DCR AidStation

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. Mistakes were made. The first of many in this week’s episode of the AidStation was Andrew McDowall describing Matt as having a “water off a duck’s back” mentality. This is not true. Especially when the water is the wider response to the Joyline Chepgnego doping saga.That water really sank in. The duck was soaked. Ali, Andrew, and Matt discuss this thorny issue and where responsibility for supporting athletes accused of doping sits, and is the response from sponsors and the wider bodies in the sport is up to scratch. Furthermore, do the systems that drive these athletes to chase greater riches and fame provide adequate support and guidance to avoid potential pitfalls? This (of course) leads to a conversation about why Andrew would race David Bain in a half-marathon and not Lance Armstrong. Do age group wins count? How long could a post-race funk reasonably extend? What even is Sunnyvale Baked Bean Syndrome? We touch on how running can be as much of an addiction as the next thing, and how being lubed for bear in civilian clothes when your plans change quickly feels transgressive. As a parting thought, there is some comfort in that we were probably never going to get sponsored by Salomon anyway. Also, check out our show notes for a great article in iRunFar on the subject written by Eszter Horanyi.Excellent stuff.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. We make no bones about it. Dirt Church Radio is, was, and always will be Ruth Croft Positive. Over the (at least) 7 times Croft has appeared on DCR, there has always been one constant- a focus on moving forward. Ruth is on par with the best to take the gig, a wonderful human being, and an asset to our sport. The only criminal elemen…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. It’s that time of year when we start to see the end of winter and the earliest glimpses of spring. Thoughts turn to the new year, big events, and the lead-up to those events. Does one size fit all when it comes to peak months and loading during the macrocycle? This doesn’t even begin to touch on the double-edged sword of Strava and …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau.This week, Ali Pottinger and Andrew McDowall sit down with the one and only Phil Gore. You’ll know Phil from his two epic showdowns with our very own Sam Harvey at Dead Cow Gully — both times pushing themselves to the ragged edges of what we thought humanly possible.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.com A complete psychological breakdown is rarely captured on a heatmap. Yet here we are.Kia ora e te whānau. I mean, the co-hosts of your third favourite trail and ultrarunning podcast haven’t gotten together for a chinwag for a while, and, if the universe has had a say in 2/3rds of our days, things are bound to get chaotic. …

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. This week, Ali and Matt sit down with the legendary Sage Canaday. Since turning pro in 2012, Sage has been a defining presence in the trail and ultrarunning world. With a strong background in road racing and tidy marathon times, he helped usher in a new era of professional athletes in trail running.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. This week, we’ve got another special edition of the AidStation for you. Ali and Andrew caught up with Australian endurance legend Maree Connor to talk about her amazing ultramarathon career. From the iconic Spartathlon to the punishment of Badwater 135 to the World 24-Hour Championships, Maree has conquered some of the most incredib…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comMarianne Hogan – The Will to Endure | Dirt Church Radio 335Ali Pottinger catches up with the mighty Marianne Hogan after her epic third-place finish at this year’s Western States Endurance Run, cementing her as one of trail running’s top talents. We first tried to record before Tarawera Ultra, but life intervened, so we’re thrilled to bring you this conversation now. Marianne shares her journey back from injury, her resilience and grit through setbacks, and what it truly means to endure in this week’s Dirt Church Radio.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. This week we’ve something super special for you. Ali and Matt had the chance to catch up with Dan Jones about his third consecutive top-five finish at the Western States Endurance Run. We talk about the day that was,…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comSam Harvey and Stephen Redfern- To The Well We Go. Dirt Church Radio 333. Kia ora e te whānau. As the sport of trail and ultramarathon running evolves, we find ourselves searching for that extra 1%.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau.This episode of the Aidstation leaves more questions unanswered than answered. Is finding your attention waning at a race with no end the same as disliking it? Why does Test Cricket suck? What’s wrong with Corriander? Will it…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. It would be easy to start this post off with something like “the internet sucks” and again, that would date us. In today’s context, the internet is, and with that comes its joys, its horrors, and the amplification of the worst angels of our psyche. In the physical world, moments come and go; in the digital world, a senseless act is immortal. Camille Herron, who returns to Dirt Church Radio for a third time, remains one of the greatest talents in our sport, having set multiple world records across various distances. In 2024, the wheels fell off over allegations of Wikipedia tampering. Contracts were lost, and the pile-on was massive and brutal. Ali Pottinger and Andrew McDowall speak with Camille about her career, the recent challenges she has faced, and where she sees our sport heading in her first podcast interview for 2025. We encourage you to have a good listen to this one, if for nothing else, for an incredible Greatest Run Ever. Dirt Church Radio- Best Enjoyed Running--- --- ---Episode LinksCamille Herron HomeCamille Herron InstagramSign up to the DCR AidStation newsletterDirt Church Merch!The Squadrun 4-Week Training Trial for DCR Listeners!Dirt Church Radio on InstagramDirt Church Radio on FacebookFurther Faster New ZealandEnjoy!DCR IN THE WILDWe’ll be at Northland 100 in July. Come ask Matt why he’s so slow. .SubscribedOur mates at Squadrun have come up with a special four-week training trial for listeners of DCR. Now as you’ll know from listening to DCR over the years, Squadrun is the baby of Kerry Suter and Ali Pottinger, and they have coached thousands of runners to success at a bunch of events we love and cherish and if you’ve been to any trail races on either side of the Tasman you’ll have seen the Squadrun colours being represented strongly. So, if you want to give it a crack, here’s the link.Did you miss out on episodes of the Dirt Church Radio podcast? Listen on your favourite app. There are more than 300 episodes.Check us out on YouTube!Phoney War It’s hard being in a triad with Andrew McDowall. He’s better at running and literally composes music for a living. I’m mediocre at running at best, and never really composed much. Although let’s be strengths-based here. I mean, sure, AMCD does have OVER A BILLION STREAMS of music he’s written, but is he referenced in the New Zealand-based edition of Trivial Pursuit? No (not to his knowledge, anyway). And while I’ve never run Western States or held an NZ age group record, I was in a band that took our $5000 NZ on Air grant and bet it on a horse, made a music video about it, and spent the profits on fireworks. I had some fun playing in that band*. I remember the first time we got given a NZ on Air grant for a song we wrote called YOU ALL SUCK. We pocketed the money and snuck into the University Acoustic Department at night to record our debut E.P. for free. It was incredible. It was my 27th birthday. We did our thing, and then, giddy and stoned, we went into the Anechoic Chamber, which is perhaps the quietest place in New Zealand. I think after that we had a small cake to celebrate, and the guitar player provided me with the solemn rite of everyone in the postgraduate program of that department. I was instructed to rip a random page from one of the acoustics textbooks that lined the shelves of the space. I duly did that, feeling quite punk rock in the moment, and we went back and finished tracking our parts. Looking back, 21 years later. It was a bit of a ball-bag thing to do. I imagine someone completing a master’s thesis on..god, I dunno….Acoustic Stuff, and then turning to page 432, but finding that there is only page 434, and the information is missing. I mean, it probably never mattered much, but still.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. Join Ali Pottinger, Lucy Bartholomew, Jessie Speedy, and Nicole Bunyon for the Ultra Trail Australia Women in Trail Panel. As our Ali says at the top, there is always more to say, and this is a good place to start. Join our incredible panel for this awesome discussion on the current state and the hopeful future of women in trail.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comGary House-Cutting Through The Noise. Dirt Church Radio 329.Kia ora e te whānau. You’d need to have been living under a rock over the last year not to have seen one of Gary House’s videos in the ultrasphere. From satirical stitches that poke fun at the absurdity of running media to no-nonsense and practical advice to aid in your running, e.g., “Stop being so British when climbing hills” Ali and Matt speak with Gary about his somewhat circuitous route into running, his coaching business, and his leap into the digital running media world. This conversation goes all over the map. We learn that there might be a man named Dead Paul wandering around Wrexham, and that there also might be streets he can’t jog down in London, because it appears that some people can’t take a joke. Dirt Church Radio- Best Enjoyed Running--- --- ---Episode LinksGary House InstagramHouse Run ClubGary House YoutubeSign up to the DCR AidStation newsletterDirt Church Merch!The Squadrun 4-Week Training Trial for DCR Listeners!Dirt Church Radio on InstagramDirt Church Radio on FacebookFurther Faster New ZealandEnjoy!Music by Andrew McDowall, DigicakeDCR IN THE WILDAli Will be at The Possum Night Trail Run on Saturday June 14th, In Taupō.Our mates at Squadrun have come up with a special four-week training trial for listeners of DCR. Now as you’ll know from listening to DCR over the years, Squadrun is the baby of Kerry Suter and Ali Pottinger, and they have coached thousands of runners to success at a bunch of events we love and cherish and if you’ve been to any trail races on either side of the Tasman you’ll have seen the Squadrun colours being represented strongly. So, if you want to give it a crack, here’s the link.Did you miss out on episodes of the Dirt Church Radio podcast? Listen on your favourite app. There are more than 300 episodes.Check us out on YouTube!Family Shapes I didn’t know who Allan Gurganus was until a couple of days ago. Much to my horror, I’d found I’d stopped my lifelong habit of reading before bed and slipped, step-by-step, into a process of brain-rotting scrolling. The books I’d brought to read sat accusingly on the bedside, and I could feel my attention span receding faster than my hairline.When I found myself walking out of a bookshop with a copy of The Best of Me, a compilation of the essays of David Sedaris, I was determined to reset. No phone in the room unless I was on-call, and books, books, books before bed. Spending a lifetime decoding other people’s truths has left me with a narrow window of interest in fiction writing, and embracing the reset ideology I’d stepped outside of my comfort zone with this purchase.Sitting with Lily, on the steps by Queen Elizabeth Square, leafing through the book’s introduction, I came across this quote from Gurganus.“Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.”What does this have to do with running? Well, nothing. And also, everything.I have been thinking a lot recently about the identities we hold, and how we shift between them depending on circumstance. I’ve also been thinking about our generational identity, and how this relates to running, and in the wider context, our lives.I’ve always thought that those of us whose first taste of running media was Unbreakable are now at the point where we are being left behind by the carefully curated world of trail running in the digital age. It’s a sport that can -in some cases, take days, distilled into the vertical video format. It’s not any worse or better, it’s just different. And different, generally, no matter how much I protest to the contrary, scares me. I feel old. And with that feeling of age comes the understanding that nothing in this world is permanent.I remember the first time that grief interceded in my running on behalf of a dear friend’s wife who passed away from cancer. Not so much a battle, as he said in her eulogy, but a king-hit.It was years ago, when I was much fitter and far less effective in my running. I was at a track, doing 800m repeats, and every second lap of the interval, I’d begin to have a panic attack.The focus required for each interval, each descent into physical pain, left space for my reflection on the emotional pain of grief. I was unfamiliar with our friends dying, which happened to other people. Old People. Each time the bucket descended into the well, what it brought back was overwhelming.Years pass. And we get better at grief, marginally. People in our lives leave. And as they do, we not only reshape the lives we lead, around or over the hole the person filled, but also against those roles our families, and other systems, nudge us into. For a sport that consciously (perhaps self-consciously) brands itself as being life-affirming, conversely, running offers us an honest space to talk about and think about death.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comThe Ultrasphere Is Getting Spicy. Aidstation 31.Kia ora…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. It’s always a party in the Blue Mountains. From the out-of-this-world scenery, to the amazing people, to the exceptional country that carries you, the Blue Mountains have it all.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. This week, Ali Pottinger speaks with Hanny Allston for a special addition to the Aidstation Podcast. Hanny is a returning champion to DCR who was with us for episode 121, all the way back in December 2020. Back then we said Hanny is based in Tasmania and is a high performance coach, owner of Find Your Feet Outdoors, former junior and senior world champion orienteer - elite trail runner and now the author of Finding My Feet, Hanny’s memoir which delves into a lot of topics including body image, mental health, and bullying, which we don’t often talk about in the trail running space, but we definitely should. This conversation focuses on the multitude of identities we have in our lives, and how we can be pigeon-holed into specific ones, and they, in turn, can define what people perceive of us, but not the whole us. Heads up. This conversation deals with topics around perinatal mental health. Ali and Hanny are powerful women, and this is a worthwhile listen for anyone with a running Mum in their lives, or indeed, any Mum in their lives. That means most of us. Mum’s rule. Dirt Church Radio- Best Enjoyed Running-- --- ---Episode LinksFinding My Feet: My StoryTrail Running GuidebookHanny Allston FacebookHanny Allston InstagramFind Your Feet ToursSign up to the DCR AidStation newsletterThe Squadrun 4-Week Training Trial for DCR Listeners!Dirt Church Radio on InstagramDirt Church Radio on FacebookFurther Faster New ZealandEnjoy!Music by Andrew McDowall, DigicakeDCR IN THE WILDMatt and Ali will be at Ultra Trail Australia from 15-18th of May Come check out the live shows on Thursday and Friday at 1300!!! Our mates at Squadrun have come up with a special four-week training trial for listeners of DCR. Now as you’ll know from listening to DCR over the years, Squadrun is the baby of Kerry Suter and Ali Pottinger, and they have coached thousands of runners to success at a bunch of events we love and cherish and if you’ve been to any trail races on either side of the Tasman you’ll have seen the Squadrun colours being represented strongly. So, if you want to give it a crack, here’s the link.Did you miss out on episodes of the Dirt Church Radio podcast? Listen on your favourite app. There are more than 300 episodes.Check us out on YouTube!ESSAYMultidudesIf 2024 was about a singularity of purpose, then 2025 has been about multitudes.There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain which is along the lines of “History never repeats, but it very often rhymes”. I believe that old Clemens himself did not say those words, but it is as elegant a summation as I’ve ever seen of the concept that themes repeat themselves through your life, with the only common denominator ultimately being you. I’m starting to think, however, that this may apply to differing identities we hold, as well as our lives as a whole.One of the greatest privileges about Dirt Church Radio of the last six and a bit years is getting to be with people through a multitude of their experiences. Myself, Eugene, and now Ali and AMcD will worm our way into people’s brains in specific contexts, and our identities to that person will be cemented to that moment.An exceptionally awkward example of this was when a very charismatic woman told me upon meeting that “I fall asleep to your voice”. In hindsight, it is clear that A) she was being an egg, and B) had I been able to, I would have thrown myself out of the 2nd floor window I was by. But this is the thing, in her mind, she associated me with her chronic insomnia, and that was how she knew me, rambling sleepy-time dude.This week’s guest, Hanny Allston, is neither a rambly sleepy-time dude nor a dude. What she is is many things to many things to many different people. To us on DCR, the first time she spoke to us in 2020, Hanny was a two-time orienteering world champion, author, elite trail runner, coach, and business owner. As with most of us, Hanny is also many other things- a partner, daughter, mother, friend, and other multitudes. I’d asked Ali when she spoke to Allston if there was anything that she had said that stuck in Ali’s mind that I could use for a title for the episode, and Ali said words to the effect that Hanny had moved past wanting to be known as “Hanny the athlete” and to be with a simpler ( and yet at the same time containing multitudes of meaning) “just Hanny”.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comBryon Powell- Transcendent Trails- The Ultra Gobi 400. Dirt Church Radio 325Kia ora e te whānau. Bryon Powell is a legend. The founder of iRunFar, an Ultramarathon runner and returning Dirt Church Radio Champion. In this week’s episode of DCR, Bryon speaks with Ali and Andrew about the lessons he learnt and the stories he shared in what felt like a lifetime in three days.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. Anyone with a passing relationship with Dirt Church Radio will know that Ultra Trail Australia has wormed it’s way firmly into our hearts as one of the must-do events on the planet. That love was deepened when Ali P jumped on board as a co-host in 2024. This week, Matt has the pleasure to speak to Ali and Kerry, the brawn and brawn behind Squadrun, about this year's event being one of the three global majors and what to expect both in terms of the courses themselves, with the inclusion of what will be a very challenging 100-mile event. In addition to these course previews, Ali and Kerry bring the executive functioning of a well-stocked spreadsheet to the party of who to watch out for in each distance, whilst Matt impulsively wants what the heart wants. We can’t wait to see you all at the start and finish lines in a couple of weeks, and until then, we hope this will help fill the UTA-shaped gap. Dirt Church Radio - Best Enjoyed Running

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit dirtchurchradio.substack.comKia ora e te whānau. Jean Beaumont is a legend in Aotearoa ultramarathon circles that you’ve probably heard of, or maybe thought you did, because Jean keeps to herself. It’s taken years to get her to come on DCR, and we’re so glad she did. Eight Northburn 100 finishes, and six wins from those eight, on top of masses of other feats of endurance that would…