Run To Paradise

Season 2 Episode 4 - THIS HEAT (Darryl Griffiths, sweat tests, Sarah Ludowici and the Derby speedway)

Hello all!
It’s getting hot in here, so blah blah blah. El Nino is threatening to make this Birak (in Nyoongar) long, dry and very hot in the Southern Hemisphere, so I went scrambling around the country trying to figure out if there was any way to make life more bearable as a runner in the boiling antipodean summer. 
Does sauna training work? How do you hydrate properly? Does punishing yourself in the midday sun make you a better runner? Are some people born for it? Who are you? Who am I and what am I doing here? 
To answer these questions I went on a very long and circuitous journey which led me to Darryl Griffiths (founder of Koda nutrition and author of ‘Sweat. Think. Go faster.’), doing a sweat test on myself, speaking to the fabulous ultra marathon champion Sarah Ludowici, and training (and going to the speedway) in the far north west. 
God knows if I found anything useful but eh, I had fun, so enjoy this bizarre exploration of HEAT!
Note, this podcast is just made by me alone, we don’t have anyone fact checking like other big fancy podcasts. Trust or do not trust what guests and I say at your own discretion. 
Except Sarah. Definitely trust Sarah coz that is some of the best advice you’ll get. I encourage everyone to take what she says on, and be gentle with yourself, for your own mental health, and to run better and happier! 
Also, don’t compare your summer running to your winter running. I’ve seen so many smart people, (and some dumb ones) do this and get despondent about their declining fitness. Don’t. You WILL slow down in the heat. 
Anyway I’ll shut up now Bye!!
Nick

Run To Paradise Season 2 Episode 3 - Delicate Steve : There Ain’t No Zone 2 in New York Baby!

Delicate Steve is both a guitar god and gentle creative soul. He’s also a mad jog dog. I’ve been enamoured by his music (well, one album) for about a decade now and was very stoked to meet up in his favourite running park to eat an overpriced shmoofty lunch and chat about 90’s action movies, zone 2 training, guitar god stuff, Ray Charles and the Disney half marathon and a bunch more. 
I had a hella good time doing this one. I hope you enjoy it even though the sound quality is kinda shit… sorry about that! It just comes with the “field recording” territory I suppose. Forgive me and enjoy this yarn with one of my biggest 6 stringspirations (smh), the fabulous Delicate Steve!

Run to Paradise Season 2 Episode 2: BONUS EPISODE - Catching up with the Tarkine Family

Surprise!
Here’s a little friendly catchup with some Tarkine favourites - Phil Gore, Erchana Murray Bartlett and Andrew ‘Googz’ Thorpe. Its been such a big year for all of these legends so I just figured we should catch up with where they’re at now that Run To Paradise is beginning a bright new second chapter.
I was gonna wait til we got through to Meriem Daoui, but she’s just too bloody busy! That’s why we love her though. Go Meriem!!
Anyway, I decided to release this asap because I realised Phil is only 2 sleeps away from doing the Backyard world champs, and after that, all of this might be somewhat irrelevant. 
These 3 are so great and inspiring and cool and I would’ve been more than happy to have these chats without the validation of putting it out in a podcast. 
Anyway, enjoy :)

Run to Paradise Season 2 Episode 1 : “A drinking club with a running problem” - Hash House Harriers

Welcome back to Run To Paradise! It’s me, Nick, continuing my cock-eyed-convoluted exploration of running and the people who do it, with all the japes and tears, ups and downs and painfully stupid intros you’ve come to expect. I guess this is season 2? Lets say it is. 
 
Have you ever heard of the Hash House Harriers? They are a “drinking club with a running problem”. 
I hadn’t until my mate Joe Alexander (Bedroom Suck Records, Music in Exile etc.) started regaling me with bizarre stories about chasing paper trails through Malaysian rainforests and being forced to sit bare-arsed on a block of ice while singing lewd songs with a bunch of “drunked up” runners.
This sent me on a path of advanced silliness and discovery, finding out what this old, beloved and somewhat misunderstood club is all about. I spoke to Joey, his Dad - long time Hash enthusiast Borneo Bob - and finally participated in my own Hash run with the weird and wonderful Fremantle Heave Ho Hash House Harriers and Harriets aka. H6.
This episode is a real time documentation of one man (me) being introduced to one of the most storied running / drinking clubs in the world, and all the joy, confusion and hilarity that went with it.  
Enormous thanks to Joe and Rob Alexander aka. Borneo Bob, and the wonderful H6 club. You’re all mad.
 
This podcast is supported - and conceived - by the good people at Tarkine, Western Australia's very own, environmentally-focused running shoe company.

Run to Paradise Episode 8 : “Existence is playful right?” - Milly Young

“Milly Milly Milly
You’re a silly billy
It’s way too chilly
To climb up hilly”
Milly by N.R.Allbrook
 
Milly Young climbs up glacial mountain faces and runs across boggy wildernesses and just seems to be having a wicked time doing it. She set the FKT for running the 165km from Scotts Peak Dam to Cockle Creek in Tasmania, but the most impressive thing for me is the joy with which she approaches the sport. There's so much self flagellation, over analysis and gnashing of teeth in the running and adventure world - overcoming pain. Pushing the limits. GETTING and STAYING HARD (sic.) but she does it for the most obvious and sublime reason of all - it’s fun! This hit me like a mighty blast of fresh Swiss mountain snow right in the face.
In this chat we also figured out Milly is an experimental ambient sound artist and a studio engineer and she didn’t bloody know it, which to me epitomises something very cool which is easily lost from art and outdoor movement - that it holds inherent value, no matter the kudos. You might "be" something without wearing the glittering badges or yelling it from the rooftops. 
We also talk about sounds, her kangaroo shod Dad, b&s balls (not as sordid as it sounds*), fear, adventures in the Alps and much more. 
From Kojinup to Chamonix, the wonderful, gutsy and inspiring Milly Young. 

Run to paradise episode 7 : ”Losing Track of Time and Space” - Australian Backyard Ultra Champion Phil Gore

509 kilometres in 76 hours…
Phil Gore is made of something different. Steel? Mist? Some rare martian alloy? Whatever it is it can keep on moving after it has lost its mind entirely and forgotten what the hell it's even doing here…
Phil is a Tarkine elite, 2022 Australian Male Ultra Runner of the Year, AURA Ultra Performance of the Year and the Australian Backyard Ultra Champion, who has turned this strange and torturous event into a unique art form. In this chat he takes us through the various tools that make him virtually untouchable in this space - meditation, meticulous planning and focus, sleep, food, his dedicated crew, and the strange process of weaving the mundanities of real life into a race that might take up to 3 or 4 days. 
I gained a real appreciation, not only of what it takes to be one of the best in the world but also of the inclusivity and sociability within the Backyard Ultra community. 
As Phil says, it’s more of a mind game than a physical game, and he trains both with equal discipline and drive.
Phil is searching for his limits and goes to some quite trippy places in the process.
Wild…
 

Run to Paradise Episode 6 : Always Think Of The Cows - Meriem Daoui

“Running is meant to be fun, it's meant to be liberating, it's meant to make you feel free. If you focus too much on how fast you run or what place you come it becomes toxic.”
This week I talk to one of my heroes - the irrepressible Meriem Daoui! Meriem is an athlete, a running coach and an oncology nurse and is infuriatingly humble about being so blindingly brilliant. She wouldn’t even let me say she had been voted the Best Tasmanian in Tasmania Award 2022 even though it (sort of) true!! Oh yeah and in 2021 she received the Peter Norman Humanitarian Award for leading a number of fundraising initiatives for cancer causes as well as her work with the Muslim Women in Sport Network. She’s been doing this since she was 16.
Meriem has many powerful insights to share about maintaining an athletic lifestyle and a generosity of spirit through myriad challenges; as a woman of faith and colour surviving racism and bullying in Australia, living with type one diabetes and surviving mental ill health and eating disorder. 
This episode gets pretty heavy and powerful, and the passion with which Meriem speaks about her own challenges and the way they’ve informed her approach to helping others to navigate the choppy waters of human life is unbelievably inspiring and moving. Her advice on these things is from a place of lived experience and true empathy. We both open up about mental illness and disordered eating in a very vulnerable way and I’m endlessly grateful for Meriem’s honesty and strength in creating a safe space for real discussion.
If this discussion of mental health and eating disorders has raised any concerns or triggered anything for you, don’t hesitate to call Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
And remember, “It’s ok not to be ok”

Run To Paradise Episode 5 : “Mullets and Weetbix, waddya reckon?” Seth O’Donnell

In this episode I (nick) talk to Australian Cross Country Champion, Seth O’Donnell. Seth is someone Australia can be proud of - a died in the wool, true-blue weetbix kid (27 a day at his peak), great at footy, loves his family, wants the best out of himself and those around him, volunteers for the Salvos, studies hard at physio, plays in a sick pub-rock band (Adhesion), has a resplendent mullet and bloody loves the Hawks.
While he runs at a national elite level, Seth also has a deep appreciation of the power of running to bring joy and build community. We talk about running free and training hard, eating kangaroo, the mongrel game of CC, John Bonham, Footy and the transition to Running, and heaps more. 
Listen, enjoy, and forward to anyone you know working at Weet-Bix so together we can get Seth SPONNO’ed!!! Oh, and go check out Adhesion if u live in Victoria. At a pub near you. 

Run To Paradise Episode 4 : Thank You Hill, Thank You Road, Thank You Dilla - Simon Barker, drummer and barefoot runner

“When you’re regulated by the ground your body learns something about form, you relinquish the achievement and ego, but you gain this sense of being fauna, being regulated by place”
Simon Barker doesn’t care about distance, incline, cadence, heart rate or speed - the only running metric he is concerned with are form and experience. 
Simon is one of the most astonishing drummers in the country and a dedicated barefoot runner. His teachings and explorations within these spaces are extensive and mind-melting. 
I learn a lot with every episode of this show, but this one was truly enlightening. Simons views towards training and experience, about learning from the terrain rather than dominating it, have honestly shaken my whole view of modern running. I’ve never heard anyone speak so thoughtfully about the boundless intersections of running and music. It’s not just the rhythm of ones feet and heart, but the timbre of the wind and electricity in yr brain, and the emotions and sensations transmitted through the feet. Running informs every element of his music as fishing songs are sung by fishermen. 
We talk about a bunch of stuff - unlearning as progress, J-Dilla, skateboarding, running and drumming in Korea and Japan and the new album by him, Chloe Kim and Jeremy Scott, titled Disruption!
I’ve never met anyone more attuned to the sounds and sensations of their body and the terrains on which it moves. I’m very proud to present this chat with the remarkable Simon Barker. 

Run To Paradise Episode 3 : Glutes that could crack a conker - Jonty Brown

This was a real good excuse to yarn with my dear pal Jonty Brown. Jonty is a type one diabetic, Northerner, barber and mad dog runner and coach with AR London. In past lives, he’s been a surf instructor, motorcycle mechanic and drummer. He ran across England and started Chasing Change, a charity and now a weekly run club. Makes me tired writing it all out tbh. JONTY is rad. He really REALLY loves running for all the most wholesome things… community, charity (he’s a tireless supporter of JDRF) mental health, nature, and fun. He’s always excited to share his enormous talents and knowledge with others, building up those around him selflessly, which has got me through a whooooole lotta my running journey with free top-tier coaching haaaaahah nah srsly Cheers pal, you’re the best.
 
Tarkine Running and Run to Paradise are based in Walyalup (Fremantle) the un-ceded traditional lands of the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar nation. We honour and are thankful for their continued custodianship over the lands we work, sing and run on. Always was, always will be.