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Tyson Popplestone is a Comedian from Melbourne Australia. Join him for a brand new interview each week.
tyson (00:01.254)
Beautiful man. Well, I reckon the number of podcasts that we've recorded now must be getting close to five, but I reckon this is the first time I've ever sat down with you and had a bird's eye view. It's a very impressive setup. What's going on here at the moment?
Andy (00:17.098)
Yeah, we've got a new conference room at work. So we've got a new massive, you can't see it obviously because I'm talking to you on it, but we've got a massive new TV and a decent camera hopefully. So we can do group conference calls. We do our group standup calls in the morning and evening with the company here. So it's a nice setup. And we've got a lovely clean and clear room where no one's allowed to leave a load of their personal rubbish lying around. So you feel quite.
You feel quite calm in here. It's away from the clutter.
tyson (00:47.614)
Well, see, I'm coming at you from the upstairs room of my house. Don't be fooled by what you see on screen. I've got a number of lights around me. I've got baby clothes. There should be a room in, we're about to move out. And I think the next room, there's gonna be a dedicated conference room for me where that same rule should apply. Because the nature of just having kids running around the house is there's just shit absolutely everywhere all the time. And my wife and I are constantly laughing about the fact that.
You just have to be so on the ball to even have some semblance of like clean and organized and routine Yeah, man, so that's the rest. Well, I'm very jealous about your luxurious new room I think I've had a little bit of an insight into some of the rooms because as we've spoken about on the relax running podcast I've um I'm quite a big fan of Matt Fox and his work at sweat elite and I think when he did One of the sweat tests with you guys. He had the cameras in the offices. So I've always sort of wondered
what the actual setup looks like. Cause since we've met, I've not yet been back to the UK. So I haven't had a chance to come in and actually say, get a, but what's the setup like there?
Andy (01:53.738)
Yeah, we're in like a sort of, it's a bit like a coworking type space here, but with lots of private rentable rooms and workshops downstairs. So we've actually converted one of the big workshops into a warehouse with a big, you know, it's got a roller shutter door. So that's where we do all the stock picking and where the courier companies come up and pick up every day to take the, take the orders out that use. We used to have that boarded off. So it was like 50% office, 50% warehouse, but as we've grown, we kind of
the warehouse space. So we've now we then moved into an office upstairs, kind of almost above it, which is a nice kind of airy space. It's a corner office with big windows, which is really nice. And then we've got two or three other little rooms like the one I'm saying now for private conferences or meetings and that type of thing. So it's a nice setup for a growing business because we can just
gradually take on more space as we need it. And then, and also retract quite quickly. So I think it's sort of, you know, you can take rooms for a month or two here if you want to, which is really good. Cause you know, flexible office space is hard to come by sometimes.
tyson (03:04.074)
I can imagine that's true. It's interesting. It's interesting you talk about you guys as a growing business because the last 12 months, especially It's been amazing here in Australia just to see how many more people only in the running scene I'm familiar with I can imagine this is all across the board. They're starting to use precision hydration I feel like in the time I think we did our first chat back in maybe early 2019 or 2020 it must have been actually and from that time it's been really interesting Like I know there's a number of top Aussie runners using the products now
It's starting to really become a bit of a mover and a shaker in the industry. When did you guys officially launch?
Andy (03:39.99)
We launched quite a long time ago in 2011.
So we've been at it for quite some time now. And you're right, the last two or three years has really seen the growth trajectory get steeper, but it's only really been a function of the fact that if you're growing a business organically and sort of that's what we've been doing the whole time is, if you get, say even if you're growing at 100%, if your customer base is really small and your revenue numbers are really small, 100% growth is great in terms of.
the fact that you're doubling, but if it's doubling a very small number, that's still a relatively small number. But then at some point, obviously, that starts to get bigger and bigger. And we've managed to maintain our rate of growth in the last couple of years, and the numbers have got a bit bigger. And I think that's why it's lovely to hear you say that, that you're sort of seeing us around and about a bit more, because it's definitely the case that feels like what's happening. I was in the US last week.
I was in Salt Lake City and I was wearing the t-shirt that I'm wearing now with the company logo on it and I walked into a climbing, sort of outdoor running climbing store and immediately the guy from behind the counter came over and said, oh do you work for Precision? My wife is a runner, she uses your products and that was the first time that's kind of happened to me, just in a random place a long way from home and that was really cool. So the name is obviously getting out there a little bit.
tyson (05:03.238)
That's awesome man, that's a unique combination of sports to combine and what was it, a climbing and running store?
Andy (05:09.29)
Yeah, it was that company called Black Diamond, if you've heard of them. They make kind of, I think they're big in climbing, but they also start to get into trail running. They make some really good trail running packs and apparel and things. So I was just kind of mooching around there killing some time while I was waiting for a taxi to turn up. And yeah, it was cool just to be doorstep by someone, you know, whose wife really enjoy using the products. Yeah, it was that I felt like we started to arrive.
tyson (05:33.726)
W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w
Say that again.
Andy (05:38.962)
I felt like we'd started to arrive, you know, when someone asked you.
tyson (05:40.942)
Yeah, man. Yeah, that's interesting. It would have been funny. I would have loved to have been there when you got to telling him that it was actually your company, whose shirt you were ripping. Ha ha ha.
Andy (05:49.13)
Yeah, I didn't actually go that far. I just kind of said that, yeah, we just had a chat about the products and it's quite, it's good.
tyson (05:55.918)
See that's the difference between you and me if I had started a company that I went to America and someone recognized It would have been the first thing I told him Probably why you're in your position. Yeah, what was the um, what was the nature of the way you started it? You said what were you not advertising at all at the start? You were pretty keen just to let things spread naturally through word of mouth or what was the mindset going into that?
Andy (06:17.298)
Yeah, it wasn't so much that we were keen to do that. It's just that we didn't raise very much money at all when we started the business. It was a group of four of us that put some money in together. And most of the money honestly went on buying stock and getting the basic business administration set up. So we didn't actually have a very grand budget for advertising or marketing. A lot of what we did was, was reliant on word of mouth, you know, getting the word out there through contacts and kind of.
low key marketing. We went to a lot of events and expos in the early days to actually meet customers. That was obviously well sort of pre-pandemic and when the internet sales were definitely significant but not anywhere near as dominant as they are now. So we had a vision that maybe actually getting out to events was the best way to reach people and it kind of was in the sense that
It allowed us to learn very quickly by chatting to people what they liked and what they didn't like about the products and what they thought about them. But it's also obviously not massively scalable or not as easily scalable as stuff online is. So I think that meant that we were always naturally destined to grow pretty slowly to start with.
tyson (07:28.354)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That's a cool approach. It's interesting that whole world of expos That's something that I'd never really even considered till last night I just started the American gladiator documentary here in Australia and they were talking about how they were trying to get that show off the ground and I was thinking of I was actually thinking about us because uh Just flirting with the idea and I'd taken some notes yesterday about a few things I wanted to speak to you about but just the idea of launching a company or a television show or whatever It's a really daunting prospect at the best of times
But it's funny when you look at a company that whether it's a Nike or American gladiators or whatever it is that you're looking at that's established, you always just look at that and assume that there's been no real holes that they needed to hurt or no real challenges. It's funny how you look at some other company and you assume that the grass is greener and it was just a really smooth run. But it's so interesting that you talk about the trajectory that you guys are on in growth now. Like that's 12 years after a company started.
This is something that I've come to appreciate, even with relaxed running and so many things. Joe Rogan always says that, anyone who's been doing comedy, which is a big passion of mine for less than 10 years, doesn't really know what they're doing. And I'm just closing in on five years now, and sometimes leave gigs going, this is so easy. But then I'll go to another gig, like I said before I hit record, and you go, okay, no, that makes a lot of sense. I've got so much to learn. So it's a, yeah, it is really interesting. Are there a lot of starters in the industry that you're in now?
To be honest, until I met you, I didn't really know a lot about the industry. So from my perspective, it was just precision hydration and no one else. And then now I've started to become a bit more deliberate with marathon preparation and training. I've heard of a few other brands, but I've just, I've developed a taste for your guys stuff. I enjoy running with it. I've, um, I've started just to use some of the carb gels on my run, which has been really good, but what's the actual market like, man, have you, have you had to rub shoulders with a couple of big dogs to become a little more established in the scene?
Andy (09:20.606)
Yeah, there is this sports nutrition industry is pretty massive these days. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of big players in it, sort of companies that are owned by the huge food companies. Gatorade is probably the most globally famous, who are owned by PepsiCo. Um, and then Coca-Cola have Powerade and then I think Nestle owned PowerBar, or certainly did own PowerBar. Um, so there's lots, there's lots of sort of big established brands. Cliff Bar is another huge one.
goo, Lucas aid, you can keep rattling them off. And so there's, there's some massive players in the space. There's, there's also loads and loads of more going down the line. There's more kind of specialized and more niche people like us. We're one of the, still one of the smaller players, I would say in the market. But I think we're, we've defined our niches being in, you know, endurance sports in particular, we do quite a bit in team sports as well.
behind the scenes. So we sell to a lot of Premier League football teams, rugby teams, NFL teams in America, that kind of thing. But that's not what most people know that we do. What most people know is triathlon, ultra running, marathon running, long-distance cycling, that kind of thing, because that's where the products are a great fit. And I think as the market for sports nutrition has become more mature over the years, it's become more segmented because people
Andy (10:49.366)
or believe at least that it used to be seen that Gatorade was a drink good enough for NFL players, so it was good enough for all athletes. And now it's like, well, if you're a guy who's running the Gold Coast Marathon, are your needs the same as someone who's playing American football or baseball? Like, probably not. So do you need a more specialized product? And I think as it's become more segmented, more people have come into the market. We've seen quite a few players come and go.
in the 10, 12 years that we've been around, because like anything, like the failure rate of new startup businesses in any sector, I think is pretty high. And it depends on the model. And we've seen some players come in and do really, really well. Since I think the American company Scratch Labs started around the same time that we did. And I know some of the guys behind that, they've done really, really well by the sound of things. That's pretty big company now.
Obviously, more recent years, you've had Morton, this Scandinavian company that's back, they're a pharmaceutical company, come in with an innovative product line and they've certainly got a huge presence, whether or not they're profitable or sustainable, I don't know, but they're definitely big in the market. But the thing that's helped us, I think, over the last 10 or 12 years, apart from whatever...
hard work and right moves we've made ourselves has been the fact that the whole industry has just grown. There's so many more people doing so many diverse endurance sports now that I think there's just a growing marketplace and there's room for a lot of different people with a lot of different specialisms.
tyson (12:25.378)
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned Gatorade as a another Company that you compare yourself to because it's when I look at you guys And when I look at Gatorade I look at Gatorade as a very I think this is I don't know if this is what you Meant when you said it's good enough for an nfl player or whatever So it's good enough for the general public, but I see them as very general It's almost like they're just trying to reach as many people as they possibly can when I go to their website I mean, i'm sure if you dig deep enough, there might be something there, but
There doesn't seem to be any real specialized treatment of any elite performance. So let's see how many drinks we can possibly tell. And the reason I say that is I'll go down to the local supermarket here and they're in the aisles next to Coca-Cola. They're in the aisles with all the soft drinks, fizzy drinks. In my mind, and I don't know how many people actually feel like this, when I think of Gatorade, I just think of like a sugar drink now. I never really consider it as like a drink for elite performance. So even going into a marathon that I'm...
preparing for at the moment. It's not something that I'd really consider touching. That's obviously been a focus of your guys, like that real specialized hydration. And whenever I point someone towards you, it's always about that individualized approach. So you're trying to create a bit more of a niche brand like tailored to the individual athlete rather than just going, all right, let's just see how many supermarkets we can get our product in just for that bottom line, you know, dollar result.
Andy (13:44.99)
Yeah, 100%. We're, we're all about, we started out being all about individualization. So individually, individualizing hydration based on your individual electrolyte losses, which I think was something that the industry wasn't doing, was barely doing at all. And certainly not doing very well before we came along. And then I think what we also learned during that process was that led us to having a lot of one-to-one interactions with customers because we were selling direct to them. And what we realized was that there's a lot of fundamentals that.
athletes need help with, even on the simple stuff like how to mix their drinks up or how much to take per hour. Same with energy gels, like how many of these things do you need per hour in order to perform at your best. The basics of the education, which just aren't very well catered for in the market. There's some fantastic products out there, you know, around, not just limited to ours. There's some really good products in the market, but I don't think anyone else does as good a job.
as we do in terms of taking athletes under their wing and either using digital tools or one-to-one interaction to really educate them on what they need, how they need to use them. It's a bit like selling someone a really lovely set of tools, but not teaching them how to do DIY with them. You can buy the best stuff, but if you don't use it right, you're not going to get the best results. And so where we've doubled down over the years is that...
personal one-to-one interaction with athletes, be it through having a sweat test to understand your hydration needs, be it through having free 20 minute online video calls that we started during COVID with athletes, or me and the team hosting webinars, going out to clubs and organizations and doing talks with people, writing educational blog articles and magazine articles. We've always been this kind of education first and the products will follow mentality. And I think...
That's given us a bit of a USP in the marketplace.
tyson (15:43.678)
Yeah, I mean, you're no stranger to competitive sport. You're a triathlete. Were you an Ironman? Is that what you're competing in your heyday of competition?
Andy (15:52.086)
Yeah, I did, I did quite a few Ironman races. I did a lot of half Ironman races, exterra, which is off road triathlon. Um, I've also done a bit of ultra running and, you know, all sorts of regular running races, um, long distance swimming, kayaking, loads, loads of different stuff. So I've got a fairly broad background in those kinds of endurance sports.
tyson (16:13.902)
Yeah, because I don't ever remember there being a real key focus on individually, like fueling and hydration. Even going back, I was competing at 2013 was my last year. And I know there would have been stuff around for sure. I mean, you existed at that time, like you already said, but it could have been a focus point for me. But that real tailored approach to fueling and hydration, it just, it didn't seem to
be a real point of consideration. I mean, in the running world, there was running training, there was a little bit of gym training, maybe do some stretching, get a good night's sleep, do some supplements and see what happens. But was that your experience when you were actually competing and was that sort of your entrance into the world that you're in now? Like it's such a niche field to an outsider the idea of becoming a professional and developing not only an expert knowledge in the subject of hydration, but a company.
that supports the hydration of others. This seems like such a random field to go into. Like, what's the origin story for you?
Andy (17:11.658)
Yeah, I basically, when I was an athlete, I had problems with hydration because I sweat a lot and I lose lots of salt in my sweat. And I didn't really understand, I knew that I sweated a lot, but I just thought that meant I needed to drink a bit more. And it wasn't until I started competing internationally in really hot places that I found that my performance dramatically suffered compared with how it was in the cold. And that was what led me to look into it.
get a sweat test done with a friend of mine who was a medic and sort of sent me down this journey of really understanding the need to individualise hydration when you're doing long, hot, sweaty events. And I had a degree in sport and exercise science, so I had a basic grounding in the physiology of it, and I was already working with athletes doing physiological tests. So the idea of doing a sweat test was quite a natural fit for me. It was something I understood about selling testing services to athletes. So initially the plan was to create...
a business around selling sweat testing services and sweat testing equipment. But it became apparent pretty quickly that whilst there was demand for that, the real opportunity from a business point of view and what athletes were really looking for was a solution off the back of that test. So that's when we decided that it was time to develop our own drinks and kind of marry them together with the sweat test to create a unique service. Because I think you're 100 percent right that.
That kind of thing just didn't exist. If you were maybe really, a really, really top athlete, let's say you were, you know, in your world being looked after by the AIS or the AIS or something like that, and you were doing really well, but exhibited some problems that might have been put down to lack of understanding about fueling and hydration and nutrition. Maybe you might've got to work one-to-one with a dietician or a sports scientist who could...
actually look at you as an individual and help you solve those problems, but you've already had to rise to a significant level to get access to that kind of service, or maybe you come out from another angle and you're just wealthy enough to go and seek one-to-one nutritional consulting yourself. But if you, I bet, and it's still the case now, if you reach out to 99% of sports nutrition companies for help and advice, their customer service side is often very weak and that it's.
You know, you, you contact the customer service department and we do this. We mystery shop the customer service departments of our competitors. And quite often they're, they're fine. If you want to find out where your parcel is that you ordered from them, because they need to look into the tracking numbers and they're like that. But if they, if you want to know how many gels to use an hour or. You know, what kind of, how to pair different products together, you get pretty boilerplate standard advice rather than anyone taking an individualized look.
So that's where we felt there was a gap and we've tried to exploit that and try to, you know, try to sort of come in and fill the void in between high-end elite one-to-one consulting and just read the back of a packet and get on with that approach that most athletes have had to take for a long time.
tyson (20:24.77)
Yeah, it's interesting just hearing people trying to break into a sporting world, especially it's, you know, whether it's feeling and hydration or the actual product line. I mean, before when I did the example of, or I referred to this idea of a company just not having any dramas, trying to create a successful product. I was thinking of Nike as I spoke about that, but I mean, I've read Phil Knight's book, a shoe dog, and I've seen enough documentaries about them to know the struggle that was actually, you know, the, the origin story of the actual company. And it's,
It's so strange just to see them with a grip hold now after, I don't know if it's directly related to this, but I know one of their, their really huge breakthroughs or the really big breaks was the Michael Jordan get who started to wear their product and started to be recognised as one of the greatest basketballers of all time. You can see why marketing such a powerful tool in this world because so often I'll see Novak Djokovic wear a shoe and I'm like, well, you know, not only am I going to start tennis, but I've got to wear that. And the same is true with a Michael Jordan. The same is true with an Ali Kipchoge.
Has that marketing element, because here's one thing I've learned just through running my own company is there's just so many, and you seem a lot further down the line than where I'm at. I mean, I only started Relax Running back in 2019, but for me, one of the most amazing things and shocking things was just how many different pulses you had to have the finger on. Like you not only have to put together a quality product, in your case, the actual fueling and hydration.
but you also have to be able to market it well. You have to be able to, there's just a blanket of things that you need to be across the board with that it can be a little overwhelming, the nitty gritty details that you have to cover. How did you go about that? Like from when you launched in 2011, it sounded like you guys, you put together a bit more funding than what I was required to do for an online business. How long did it take until you guys realized pretty quickly there were a number of elements that you had to be across and...
you know, as much as it'd be beautiful just to focus solely on the product, there was a number of other things that were required for you guys to actually be able to hang around in, you know, well, at least to this point, 12 years later.
Andy (22:30.314)
Yeah, I think around we were a few years in because a lot of the early sales that we made were what you'd call B2B sales. So like business to business stuff from me selling directly into sports teams and clubs where if I went in and closed the deal, I didn't really need to market that in the sense that
I could usually find a personal contact or a, get a warm introduction, say a football team, and then go and do some sweat testing and sell them the product. That was pretty rewarding in the early days because one team would usually buy several thousand pounds worth of product at a time. So it kind of beat.
it beats selling to individual consumers initially because even a really, even a really good customer as a consumer might say, let's say they're doing a training for an Ironman or an ultra and they might buy a hundred pounds worth of products or a couple of hundred pounds worth of product and they, and hopefully they'll come back and buy more, but it takes a long time for that to aggregate up to a point at which it's worth. The revenue is what is sort of impactful in terms of running a business, paying yourself and all the rest of it.
We started off focusing on B2B where if you're connected in an industry, you probably don't need to do a ton of marketing if you're lucky. But then it wasn't till about 2015 when I met, I was introduced to Dave, who's now our marketing director and Dave came and did some consultancy work for us, helping us to set up a new website and to basically start to explain how we might market the products to consumer audience.
that we really considered it. And Dave's idea, which we still use to this day, was to drive our marketing through a sort of content-based strategy. So in other words, putting out good educational content about fueling and hydration, creating an email newsletter list. And with the idea being that if you can deliver good quality educational content into people's inboxes, they'll read, then obviously a proportion of them will feel like they've learned something will be...
at that moment in time be interested or considering trying a sports nutrition product and there's a chance that they might click through and buy your one as opposed to someone else's. And we, we still do, we do two newsletters a week. Now there's, there's a team of four or five people who are constantly producing content in the business. Um, because there's just, there's an appetite for that with people. And we've always tried to be.
content and education first rather than sales. We get a lot of positive feedback from people who get our newsletter saying, I usually delete marketing emails, but these I actually learned something, so I keep reading them, which is always really nice to hear, because that's the aim.
tyson (25:16.378)
That's good. Well, I've found myself on your blog since I discovered you had one probably at least once a week, especially it's usually on a Saturday night Before I'm getting ready to go out for a long run just to make sure I've understood You know the best way to fuel and what particular gels I need at what particular time and yeah I've found from a personal level that to be really helpful as well but you referred to this education part of the business being a really important one that makes sense because
From my perspective the amount that I've learned about hydration in the last couple of years has been mind-blowing I mean, I thought I had a pretty good understanding that he's had to drink some regular Drinks regular water throughout the day, but from your perspective like what are some of the if you had three or four key mistakes or? Misunderstandings that just the general public not even athletes had about how to effectively hydrate. What would they be?
Andy (26:07.054)
I think one of the biggest ones that athletes make a mistake with is actually, counter-intuitively, is before big races and big events, people think you need to drink way, way more than you normally do. So, you see people wandering around an expo the day before a marathon, glugging loads and loads of water.
thinking that they're worried, in a way, if it's going to be hot, they're rightly worried about the effect of dehydration on their performance the next day, but they don't realize that over drinking is as much of a problem as under drinking, that there's a sweet spot that you've got to hit. So I was definitely guilty of that as an athlete. I sort of felt like the messaging was always that more is better when it comes to hydration. And so, and you always made to feel a bit guilty, like you're probably dehydrated, you're probably not drinking enough, so you need to drink more.
And then of course you don't do it every day because you don't, you've got other things to pay attention to, but in the buildup to a race, when you really focus on performance, you go the other way and you start over drinking. And that, that I think we've, we've had a lot of success with, with people in sort of re-educating them around the idea that actually just drinking tons of water in the buildup to a race is not a good idea. And explaining to them about the role of electrolytes in preloading and, and increasing hydration.
in the last few hours before an event, but also just in moderating your fluid intake and being sensible about it in the days leading up. So that's one big misconception. And then the other one, the overarching bigger one is that there's kind of one answer for hydration, this kind of a sound bite that you can give everyone, like, oh, you can just drink to thirst, or, oh, you just need to drink X amount per hour, whatever. And it's so individual. It's got so many variables plugged into it that we...
humans would love a simple answer, like a one line answer to clear everything up so we can save some brain space and move on to other questions. But with hydration, it's very nuanced, it's quite individualized, it requires a little bit of trial and error, it requires a little bit of scientific investigation sometimes, and often, you know, people don't necessarily wanna hear that it's more complicated. So it's a case of breaking it down, that's what we do in our blogs, we try and break down different.
questions around hydration and then try and provide answers, not the answers that you're looking for, but ways in which you can find the answer for yourself, which I think is the most important thing.
tyson (28:30.866)
Yeah, so that's even for people who aren't necessarily competing. I mean, I've got so many friends and family who would have no real interest in developing any structured hydration plan because they've just bought into this idea that well drink to satisfy. I mean, that seems like a pretty good way to start or even just drink enough so that your wheeze not yellow. I don't know if that's a good sign or if that one's just an old wives tale. Like is that a pretty good tell on where you're at from a hydration point of view?
Andy (28:56.81)
Yeah. Funnily enough, we have got, we have got a blog about that one, which gets loads of hits. Like that's one of the most that would, so when people search on the web and find that we get that drives a huge amount of traffic to our website, but this, the sort of short answer on that one is that it depends. It can do so generally speaking, if your way is really dark and concentrated, then you probably are, well, that's a sign that your kidneys have decided they need to conserve water. So they're not.
peeing out a lot of water, which is often a sign that your body water is low or that you're dehydrated. If your wee is clear, that's a sign that your kidneys think they need to dump some fluid because they think there's more fluid than you need, which is a sign of adequate or over-hydration. But it's not always the case because we all know, I think, that if you drink caffeinated drinks, that can cause you to wee and cause you to lose more fluid. So that might trick the body. Generally speaking...
If you get up in the morning, the first wee you do in the day, when you've had a night of not eating, not drinking, you rested, everything's balanced, that can be a decent sign of whether you're waking up dehydrated or well hydrated. But later in the day, once you've started drinking things, eating things that can affect it, it becomes way less obvious as to whether that's a, you know, a kind of a red flag or not.
tyson (30:20.11)
Yeah, yeah, sure. Actually, you just mentioned the coffee there at the start of the day. That's the way that I start most days. I get out of bed, I've got a little mocha pot, which I discovered when I was in Italy a few years ago. It's enough to make just me and my wife a pretty good solid three quarter long black, which is always a good way to start the day. But one thing that I used to often hear was that coffee was a dehydrator or something that actually caused you to be dehydrated. Is there any truth in that?
Andy (30:47.002)
There can be in that it causes you, if you drink a lot of caffeine, so it doesn't have to be coffee, anything with caffeine in it, it acts on the kidneys and causes them to excrete fluid rather than retain fluid. So the theory is that if you drink too much of it, it can make you dehydrated. Now there's a lot of papers that have been published that suggest that because when you drink a coffee you're also consuming a large amount of water normally, then that balances it out. So the net...
effect is not that you become more dehydrated. I would say from practical experience for me, I'm fine with drinking one or two coffees a day, maybe three at a push, but beyond that, I kind of feel like it does have a net dehydrating effect. I mean, it certainly doesn't make me feel great, so I don't tend to do it. When I tend to drink most of the coffee I have like first thing in the morning, I've usually stopped by at least like nearly half past 10 in the morning for me here. I've usually stopped by about now with the coffee.
unless I'm abroad and I'm jet lagged or something like that. Because I find that not only is it better for my energy levels, but my fluid balance is better. It's a bit of a trade-off. But I don't think it's necessarily a strong dehydrator for everyone. But I think you've got to learn your own individual tolerance for caffeine and figure out how to keep your fluid balance in check if you're drinking a lot of it.
tyson (32:08.954)
Yeah, I've barely even finished thinking about coffee at 1030 is an early cutoff period I've heard some people say that lunchtime for them is fairly Fairly good for me. I don't know if it's just because I've had so much practice. I mean 2017 I challenge myself just to 12 months without coffee and I had I had no trouble really I mean, I missed the social side of it I like being able to go out and catch up with a mate and have a coffee It was way cooler than asking for a mint tea, which is what I was doing. I was actually in London
when I was doing it. And I mean, there was no side effects, there was no symptoms. I didn't really notice that I slept better. So, but what was interesting was even getting back onto coffee. I can have a coffee at four o'clock in the afternoon and feel no side effects as far as I can tell, unless I'm just completely oblivious to the fact that I'm having a bad night's sleep on those particular nights. But I guess this is just that individual factor as well. Cause there's some people that I'll speak to as well and they're very similar to you. Like if they have a coffee after 12.
They're like, yeah, there's no way that I'm sleeping that night.
Andy (33:10.334)
Yeah, I think it is individual for sure. And I reckon when I was in my twenties, I had no problem with drinking coffee round the clock. Um, and I look at the habits of like the, most of the people in our office, a lot of them are younger than me, a lot of them in their twenties or thirties. And they'll, I'll hear the coffee machine like wearing away, grinding beans at three or four o'clock in the afternoon. And no, that would have been me 20 years ago, but now I, maybe, maybe I've got older, maybe I'm a little bit more.
educated about it. I don't know, but I think there is a big genetic impact as well. It sounds like you're someone, if you came off coffee and didn't suffer any withdrawal effects and that kind of thing, it maybe sounds like just the caffeine is not, doesn't have, you obviously metabolise it really well and it doesn't have a huge effect on you. Whereas my wife is completely the opposite. Like she can't touch coffee unless it's decaf. It really does make her jittery and feel terrible. She gets all of the bad...
side effects of coffee without any of the benefits. So I reckon a big part of it is genetics, but potentially as well, I think it might, well, my personal experience leads me to think it might be a little bit age-related as well, that perhaps as you get older, you can't tolerate it as well. Although, having said that, I watch my mum and dad now regularly put the coffee machine on after dinner in the evening and have a coffee before they go to bed. I'm like, I just couldn't do that anymore.
tyson (34:34.878)
The one thing that gives me comfort is I remember I used to work at an Italian restaurant here in Melbourne and as called La notte and it was a 24-hour restaurant originally when I started working there They often closed at sort of 12 to 2 and towards the end of the night They would always get that coffee machine going and I thought well, you know what? I'm not gonna be antisocial I may as well take one and then I would do it without thinking go home sleep. No worries and then just in recent years I've started to
I guess as I've started to pay a bit more attention and sleep has become a bit more precious, having two kids under the age of three in the household, I've started to ask a few more questions about what's wise. But I mean, at the moment, I just think a crying baby seems to be the main problem keeping me up rather than any form of coffee. But one thing I was keen to talk to you about, and this has been a real point of interest for me, and one thing I don't think we've actually spoken about before is just the quality of tap water. It's interesting, when I lived in London, it was the first time
that we used to boil some of our water before we would drink it. I'm not sure whether that was just a recommendation from a friend or whether that was just general guidelines. But funny story, in the house that we lived in, so small that we had to be, it was a little studio apartment. We had to be so cautious with the amount of things that we had that we boiled all of our water in a frying pan and just poured it from the fry pan into the actual cup. But one thing that I noticed on a regular basis when we were in London was after we would boil that water,
There was like this residue at the bottom of it. It looked like a white kind of residue that I thought, that doesn't look like it should be in drinking water. It didn't look healthy. I don't know what it is. I don't know if there's any side effects. And then in recent years, I've started to hear more people speak about just the poor quality of so much of the tap water that we drink, whether it's, you know, and over like too much fluoride or too much chlorine added to keep it safe for drinking. And so I've...
recently got like a reverse osmosis, or not recently, about three years ago, got a reverse osmosis filter, which claims to reduce the fluoride and the chlorine to a massive degree. And then at the base of it, it's got these little, I don't know what the rocks are called, but apparently it's just to reinstall some of the minerals. I don't know whether I've just been sold fool's gold or whether or not that's something that's really beneficial. Cause I mean, 99 plus percent of people that I know are just purely drinking tap water and...
That's what I did for 29 years of my life. Is there any general advice that you can give around tap water? And I understand this is probably highly variable based on where you're living and where the actual water is coming from.
Andy (37:08.446)
Yeah, I think I'm definitely no expert in this particular area, but for me, I'm, I'm pretty comfortable and tend to drink tap, which I, wherever I go, I, you know, unless there's a warning, a specific strong warning, not to, unless, and I'll, and I'll tend to, admittedly, a lot of my travel will take me to the U S down to Australia, you know, to kind of Europe, like very Westernized modern parts of the world. So there's not usually a massive.
there's usually no major kind of red flag to drink in tap water. So I'm pretty comfortable with that. And that's my default most of the time. Like I say, unless I've had a strong warning for some reason that we shouldn't, then I kind of, I guess I lean back on the idea that public water supply is a pretty fundamental staple for most governments to get right and take care of. And that so many people drink it that you would.
you would get very early warning signs if there was something going wrong. I've definitely been to countries or places where either the mineral content's different or the way they treat it is different and it doesn't taste great. And sometimes then I might get a filter or bottled water. But I think that there's probably some arguments in some places for drinking filtered water. And if it makes you feel better and if it tastes better and encourages you to drink a little bit more, there's probably no, there's nothing bad with it.
But I do think sometimes those things are a little bit overhyped and oversold, especially when they're taking certain things out, putting other things back in. There's often, I don't think, not a lot of strong evidence to support that, proper scientific evidence. And sometimes it's just the case of, yeah, people getting a bit hyped up about these things. I think when you talk about the white stuff, I know that Limescale, where I live on the south coast of England, we...
my kettle gets gunked up with limescale really quickly. I just think we have what they call hard water, you know, where it's kind of got more of those minerals in. But yeah, I mean, whether or not I'm a bad parent, I don't know, but I drink it. I let my kids drink it. You know, I encourage my kids to drink it and sort of feel comfortable with that. So I think it's all, if you're traveling, it's always worth checking out and getting good advice on whether you're going to a part of the world where
people generally don't drink the tap water, that's a warning for me, but otherwise I tend to drink it.
tyson (39:40.002)
Yeah, I think what you've just said is I'm a hippie and so is my wife. I'm pretty sure Which is I mean, I've got no real evidence to back it up I just had a mate who sold me a good argument. Um, and then went on to tell me about how the world was flat so I thought maybe he's not the best source of information, but I thought I'd give it a go man I was really keen to uh to hear about how you went with this european race recently because as I don't know if I mentioned it before we recorded or not, but
Andy (39:54.115)
Yeah.
tyson (40:06.03)
Sweat Elite, your friends with Matt Fox, I saw that he'd put together a nice little run across Europe. What was it, 400 Ks in distance? You're gonna be better at actually painting a picture of what happened, because I've seen half the video that he's posted. It looked beautiful, it looked impressive. I liked the man bun that you were rocking and the sunglasses that you were wearing. But what was the purpose of that? What was the details of that?
Andy (40:30.514)
Yeah. So yeah, Matt, Matt Fox obviously runs that, um, runs his company, his kind of media company, Sweat Elite, which I followed for a number of years, just because I was, he gets great insights into the way that elite athletes train and seem to pop up all over the world, running with like Kipchoge and Kenya and all these sorts of things. I always thought, oh, this is an interesting guy. He's, he's doing interesting stuff. And then I can't remember how we were introduced, but I think a mutual
acquaintance or mutual friend introduced us and we helped Matt with some fueling and hydration for, for marathons that he was running and did a little bit of collaborative work with him, kind of hit it off. I think that's, that's a really, he's a great guy. Um, and he reached out to us after he'd run, he'd run, I think it was, uh, was it Tokyo or Osaka? He ran a marathon in Japan not long ago. And then after that, his next kind of project was this Euro trip run, which is a team.
run 420 kilometers this year. It was from Cologne in Germany to Strasbourg in France. Each year, it's only the second year of it, but their plan is that each year it starts in one town, finishes in another, and then the next year starts in the finished town and kind of moves on. So it's going to move around Europe. And Matt mentioned that he was doing this race. He was putting a team together. Could we sponsor them with some products? Cause they're going to need a lot of gels, a lot of hydration products for...
for a run in the summer like that. And I kind of stuck my neck out and said, well, yeah, absolutely, but I'd really like to run. You know, if you haven't got a full team or whatever yet, I was pretty shameless in putting myself forward to have a go, because I just thought it sounded cool. I thought this sounds like a great event. And Matt, he obviously deliberated for a while and then came back and reluctantly said, yeah, I think you can run in the team. Because I was probably bringing the average speed down, a little bit, if I'm honest.
but he was gracious enough to let me have a go. And so, yeah, we did very little planning in the buildup. Matt did a great job in pulling some fantastic people together. It was six guys and two girls. We all met up in Cologne in Germany a couple of days out from the event. I brought some of the crew, my business partner, Johnny, Raph and Minty from our office to kind of ride a support bike and drive the support cars because we obviously are gonna need supporting through this.
And then we sat down the day before this race, we got given the suggested route by the organizers. And the only rule was you had to get from A to B coming through five checkpoints, not running on any motorways or roads where you weren't allowed to, and you couldn't do anything illegal, but you could plan any route you like. And they gave you this suggested route. And, and we went at it with a bit of a mapping software to try and trim some of the, some of the corners off that route to get the distance down. We got our route down to just about 400 K.
in the planning stage and then basically the next day we sort of lined up at six in the morning and Matt led us off and it was an incredible adventure.
tyson (43:36.806)
So how did it operate? So you're obviously not all running 400Ks. It looked like it was really a relay setting. But I don't know, what did you say? There was six members in your team?
Andy (43:46.282)
There's eight members in the team. So six guys and two girls. That was the kind of standard setup for the teams. And then you could run as far or as, yeah, it was, it was a relay. So only one runner was ever running at once and you could run as far in one go or as little as you wanted. And we, we decided, um, we, we had no previous experience of a race like this. So we just decided, right, what we're going to do to start with, to get, to get ourselves bedded into it. We're all going to run 10 K. So that takes care of the first 80 kilometers.
that'll get us going. That's gonna get us a few hours in without too much stress. And we had two support cars. So we set off, drove out. We used this website, if you've ever heard of it, called What3words, which is a highly accurate way of pinpointing places on a map. So every, I can't remember the size of the blocks, but there's every, it's like coordinates. Every single part of the globe basically is mapped with this.
what three words and it'll say, so it'll have three random words that signify a spot on the map. You can translate that into Google Maps. So we drop pins into these what three words locations in 10 kilometer stints along the route. And then the car would drive to the next spot. The bike would lead the runner to that spot. And then you'd do a handover and carry on. And so we did 80K like that. And then we started to figure out that actually we're gonna need to reduce the distance.
that we run each time in order to keep the pace high. Cause Matt set off and set the bar pretty high. He was running like 330 per K for the first stint. And my, I honestly thought to myself, I'm like, well, I'm going to do well. I need to try and get under four minutes a K, you know, for my, cause I figured I'm going to have to run about 40 or 50 K in total. And I didn't want to sort of pull a calf or hamstring or something early on. So I thought I'm going to try and keep it that, but inevitably Matt runs 330, then he hands over to this guy, Nicky.
who is a phenomenal runner. Nicky runs 320 something per K, then I'm the third runner tagging in. So I had to, I just went out way too hard and ran 330 something, like 339 a K, my first in. But then of course the bar was set. But in order to keep the pace high, we had to reduce the distances. So we gradually, a lot of us then ended up running like five or six K for the next in, so then we, and eventually we got it down to.
tyson (45:48.222)
Thanks for watching!
Andy (46:08.578)
two or three kilometers and we were switching over. So I would, in the nighttime, I paired up with Nicky for a while. He was riding the support bike. I would run 3K and then we'd jump across. I'd ride the bike for a bit. He'd run 3K. We kept flicking through like that. We did that until about, I don't know, three o'clock in the morning because this whole thing took us 25 hours. And so three o'clock in the morning, though, we got word that we're in second place overall.
And the team that's leading is kind of, we're catching them incrementally. So we decided what we wanted to do was reduce the legs even shorter. So then we started doing one kilometer or like three, four minute runs through the rotating through that. And then by the end with, with only a couple of hours, with only an hour to go, we were literally running a minute or two flat out, then having 15 minutes off and tagging runners through and sprinting.
So some of the guys, Nikki was running 2.45 per kilometer near the finish. I think we ran, we'll have run like a two hour 15 marathon between us in the last 42 Ks and we won the event in the end by 14 seconds, which was incredible.
tyson (47:21.062)
That is unbelievable. So who was the other team? Was it, cause this is one thing I was trying to navigate. And as I said, I only watched the first part of it. So I'm not sure I've got all the details, but I couldn't tell whether it was an event where every team was lining up at the exact same time. I know you said there's different routes that they can take, but I wasn't sure whether it was like, okay, at some point during the year, you can line up for this run. Here's a rough estimate of the direction that you got to go and the fastest posting wins.
Andy (47:47.646)
No, this was, it was all done on one day. So there were two, there were two start windows. So I think if you, you had to predict your, or you had to put down your average half marathon time as a team, and then the organisers either said, right, you're one of the slower teams and you're going to start at three in the morning, or you're one of the faster teams and you're going to start at six in the morning. So there was that kind of three or four hour differential so that the slower team, so that everyone could kind of finish at the same time. But it was very much so there was a start line and there was a finish line.
It was a competition on the day. And, and so we, we started off in the second set because the team was generally on average pretty fast. As did the, obviously the team that came second, I think they were called Team Vault and they'd, they'd won the event last time around. So they, they were probably a bit more favored than us, I guess, because they had a bit of experience and we, we actually did take the lead very early on because Matt pulled a blinder right at the start and where
It was very funny. Everyone was lined up, ready to go in an obvious direction. And he'd spotted that he could turn around and go the other way and nip over a footbridge across the river and cut a kilometer off. So everyone ran and then one or two of the teams as included, like turned around and went over the early bridge and we, so we were straight out in the lead. Um, and I think early on, we got a sense actually, maybe we could win this cause we're out in the lead and we appear to be holding a gap with these of the teams, but then we had a big navigational error at
in the middle of the afternoon, one of the runners missed the turning because the bike couldn't keep up with him on a steep hill. Ended up losing 30 or 40 minutes and at that point there was a bit of a feeling that maybe this is, you know, maybe we've screwed it. But then we nibbled it back so there's a lot of highs and lows. It was a fun experience.
tyson (49:23.064)
Ugh.
Well, that was one of the things I was most impressed of when I even heard about the concept. I thought, I struggled to get from here to Melbourne. That's an hour and a half drive that I do three times a week without taking a wrong turn. Like the idea that you're going to get 400 Ks across Europe with a team of eight of you and not have at least one of these issues is almost impossible from my perspective. Was that something that each team had to wrestle with? How many teams were running?
Andy (49:55.31)
I think it was about 20 teams, 18, 20 teams, something like that. I suspect there were people that went badly the wrong way. We did a pretty good job and that was down really to sort of Johnny, Raph and Minty in particular on our side who did a phenomenal job in planning the route and then also predicting ahead and looking ahead and sort of positioning the cars and the cyclists in the right places to make sure that we didn't make a mistake because as much as.
It was about running fast. There's no good running fast if you're running in the wrong direction. So we, we put a lot of emphasis on getting, getting those logistics sorted out properly. And the guys just worked, they literally worked tirelessly for about 27 hours to get, to get that right. And apart from that one error, we made very, very few, there were obviously there like little tiny hundred meter excursions and things like that, where it wasn't clear where the track was going, but mostly we nailed it. And I think that was
tyson (50:27.614)
Hehehe
Andy (50:52.362)
That was where we won the race actually, was in the logistics.
tyson (50:55.374)
Yeah, no, that's impressive. What kind of training are you doing at the moment? You said you got out to a pretty quick pace. I know 330 something was quicker than what you anticipated, but you're obviously at some pretty good level of fitness for that to even be a possibility for you. What's your training week look like right now?
Andy (51:10.978)
I'm so I'm doing a fair bit of, um, I'm getting back into swimming. I've had a few weeks where I've been traveling and my wife's been traveling. So it's been disrupted for, for swimming, but tend to try and swim twice a week, maybe three times if I can for about an hour. And then I commute, I actually did it today. I run into work, which is about, depends which way I go, but I can get about eight to 10 Ks in on my way to work. If I run directly home, it's about 4K. So I can sometimes rack up 10.
10 to 14 K, you know, kind of running in and out of work, which I just do at a steady pace. And then before that event, I was trying to get a bit of a tempo or interval run in every week as well, and maybe a long run at the weekend, but tend to just be ticking over with that. It's probably about six or seven hours of training a week, which isn't a lot, but it is just about enough to keep me fit.
tyson (52:03.726)
Yeah, between sort of work commitments and... How many kids have you got at home? You got two as well.
Andy (52:07.918)
Two, two, little older than yours though. So I get a bit more sleep these days, but I've been in the hurt locker where you are now with the sleep deficit.
tyson (52:16.502)
I wish I could say I'm happy for you. I'm only happy for you based on the fact that might happen in my life in the next couple of years.
Andy (52:22.674)
Yeah, don't worry. It does. It does eventually happen. My kids as well, especially my boy, the oldest is now nine. He was the worst sleeper, you know, apparently, according to my mum, it was it's all genetics because I was exactly the same. But yeah, now, pretty good actually, yeah, when I get the chance. So yeah, I think I think so you'll get through it. You will get through it.
tyson (52:40.42)
How do you go now? You're a good sleeper now?
That's good to grow into it. Man. No, that's great. I'm glad to hear. I'm glad to hear. Well, mate, I know it's early in your day. You've got plenty to get done. So I won't hold you up too much longer, but I appreciate you jumping on here. And it was nice to have a bit of an opportunity. I was looking forward to chatting about a few things outside of running, which we got to as well. It's nice to hear a bit more about the business as well. And one that I'm sort of feel, you know, from a personal perspective, invested in, at least because of the fact that I've got a Melbourne marathon coming up, but also because
so much to do with each other. Based on the fact we're on the other side of the world, it's been fairly consistent. So I'm looking forward to actually bumping into you at some stage. I'll make sure I'll let you know if and when I'm over there, you've got to make sure you do the same for me next time you're in Australia, line up a run or something.
Andy (53:17.527)
Yeah.
100% mate, I'm very keen. I haven't been to Melbourne for, well no, I haven't actually been to Melbourne, I don't think. So I've been to Australia a few times, but I need to get down there. So I'll definitely try and get out for a run with you. How is your marathon training going, by the way?
tyson (53:44.922)
Man, much better. So probably, I can't remember the last time we spoke, but I had a lot of trouble with calf strains, as you know. I'm about seven weeks into fairly consistent, very consistent training, but it's consistent in the sense I haven't done any real intense work at the moment of, this week I probably ran 35 kilometres. I did 12 Ks yesterday at sort of 450 pace and felt really good.
I'm gonna keep building up to the end of July and that'll put me 12 weeks out from the Melbourne Marathon. And then assuming that the body's holding up well, I'll keep increasing that long run. I'd like to get that up to sort of between 30 and 36 Ks in the next eight weeks or so and do that fairly consistently for at least sort of six to eight. It'll just be interesting to see how much intensity I can put into the actual training load because my biggest struggle now is if I get injured again, I'm gonna refocus on a run.
that's not in October, maybe early next year and just try and refocus for that. So my biggest stressor at the moment is just saying healthy. Cause you know, if another calf strain creeps in, that's a, that's Melbourne marathon done and dusted and I'm really loving the running. So I'm hoping, uh, I mean, that's a long winded answer to say it's good, but there's a, there's an asterisk next to that. I hope it, hope it continues. Cause the first six months of this year was a nightmare.
Andy (54:40.824)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andy (55:04.434)
Yeah, I feel your pain there. I've, I've suffered chronic, you know, cough trouble over the years. And I think it's only been in recent years and I don't want to curse myself, but I've just, honestly, I've just slowed the pace of 90% of my running by I used to run all the time at about four minutes a K maybe a little bit quicker. And I was always on the knife edge.
tweaking a car for an Achilles doing that. If you look on Strava now, I would say my standard pace is 425 to 440 K for my runs and, but that feels to me always like within limits and that's like comfortable. And then occasionally I do spike it. I'll do an interval session or a five, a part run 5K or those kinds of things. And although you, you deep down know that you get more bang for your buck.
tyson (55:34.654)
Too solid.
Andy (55:53.354)
If you can do that sort of training, you get, you get more adaptation. There's nothing worse than, than doing that, tearing a calf and then ended up six or eight weeks doing nothing. Cause you just, just don't go anywhere. So I've become a lot more accepting. I think that, you know, optimal is actually optimal can look like different things, but sometimes optimal is running a bit slower than you'd like, but getting the volume in over a consistent amount of time, not only is that probably better for building up for a marathon, but
It's actually better for your head as well, because otherwise, like you say, you're just ready to throw in the towel the whole time if you're injured. That's no good.
tyson (56:25.318)
For sure, for sure. That's what I've sort of been saying to myself the last few weeks. I'm like, I'd much rather go into the Melbourne Marathon underdone than just not at all. Like, so that's the goal. But I mean, yeah, I've sort of, I've set my target pretty high. I said I'd like to break 240. So I mean, I've talked to big game now because it brought in a lot of Instagram YouTube views and now I'm being held to account by people who should be doing that. So anyway, watch this space, fingers crossed that it all comes together nicely. But...
Andy (56:32.255)
Yeah.
Yeah.
tyson (56:52.854)
I mean, well, we've got 15 weeks. So if I can tie that together, I mean, that's a big base.
Andy (56:58.21)
Cool, yeah, well good luck with that. And if you do make it over here, yeah, come and see us. It'd be lovely to see you in the office.
tyson (57:04.218)
Alright man, I look forward to it. Alright Andy, thanks again, I'll leave you to it.
Andy (57:07.998)
Yeah, thanks mate. See you soon.
tyson (57:10.066)
See everybody. Awesome, man. Dude, that was a really great chat.