ATHCO

Danieke Malan’s first race was the worst race she’s ever run. She did what everyone does: a coffee and a peanut butter toast before the start.It took a look at her own DNA to find out why.Danieke is a nutrigenomics consultant, which means she works on how your genes interact with the food you eat. She grew up playing competitive hockey, and by 15 she was training before school and after school. At 16 she was so tired she slept through whole weekends. A functional nutritionist helped her turn it around, and he was the first person to explain to her how DNA and nutrition fit together. She’s now doing her master’s in functional nutrition.Once she started running, she got stuck in a cycle of Achilles and connective tissue injuries. So she analysed her own genetics the way she would for a client. She found out she recovers slowly. She also metabolises caffeine slowly, so on race morning the coffee was only kicking in once she was trying to race. She didn’t quit coffee. She changed the dose and the timing, and she says she’s now running the best she has since she started.Pasta and pizza before races made “the wheels fall off”, so now she fuels on honey, dates and bananas. The night before every race she has a sourdough chicken mayo toastie, even if that means taking one with her on the road trip to a race in Knysna. She runs less, cross-trains more and walks every day.In this episode Danieke explains nutrigenomics in plain English, and what a genetic test can and can’t tell you as a runner. In her words, it’s “a compass, not a verdict.” She takes us through what working with her looks like, using Jannis (currently injured) as the example client: the first conversation, the cheek swab, the 21 working days it takes to get results, and how those results become a plan for recovery, sleep and fuelling.We also get into what to eat and drink after a hard session, why timing matters as much as what’s on your plate, why inflammation is a symptom rather than the problem, how stress shows up in your body, whether your genes can show if you’re more suited to power or to speed, and why we personalise our training plans but still eat off someone else’s plan.Plus Dan’s low-carb half marathon that nearly finished him off, the Stellies vs UCT debate, Danieke’s honest answer on peptides (“I do not have the credentials to answer that”), and her take on supplements: “You don’t need a fistful of supplements, you need a slow morning and your farmers market.”An honest one about getting to know your own body.This episode is general information, not medical advice. Speak to a qualified professional before changing your diet, training or supplements.🔗 Follow DaniekeInstagram: @daniekemalanGeneIQ: @geneiq.healthVeldt: @veldtlife🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @jannisrothermel

Juli Kleinhans once had almost 100,000 followers on Instagram. She didn’t make a cent from them.Today she runs Gutsy, a fitness app and community for everyday women, with a far smaller following. And she’s convinced you can start a business with just 1,000 followers.Juli raced at nationals for the first time when she was 11. By grade 11 her coach sat her down over dinner and told her that if she ran under 60 seconds in the 400m hurdles, she could race internationally. She ran the time. That year, two other girls ran faster, and only the top two went.At university her new coach asked her a question nobody had ever asked her: why are you running? She burst into tears. At 20 she met her coach for coffee and could only get three words out: “I hate this.” It wasn’t the sport she hated. It was the pressure, and how her whole identity had been built around it. Around the same time her Instagram was hacked. She lost her sport and her following in the same stretch, and then lockdown hit.What came next is the part we didn’t expect. Home workouts during COVID led to a personal training certificate, then group classes at F45, a hiking community, and eventually the Gutsy app, which launched in September 2024 at R99 a month so South African women could actually afford it. Now there’s also her podcast, She’s Gutsy.In this episode Juli breaks down how to get brand deals with a small following: what a media kit needs, why your audience numbers matter more than your follower count, why she’d look people up on LinkedIn rather than send one DM, why doing your first deals for trade can pay off, and how a protein bar she melted in the microwave turned into a partnership with USN.We also get into what nobody tells young athletes about pressure, why she came back to the track four years later to race her younger self (“I miss everything except the pressure”), doing an Ironman 70.3 in their first year of marriage without owning a bike, and the burnout she’s dealing with right now, which is why she trains 20 to 30 minutes a day.Plus the time Sydney McLaughlin followed her back, and why she films weekly car reviews that have nothing to do with fitness.Juli’s first ever podcast as a guest.🔗 Follow JuliInstagram: @julipoeli_officialGutsy app: @gutsy_appPodcast: She’s Gutsy Podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts)🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @jannisrothermel

“I’m not an influencer, I’m a triathlete.” That’s what it says in Dylan Nortje’s Instagram bio.Dylan is a professional triathlete from White River who started racing at 16. He’s 29 now and, by his own count, still on his twelfth gap year. He never sat down and decided to go pro. He wanted to make it in cycling and didn’t crack it. Then he did one race in Joburg, and it kept going from there.Making a living from triathlon in South Africa is a different game, though. Brands here run on small margins, importing is expensive, and very few of them can put big money behind an athlete. One brand owner told him straight: sponsoring the package he asked for would mean cancelling all her marketing. So they met halfway. Two years later, they’re still working together.He’ll also tell you he hates Instagram. If he could delete the app today, it’d be gone. At the end of last year he decided to post anyway, on his own terms: he only shows products he actually uses, and gives an honest answer when people ask whether they work. When he started speaking up about depression, 15 to 20 guys messaged him privately within the first hour.In this episode Dylan gives his honest advice to anyone getting into triathlon, especially Dan, who’s only a few weeks into his own training. We get into why “you don’t race triathlons, you train for them,” why he hasn’t raced since December and still loves every week of training, and how running without a watch helped take his 5K from around 16:40 into the 15s in six months.We also get into why copying pro triathletes can make you slower. Instagram shows you the heat sessions in hoodies on a 36-degree day. It doesn’t show the nine hours of sleep and the 99% of unglamorous work behind them. Plus how Strava pushes people to run faster than their body wants, why work stress hits your body the same way a hard session does, and why he says that training alone, he’d have quit years ago.And fuelling the simple way: how many carbs per hour, how to train your gut, whether DIY sugar mixes are worth it, and why a Bar One makes it onto his long rides.An honest one about loving the process, and doing sport because it’s fun.🔗 Follow DylanInstagram: @dylannortje97🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @jannisrothermel

We met Michael Brand by accident. We were organising an event at SaunaHaüs, he happened to be there, and when we asked if he trained, he said he did "a little bit of triathlon." Then he sent us his list.A self-made Ironman. A 100-miler. Top five at the Prom backyard ultra. Medals at the South African rowing champs. And the Cape 253. A 7.4km swim from Robben Island, a 138km cycle, and a 108km run over Cape Town's 13 Peaks with 6,500m of climbing.His mates told him it was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard. He did it anyway.Mike grew up rowing. For a kid with ADHD who didn't quite know where he fit, it was the first place where hard work showed up clearly in the results and the first time he found real confidence. Years later, struggling during his master's year, he went back to that lesson: pick something so difficult that it forces you to lock in every day.At 12, he'd written two things on his bucket list: do an Ironman without ever doing a half, and run an ultra before a marathon. When COVID shut down races, he didn't wait. He built his own Ironman between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek and added 8km to the run so it would count as an ultra. He weighed 102kg when he started training. His first run was 2km and gave him shin splints. Fourteen hours later, he'd ticked off both.Then came the Cape 253. On the run leg, three peaks in, around 3am, he partially tore his ITB coming down a rocky descent. He'd trained for ten months. So instead of stopping, he told himself: just one more peak. A doctor monitored his painkillers every two hours, friends joined for every leg, and he moved one peak at a time until he finished. 57 hours after starting.In this episode we get into why he only picks goals he'll probably fail, why the race itself is never the point, and why an ultra can feel like a whole year of life condensed into 35 hours. We also talk about hallucinating friendly spiders 36 hours into UTCT, why backyard ultras are the only format that gets harder the more you train, his strategy for running one, why "sport is about doing the boring things very well," and the 200-miler he's training for next.Plus ADHD and endurance sport, injury prevention, and our honest take on David Goggins.Recorded inside Sauna, Cape Town.🔗 Follow Mike Instagram: @michaelbrandrsa🔗 SaunaHaüs Cape TownBook a session or say hi: @saunahaus.cpt🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @jannisrothermel

Chanel Kruger didn't grow up a runner. At school she only played netball, and by her own admission she hated putting in the work. Her sister was the track star.That changed during COVID. Her sister kept training at home, so Chanel joined her, mostly just to spend time together. They worked through a Burnt Studios at-home program, one session led to another, and she never really stopped. She's been strength training consistently for five or six years now, and running came later.She was sharing her training online long before it was a "creator athlete" thing. And at around 5,000 followers, she reached out to Burnt Studios and HOKA herself. Almost four years later, she's still partnered with both.In this episode she breaks down exactly how she approached it. Why she bought and wore the brands long before she ever pitched them. Why you should "do what you would do if you were already a partner." Why staying within your niche matters more than saying yes to every offer. And why brands often see the value in you before you see it yourself.We also get into how to grow as a fitness creator in South Africa without chasing perfection: why most of Instagram is actually normal parkruns and ordinary 5Ks, the simple content ideas hiding in every beginner's running journey, the editing tools she uses, and why her own page has become more of a fitness scrapbook than a planned content calendar. Even though she now manages social media for six brands as a freelancer.Then there's the injury. Cape Town Marathon was her A-race. A week after Two Oceans, on an easy Saturday run with friends, she rolled her ankle and fractured her foot. She was back in the gym on crutches that Monday, missed the marathon, and slowly built back. Starting with two minutes of running and two minutes of walking, until her first continuous run of 12km.Plus HYROX, why it's really a running race with obstacles, why Cape Town's packed run club scene makes it hard to stick to a training plan, and why fun and goals can coexist.🔗 Follow ChanelInstagram: @chanel_cronje🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @jannisrothermel