy this kind of guaranteed race entry. That is packaged.

Andrea: 7:07

But then it comes together with things like a hotel and some bus transfers and a tour and a couple of meals and your trip to the expo. And it's quite nice in that this kind of package is given to you, which I found quite reassuring because I had never been to New York before. So I was worried about all the thinking that would come with it, like how do you get there and how does it work and what time and how much does it cost. And you know, when you go with a sort of tour organizer, luckily they do all that thinking for you. So that was lovely. So, yes, we all stayed in a hotel on the Upper West Side which, as it turns out, wasn't very far from the finish line. Real blessing, oh yeah. So it was really great to have this sort of tribe. You know our Smurleys, but also Anna's bigger tour, so she had a lot. She had about 150 runners in total.

Andrea: 7:58

Oh right and we were able to participate in all those activities and get to meet people and it was really wonderful.

Brian: 8:06

And obviously you'd done quite a bit of training beforehand and you know, did you feel everyone was sort of were you had any concerns about the some of the people you're going with or were you quite happy about you know they, they, you know they're up to the challenge?

Andrea: 8:24

I definitely knew that everybody was up to the challenge. But I'll qualify that and say of the nine apart from myself who had done a marathon before, everybody else was coming to their first marathon. So nine runners approaching their first marathon, many had kind of considerable talent, many had, I knew, had enough sort of juice in the tank, they'd be fine. But there were three ladies, so two from New Zealand and also just a local runner, bronwyn, who you know running is a real, really significant physical challenge for them. I knew that they would be out on the road for a really long time and Bronwyn in particular had entered a marathon twice before and always DNF'd, so she'd either been swept off the course because she wasn't able to make the cutoff times or she'd just chosen to not finish.

Andrea: 9:20

And I guess I just had a lot of hopes for all three of them that they were going to get the race of their dreams, because obviously they'd spent years training and an awful lot of money to go all the way over there. Yeah, you know just a lot invested in the day. But fortunately they all did brilliantly, brilliant.

Andrea: 9:42

So Bronwyn finished perfectly at about eight I should check I'm going to say about eight hours yeah and rosie and allison from new look were a bit, were a fair bit longer than that, but that's, that's great, that's.

Andrea: 9:54

You know, that was the whole point, and they were able to come in as sort of some of the final finishes of the race. And new york marathon does this wonderful thing called project finish, where they literally have hundreds of people there with glow sticks and bells and cheering and singing and clapping and making sure that all the finishing runners come in safely, despite the fact that they've been out in the roads in New York at night and it's dark and it's cold, and they're in Central Park and they just make sure that they still get that wonderful finish line vibe. And all three of them got that, which was amazing. So, yeah, the whole team slow coach finished. We all got our wonderful medals and just that kind of incredible sense of personal achievement that money can't buy, which is you did something that you know six months ago you didn't think you were capable of doing.

Brian: 10:46

Brilliant. How did you do?

Andrea: 10:49

oh, I had a great race I'm great but I must stress that I had I had already done two marathons this year, so it was going to be my third marathon and I had literally only finished another marathon, I think, three weeks prior.

Andrea: 11:04

So I didn't want to run hard and I really, really wanted to celebrate. I wanted to just party the whole race. So New York just the city, let alone the race had been the kind of culmination of a lifelong dream for me. I'd always wanted to travel there. I'd always got a very strong personal interest in theater and Broadway and things like that as well. So I really wanted to go and see the shows and see the sites and see the city and experience it as a tourist. And I'd heard so much about this mythical race with this sort of literally 2 million New Yorkers come down onto the street to support these 50,000 runners and you just kind of run through this barrel of noise of people cheering and ringing bells and you know shaking signs and setting off these confetti cannons into the air and offering beers and bagels, and it's just this 42-kilometer party and I really wanted to take it all in.

Brian: 12:08

So I you must be doing floating.

Andrea: 12:12

It must have been felt like floating I don't think my feet touched the floor once brilliant I just, I just flew through and very slowly no, that was the point.

Brian: 12:22

I stopped to dance.

Andrea: 12:23

I stopped to take photos, I stopped to chat. Occasionally I'd bump into clients and we'd stop for selfies. It was just wonderful. And then one of my clients, sally her brother actually lives in New York, so his apartment was at about the 30-kilometer mark, so he'd actually even set up like a little base camp for us which had a big sign that said go sydney slowleys. And he had a chair and he had this we call it an esky like a cooler box. Oh yeah, you know, coke and sandwiches and lollies and boiled roast, roasted, salted potatoes. And when I saw him, you know, I literally stopped, for I think it was 20 or 25 minutes and I chatted and I ate and I waved at all the other runners who were going past.

Andrea: 13:12

I mean, in any normal frame of events that would just be a stupid thing to do on a marathon. But New York is not a normal race. I just really wanted to party and remember it. I feel like I got the race that I wanted. I feel like I got the race of my wanted. I feel like I've got the race of my dreams and then some.

Andrea: 13:30

So it was amazing it's like if you complete it too quickly, you've missed out for sure, and you spend so much time training and so much money to get there. It's a 20 hour flight from sydney, right, so why rush it? I really I want to remember. I wanted to spend as long as I could out there and that was just my philosophy on the day, and I'm so glad I did. I had absolute time of my life did the time difference affect you?

Brian: 13:59

you know, sort of from a physiological type of, or were you able to get there early enough and then adjust for the time difference and ready for the race?

Andrea: 14:10

Yeah, I think I made some very deliberate choices in that regard. I arrived in New York on the Monday with the race only being on the Sunday, so I had five days or so to acclimatize, I went to see a pharmacist before I left Sydney and she gave me something that would help me sleep, so that from the minute I got on the plane I tried to pretend that I was on New York time and kind of force my body to stay in the New York rhythm and, yeah, I think I did what I could.

Brian: 14:42

Did you have to stay up longer and then go to sleep? Or was it sort of yes, yeah, okay, longer and then go to sleep?

Andrea: 14:47

or was it sort of yes, yeah, okay and it was quite tough going the first day or two. But you know you, you kind of you make. I made myself do it because I knew that I wanted the discomfort of the jet lag and kind of forcing myself into the right routine. Was was the price I was willing to pay for a good race and and then you probably still do have a bit of residual fatigue on race day. But honestly you forget that pretty quickly once that race day vibe arrives and yeah, it was fine.

Brian: 15:17

It was amazing. I know you probably wanted to explore New York, but did you go for any runs beforehand? Oh, you did, oh brilliant.

Andrea: 15:25

Yeah, all right. So the tour organizers were great in that they put on quite a few shakeout runs for us in Central Park.

Brian: 15:32

Yeah.

Andrea: 15:33

But also quite a lot of the other kind of fitness influences or people that I like to follow on YouTube or Instagram. There's a lot of people organizing a lot of runs around the marathon.

Brian: 15:46

Ah, I see.

Andrea: 15:47

You were able to join in any number of those. And then I, in particular, wanted to do park run as well the day before the marathon. I'm just a bit of a park run junkie, so, yeah, I opted to go you'll be on jersey.

Brian: 16:00

Yeah, what number you're on now oh 186 okay, okay, yes, okay yes yeah. So it must have been quite a good badge to have New York park run.

Andrea: 16:12

Yeah, absolutely. And at the time, my fourth country, it wasn't actually a New York park run. Weirdly, there are no park runs in New York, so I had to travel to New Jersey to do that. Okay, but it's the thing you do when you're a park run addict, and again, it was a wonderful experience.

Brian: 16:34

Well worth it. Yeah, I suppose parkrun must must be very different. You know a parkrun very different to kind of the new york marathon. It's not the same thing.

Andrea: 16:38

Yeah, sure, sure. But I think most of the runners at that particular parkrun it's called delaware and raritan canal parkrun in new jersey I'd say probably three quarters of the runners there that day were tourists like me who were in town for the marathon. So you know, we did bring a bit of a marathon vibe with us, I think.

Brian: 16:58

Yeah, I think it was just recently, was it 20 years or something? There was the anniversary of the first park run, which is Bushy. Park, which is down the road from where I live here, because I live in Twickenham which is only down the road Wonderful. So if you come to the UK you've got to go do that one Bushy Park. That's where it all started.

Andrea: 17:20

I absolutely will. I'm actually coming to London in April and I've pretty much built my whole itinerary around being a bushy, so oh brilliant, oh good, oh excellent, oh good.

Brian: 17:31

We'll never know. Well, you never know, we might meet up there, oh that'd be, great, that'd be great, so all right. So obviously New York was a great experience.

Andrea: 17:41

Yes, is it?

Brian: 17:42

I mean, if you had the time and money. Obviously is I understand that you probably want to do it again, or would you? You feel that that box being ticked and you'd maybe do a marathon elsewhere?

Andrea: 17:53

Oh look, I would love to do it again but, as you say, time and money being what they are, I'd probably try to do some of the other world majors if I could and it's a very big if. But also, I guess, being a slow coach, I also have to be mindful of what races are practical for me to do and complete in the finishing time. So I do have a few races on my horizon. I'm probably going to take a group to run the Queenstown Marathon in New Zealand at the end of 2025, and another group to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2020.

Brian: 18:32

Oh wow, that race has no cut in time. That would be amazing.

Andrea: 18:36

So I'm hoping to build a little bit of a tribe around these running events and traveling, but always through the lens of having lots of time and lots of support to complete them safely.

Brian: 18:51

Fancy Tokyo.

Andrea: 18:54

I would love to do Tokyo. I'd love to see Japan but, I haven't even investigated the cutoff times for that, and I do know that that's a hard one to get in, and I certainly wouldn't ever qualify on running times, so I would always need to look at other ways to get in, like a charity bib or a tourism operator.

Brian: 19:14

I think I've had a wonderful chat today. I even looked at my questions because I think it's been brilliant talking to you, but I do have, before we go, I do have a couple of things. Are there any tips for beginners, because obviously this is a podcast for beginner runners? I mean in your experience from since you've been coaching, so what are the tips for people who are just looking to start up?

Andrea: 19:41

I think it's a hard one, but I think if you can try to free yourself from these sort of expectations of what your run should look like, or what your run should feel like, or what you should look like or any of those things, I've always felt that pace is the least interesting thing about your journey as a runner and it can be helpful to take your focus off it, because everybody can run. We just can't all run the same way or at the same speed or anything like that, but if it's important to you, then finding your way into running and doing it sort of incrementally and safely can be really just wonderfully life-affirming and, in fact, transformational in every way. So it's really really worth trying to start where you are. Do what you can, run for a bit, walk for a bit, but don't worry about how fast you are. That just doesn't matter.

Brian: 20:42

yeah, yeah and just a few quick fire questions do you do you have a favorite running route where you are?

Andrea: 20:52

oh well, right now I'd have to say the five boroughs of new york yes, of course, but I do also love. There's an area called De Broglie Head here in Sydney that I love running through.

Brian: 21:03

And how far is that?

Andrea: 21:05

Well, from my house it's probably about 20 kilometers away, but the actual sort of you can run through the national park.

Andrea: 21:12

There's probably about five or six kilometers of runnable tracks there, but what's special about it is that it's quite elevated. It's quite high up, right, but you have these 180-degree views out over Sydney Harbour and it's just full of these gorgeous wildflowers and birds and on the right day at the right moment in time, you can kind of feel like you have Sydney to yourself, just this magical carpet of grasses and birds and flowers and this kind of cerulean sea that's twinkling out all around you, and it's just. It's two beautiful birds.

Brian: 21:46

Do you have a running snack, a go-to running snack? Are you into nutrition? Yeah, I have many.

Andrea: 21:55

If I'm wearing my hydration vest, I'll often carry boiled salted potatoes. I love this, I love those. But otherwise I am known to plan my runs around the McDonald's's because I like the hash browns. Oh right, so the carbs.

Brian: 22:11

Yeah.

Andrea: 22:12

Otherwise just stiff bars, gels, all the usual, but I definitely have a soft spot for potatoes.

Brian: 22:20

What was the best piece of running advice you ever received?

Andrea: 22:25

I think it was when I was one of the many iterations of me berating myself for being, you know, too slow and too incompetent and not making the kind of progress that I wanted, and someone said to me that in order to be the runner you want to be, you first have to be the runner that you are today.

Andrea: 22:43

That's good advice and that really resonated, and that's like books I used to read my children when they were little. It's like you can't go through it, sorry, you can't go around it, you can't go over it, you can't go under it and blah, blah. You just have to go through it. You've just got to, you know, hold space with the discomfort and keep going. And if, if, the thing that you want is in the future, then you've got to do the work that's required today. And then, I guess related to that too, is that the quality of your thoughts determine the quality of your run. And that's really helped me too. Just to sort of really deliberately choose to be happy or be present or be grateful or be silent or be at peace with my own frustration or whatever it is, but just to really kind of work on my mind as much as I work on my body right and just a couple more.

Brian: 23:34

Do you I? It could be coaching or running. Do you have what are your goals this year or coming year? I mean, I know you've talked about possible marathons that you're looking to go on in the future.

Andrea: 23:49

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to do some more world majors when time and money permits, but I think, closer to home, I wouldn't mind having another crack at a couple of ultras. It's been a couple of years since I lasted an ultra. So we have this backyard ultra, backyard format. That's sort of taking off. I have one here very close to my house that I'm quite tempted to have a go at, and either that or….

Brian: 24:19

Is that 40k? Is that, sorry, 50k or?

Andrea: 24:22

well, it's a, it's a, it's a loop.

Andrea: 24:25

That's usually 6.7 kilometers is the loop yeah and you and you do it every hour on the hour, so you kind of just run this loop over and over again and the format is the race keeps going until there's just one person standing. So the race might go for 12 hours or it might go six days, who knows, but in my case it won't be six days. I would probably just have a goal of perhaps trying to get to something like a 50 kilometer mark or something like that. But for me the challenge is not so much the distance, it's the format of being having enough consistency and having enough speed being a relative term but being able to do 6.7 every hour on the hour and being able to kind of repeat that with enough consistency to get to the goal. I think that would be quite an interesting challenge and I really would be up against my limits. But that's one of my favorite places to be.

Brian: 25:25

Great, that sounds quite an interesting format. Last question is that if you're stuck on the lift with your hero, would that be dead or alive, oh my goodness. Or do you have one Hero?

Andrea: 25:36

Hero, hero, oh my goodness. Or do you have one, I don't know? Hero, uh well, I think I don't know about heroes, but there's certainly some people I find fascinating. There's just some really interesting, brave, powerful people that fascinate me, the likes of the, the actress Helen Mirren, or Emma Thompson, or Stephen Fry I find his brain just fascinating, but heroes I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to have to take a pass on that one. No, no, no, no. Those names were good because anyone could inspire you.

Brian: 26:18

You know, it could be any one of those people. I mean, helen Mirren is an amazing actress and she's got such longevity, as it were. Exactly, and courage. And yes, yes, yes, and someone like Stephen Fry. You could just listen to him, for you could say just start talking and I'll listen.

Andrea: 26:37

Yeah.

Brian: 26:37

Because I remember Nicole Kidman was on the. You can say just start talking and I'll listen, yeah, yeah, because I remember, um, nicole kidman was on the thing, the graham norton show with him, and she was like you know, her mouth was like how do you know so much?

Brian: 26:49

I know I know, he's just a walking encyclopedia yeah, he is phenomenal, yeah um, what I could say is that I'm I've really enjoyed our chat. Uh, andrea, I hope you did, and I could have talked to you for hours, especially about new york, because that was really illuminating things that your first guest I've had who've done the new york marathon, but it was great to listen to because a lot of things resonated. I, too, have a daughter who was born quite early as well so we well um, and how old is she now?

Andrea: 27:23

she's 21 well, so you've done well so she was, she was, uh, premature.

Brian: 27:28

She was 28 weeks premature. So wow, yes, oh yeah, so I can understand all of its own yeah, but all I say is thank you very much for coming on and taking some time out. I know there are a few issues getting the time zones right but never mind. But you never know, if you do decide to come in February, maybe we'll meet up in February.

Andrea: 27:53

I look forward to it and thank you very much for the podcast and thank you very much for having me.

Brian: 27:58

No problem, okay, all right, cheerio, bye-bye, bye. Thanks very much, andrea, and I'll let you know when it comes out. This will probably be a Christmas episode, I think.

Andrea: 28:12

Okay, wonderful.

Brian: 28:13

So I'll, because it will probably. Yeah, I think maybe in a couple of weeks time it'll come over Christmas, but I'll let you know when it comes out.

Andrea: 28:22

Well, fingers crossed, the sound was okay and thanks. Yeah, sorry about me getting the time and things wrong, but no no, no, no, no, it's all right, it's okay, it ends well.

Brian: 28:33

Good, oh well, good luck for the. You know the training and the coaching and everything and I hope everything goes well with you.

Andrea: 28:41

Thank you so much.

Brian: 28:42

Yeah.

Andrea: 28:42

Lovely to chat.

Brian: 28:43

Nice to chat, bye-bye, thanks.

Andrea: 28:44

Brian Bye.