The PKS Running Club

Paul catches up with Sam, a HYROX athlete, ex-rugby player and the very first person to run alongside PKS RUNS before it was even a thing. The two met in Auckland, New Zealand, between 2005 and 2008, when Paul was working at a church and Sam was a skinny 13-year-old. Sam entered the Auckland Half Marathon's 10K, ran the half instead, missed the turnoff after the finish, and ended up running about 34 kilometres before heading home. No medal, but plenty of bragging rights.From there the conversation travels two decades. Paul shares the story of his own start-stop relationship with running: finishing a half marathon in 1:30, putting the weight back on, seven solo marathon-distance training runs in a single year, and finally discovering Zone 2 running before he knew it had a name. Sam talks about running his first marathon at 17 with no training and being put off running for years, then rediscovering it through rugby in France and HYROX in Australia, and finding that he loved the running more than the gym.Sam is now two weeks out from the Auckland Marathon, chasing his first sub-3 and raising money for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. They get into how to pace a hilly marathon (run to heart rate, and let gravity do the work on the downhills), why Paul doesn't believe in race pace any more, how long a taper should be, and why Paul does time-on-feet long runs. There are also strong opinions on London Marathon, wall balls, and the books that shaped how they train.At its heart this is a candid conversation about mental health: growing up with a tough childhood, running home from school, making a change to alcohol and vaping, and how running helps both men feel their emotions instead of numbing them. They talk about why we still find it hard to speak up, and what a run with someone you trust can do.Funny, honest and a bit of a time capsule from the Nike+ era. This episode is about rediscovering running, the people who get you started, and why one foot in front of the other still holds up.To support Sam's fundraiser for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, use the link in the comments. Donate Here---The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul and JP sit down with Rory Coleman, the "Marathon Man" of UK ultrarunning. At 64, Rory has run 1,250 marathons and completed the Marathon des Sables 19 times. He had only just got back from Morocco, where he got lost on the MDS 120 and still won his age category.It all started on 5 January 1994. Rory was 31, smoking and drinking his way through a decade in the print trade, and in a dark place. He went for a run in his work clothes, managed 100 steps and passed out. Within a year he'd run London, and not long after he was chasing 100 marathons in a year. Along the way came a first Marathon des Sables in a three-piece Union Jack suit, a run to London in a gorilla costume that got him questioned by police over an "escaped monkey", and Guinness World Records for treadmill running and the world's deepest marathon, 1,300 metres underground in a Swedish zinc mine.Rory tells the story of coaching Sir Ranulph Fiennes across the Marathon des Sables, and how it felt to put a national treasure in his car and think "I haven't killed him". He also opens up about 2016, when Guillain-Barré syndrome left him paralysed from the neck down. A few weeks later he taught himself to walk again, finished a parkrun in last place, and went back to the desert the following year.Now a full-time coach with around 40 clients, Rory explains why he thinks of his work as life plans, not running plans, and why he reckons ChatGPT can't tell when you've just been made redundant. He also talks about the Rory Coleman Method, running with 16 prison inmates for the London Marathon, why he doesn't care about times, and the one thing that matters most: listening.Along the way: why the older runners outlast the youngsters in the desert, the tribe you find at MDS, Rory's verdict on whether treadmill-only runners count as runners, and a very tempting invitation to Race to the Stones next year (with the desert in '28) that Paul and JP may or may not regret accepting.Funny, warm and unashamedly inspiring. This episode is about second chances, community, and going and having an adventure before it's too late.---The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

JP is back — this time behind the mic as guest co-host after their planned interview guest (an ultrarunning "legend" JP refuses to fully spoil) had to reschedule. What follows is less structured interview, more unfiltered running-nerd hangout: two grown men trading injury stories, dodgy stats, and increasingly strong opinions about traffic lights.JP kicks off with a fresh Achilles niggle after switching shoe brands mid-training and a barefoot-adjacent misadventure running sand dunes in 40-degree Morocco heat, which spirals into a genuinely useful conversation about heel-to-toe drop, why you shouldn't mix shoe types without easing in, and Paul's own cautionary tale of a friend who ran 10 miles barefoot and shredded his feet to ribbons. From there it's straight into training science: zone two running, why uphill intervals beat flat sprints for muscle recovery, the phosphocreatine energy system, and why walking back down a hill between reps might be the most underrated recovery trick in running.The conversation gets properly candid on food and identity — Paul's "treat-free September" after an indulgent trip to France, a full confession of a 900-calorie Saturday-night Pringles binge, and an honest, unflinching discussion of Paul's past disordered eating patterns and how he's rebuilt a healthier relationship with food. JP and Paul also dig into a British Medical Journal study comparing running to antidepressants for depression, with Paul pushing back from 17 years of lived experience on medication — and a genuinely spicy debate about whether someone who only ever runs on a treadmill can really call themselves a runner (spoiler: Paul says no).Along the way: London Marathon ballot stats (1.3 million applicants, women aged 20–29 the single biggest group), why running clubs aren't for everyone (sorry, Derek), adaptive AI-controlled carbon-plate shoe prototypes, the growing gap between the fittest and the least fit in the UK, and a fully committed pitch for a Strava-linked tax break that somehow turns into "Paul for MP."Funny, wide-ranging, and unmistakably two mates just talking — this episode is proof that not every conversation about running needs a guest to be worth listening to.The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul sits down with Mark, introduced through fellow guest Rebecca after a 25-year friendship forged in their first graduate jobs. Mark's running story starts like so many others on this podcast — nearly 30, a neighbour training after childbirth, and a Sunday-night routine that began with not being able to run to the end of the road without stopping. What follows is a conversation about weight, discipline, and the slow work of learning that fitness isn't just about miles logged but what you actually put into your body — portion control, tracking, and finally understanding his own relationship with food after decades of "treadmill specials" and Christmas-to-Lent cycles.The heart of the episode is Mark's 2019 challenge: 15 marathons in 15 months, run while working for Sands, a charity supporting families after stillbirth and neonatal death, raising money and awareness one marathon at a time. Inspired by local hero Francis Benali, Mark ran through COVID lockdowns, homemade courses, and socially distanced club laps, eventually smashing his sub-four-hour goal at marathon 13 with a 3:52. Then came marathon 14 — run the week before Christmas, six days after his PB, tracing his own life story from the hospital where he was born to the streets of his childhood. He finished feeling wrong. By that night, his wife and friends were insisting something wasn't right.What followed was a trip to A&E against COVID-era advice not to go, a blood test showing a troponin level thousands of times above normal, and the discovery that Mark had run his 13th and 14th marathons — including a PB — while having a heart attack. His cardiologist's verdict reframed the entire story: rather than reckless, Mark's fitness had likely kept him alive long enough to get help. The conversation doesn't stop at the medical drama, though — it goes deep into what came after: the identity crisis of no longer being "marathon man," survivor's guilt, counselling, and the slow rebuild of trust in his own body.Six years on, Mark is back running 10Ks and half marathons, has never ruled out a 15th marathon, and carries with him a line spotted on a stranger's race shirt at a parkrun: the comeback is greater than the setback.Honest, moving, and full of hard-won perspective — this episode is about fitness, faith, identity, and what it really means to be lucky to be alive.The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul welcomes the show's first international guest: Yobster, a Nigerian-born runner now based in Toronto, Ontario, whose running journey started in October 2024 in the middle of a career leap and a genuine mental breakdown. Four months later, with no training plan, no long runs, and a race-day fuel strategy of dates and electrolytes, he lined up for the Lagos City Marathon — went out too fast, hit the wall at halfway, and finished in 4:52 before his immune system gave out entirely for weeks afterward.What follows is one of the most rapid and well-documented progressions the podcast has covered. Eight weeks of his first proper structured training block brought Milton Keynes down to 3:52, with his wife watching him race for the first time. A full cycle later, Toronto Waterfront dropped him to 3:35, his kids cheering from the course as he stopped at the 40K mark just to hug them. From there, a charity place at the London Marathon — run in memory of friends lost to pancreatic cancer — meant training through a brutal Toronto winter split between treadmill sessions and outdoor long runs, chasing a goal he almost didn't say out loud.He crossed the London finish line in 3:19:56, four seconds inside his target, despite a tendinitis scare in the taper. But the heart of this conversation isn't the splits — it's what Yobster calls "the journey": a running philosophy built on Galatians 6:9 ("let us not grow weary in doing good"), why he cries at every single race, and how learning to be vulnerable — including a phone call with his young son praying for him mid-marathon — has reshaped his marriage and how his family sees him.The conversation also gets into the mechanics: training by feel and heart rate rather than fixed paces, letting fitness "come to him" instead of chasing a number, the cost of going out too hard in that first Lagos marathon, and what's next — the Berlin Marathon in two weeks, chasing 3:10, with sub-3 waiting patiently for whenever the journey gets him there.Emotional, faith-filled, and full of hard-won wisdom — this episode is about patience, purpose, and what running reveals about who you really are.The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.