Episode 498: 2:59 to 2:18 Marathon | Matt Fox - Sweat Elite
Matt Fox joined me to chat about his interest in the marathon after coming from a National class middle distance background, his trajectory with content creation, the Chinese running shoe market, and his power weight ratio journey.
Matt Fox: sweatelite.co | IG: @mattinglisfox
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Episode summary: Zach Bitter interviews Matt Fox (Sweat Elite)
Matt’s background: Former Australian middle-distance runner who twice finished 5th at Olympic/World trials (consistent 1:48 800m). Felt he “failed” after never making a national team, which later fueled his curiosity about how better runners train.
How Sweat Elite started: After a failed Strava-like app, Matt launched a site interviewing pros. He later began filming elite workouts (inspired by old FloTrack videos), but it lost money due to last-minute travel costs and limited YouTube revenue. He recouped losses by documenting his own marathon builds.
Content landscape: Athletes now prefer posting their own journeys, making third-party workout videos harder. Influencers-as-coaches is a growing issue; both agree formal qualifications aren’t required (many great coaches never had them), but buyers should do due diligence. Bad influencer coaches can still introduce people to the sport who later seek better help.
Creators they follow: Truett Haynes (humor + ambitious Olympic Trials goal despite current times being far off; recently hired Rory Linkletter). Also Eric Flowberg (cinematography) and Rory Linkletter (authenticity, Canadian marathon record pursuit).
Weight/body composition debate: Matt accidentally got very lean (70 kg) for a 2:20 marathon, then gained 3–4 kg and plateaued at 2:23–2:24. After noticing he was much larger than the Japanese runners he raced with, he used carb-cycling (high carbs around key sessions, deficit on easy days) to drop back to ~69 kg and ran 2:18–2:19. He has since lost another ~12 kg.
He stresses this is highly individual and risky. Personality matters: people with OCD/obsessive tendencies are more likely to develop RED-S or eating disorders. He now studies nutrition to give safer guidance.
Examples cited: Josh Kerr’s long-term leaning-out, George Cush dropping weight before winning Comrades, Ryan Hall hitting a point where further loss hurt performance.
Both emphasize timing (fuel hard sessions, restrict on recovery days), not living in a perpetual deficit, and resetting after races.
Chinese super shoes: Matt recently lab-tested 12 models from Anta, Li-Ning, 361°, Xtep, Dynafish, etc. Many perform comparably to Western shoes at half the price and often last longer. Notable mentions: Li-Ning Dragon Flight (79 g, technically illegal but extremely fast; a legal version is coming), Anta C10 (very similar to Puma Fast-R), Dynafish trainer (versatile, durable, sub-200 g).
Barriers in the U.S.: high tariffs, limited specialty-store distribution, and brands currently focused on the Chinese market. Anta and Li-Ning are expanding globally.
Matt’s current status: Recovering from injury, posting daily on Instagram/Strava as Matt Fox. Targeting a 2:17 or faster at the Melbourne Marathon in two months.
Episode Transcript:
Zach Bitter
All right. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt
Thanks, Zach. I appreciate it. I've tuned into your podcast quite a bit over the years and appreciated a lot of the topics you've talked about. So cool to be on the podcast.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, I'm excited for this one. I got kind of drawn into a lot of your content because I feel like you're especially, especially nowadays, because nowadays, you know, like there's just so much online content out there. I feel like a lot of creators tend to try to find their niche and stay in there pretty tightly. And I mean, you're obviously like, you know, within the broader running niche, but your podcast covers a pretty diverse amount of stuff between like
talks about different creators, content content creators and stuff in the space, like the training and racing, your own training and racing stuff, shoes, like athletes and experts coming on the podcast and stuff like that. So I find that you kind of have a pretty good balance of just broad enough respect so it doesn't just feel like it's just rinse and repeat the same thing over and over again, but still enough to get someone who's a big running geek to tune in a lot. So
Matt
Yeah, thanks, Zach. I appreciate that. And I've had a bit of an unusual, I guess journey through my running life, which has been, you know, full of lots of ups and downs. But yeah, I guess probably when you would have caught you know, wind of what I was doing might have been around the time the YouTube ch channel came out potentially in like twenty twenty one, 'cause I think that's when a lot of people probably you know, maybe became familiar with what I was doing when I started
recording a lot of professionals in the US originally in training and putting them on YouTube. And yeah, a lot of backstory as to sort of why that started. I was actually running Sweat Elite as a brand for a few years before that, but it was just in article format and podcast.
And yeah, my own running journey. I've never really been an elite runner, but I've sort of been on the edge of that elite space in middle distance and in the marathon over the last sort of seven or eight years. So now a two eighteen marathoner with the aspirations of getting down to I don't know, I think maybe like two fourteen, two thirteen is possible in the next couple of years. But age is also catching up with me 'cause I'm turning forty in February, so who knows if that's gonna slow me down or not. But
No, it's cool. Well I guess I'm curious to know when do you think you first came across any of the content that I was putting out?
Zach Bitter
If I remember correctly, I think you did an athlete profile on Jim Walmsley a while ago. Would have been probably around like near the start of the date you mentioned. I'm a big Jim Walmsley fan because I kind of came into the sport just a little bit before him, and then he kind of came in and we were on Team USA's hundred K World Championship team in 2015. So I got to know him a little bit there, and then it was just fun to watch his career just take off. But I remember, I think.
That video that you did with him was my first point of reference to your stuff.
Matt
Yeah, that would have been summer of twenty twenty one. And I remember that very well because Jim I we'd already done a podcast with Jim. In fact, it wasn't me, it was my colleague Tate who sort of helped me start Sweat Elite. He's now a doctor. I'm still pretty good friends with him. And I reached out to Jim and he said, yeah, you can join me for this particular long run as he was preparing for Western States. And he said, you probably remember this, but he said, On this day I actually drove down to Sedona in my car.
But I've got a special car that I use only for this and it's like a beat up four wheel drive that has no air conditioning. And it was like ninety degrees Fahrenheit or thirty degrees Celsius that day, so I had to endure a drive down.
And back up. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. Like I was obviously stoked to be there in the first place, very lucky. But it was very hot in that car. It was like a sauna. And he was doing that for heat acclimation purposes. So he would do I think
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
It was about forty five minutes, fifty minutes, drive down, and then maybe three hours if I remember correctly, run for two and a half, and then back up in the car. So yeah, I mean that was a workout in itself for me and I was just holding a camera. I don't know what it would have been like for him, but that was a lot of fun. I remember that very well. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Well, you earn the title w sweat elite with that one for sure. That's funny.
Matt
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's been fun.
yeah.
Zach Bitter
Awesome. Yeah. So you kind of just continued on with the content creation stuff and and just documented your own journey too, which I find really interesting because you mentioned you were a middle distance runner earlier in your life and you were quite good too, right? Like you were maybe like a development towards potentially Olympics at one point, if I'm not mistaken.
Matt
I never made the Olympics, but I tried to make Beijing and London, 2008 and 2012. And you could say I got sort of close. I mean, I was fifth in Australia twice, once at a trials, Olympic trials, and once at a world champs trials. And I was w I I I really stagnated on 148, which at the time of the qualifier, I think the automatic qualifier was maybe 146 and a half. And back
then there was sort of like A standards and B standards, it's all changed a bit now.
But now, I think the B standard is 147-5 and I was like 148-3. But I ran 148 a lot of times and never quite broke through. I ran it with a 50-second first lat, with a 55-second first lat, with a 53, and I just I I I was I was a consistent one forty-eight guy, but unfortunately never quite broke through, which is what I needed to get to that, you know, really elite level, I guess. and I guess that's probably 147 equivalent with the super spikes, I I I I think. I'm not exactly sure about that.
So yeah, I was really serious about it. had a couple of like low-level sponsorships with you know, with some brands back then. And yeah, that took me to about 2014 when I finally, you know, realized I wasn't really gonna make anything out of it. And then spent a few years away from the sport completely, just working full-time. I took up a job in Singapore, in a travel agency where I was a manager there for a while. And I really I actually felt like really disappointed for quite a while after I stopped the middle distance career, and I I really felt like
It's kind of weird to say this because of the level that I got to, which is obviously quite high, but I really felt like I failed as a runner because my whole goal was to make an Australian team. I never did, even though I had like eight years of opportunities. I never never made one. So I really felt like I'd failed and I and I thought I put everything I possibly could into it. And what came far off the back of that period of time was this weird, relentless drive to try and understand like how do people better than me train? Like how like what are they doing that I'm missing, if there's anything at all.
And while I was working full-time for about two years, I just kept having this idea in the back of my mind to be like, man, like when I was competing in middle distance, there weren't that many good resources to learn about how professional runners really trained. And I was friends with a lot of guys much better than me, especially in Australia. Ryan Gregson, I was pretty good friends with. He ended up being the Australian record holder for the 1500 metres for a while. It doesn't have it anymore.
And I kept talking to him about it and he was like, you should just start something. Just start s you know, start a website or and this is kind of like really even sort of pre-Instagram really blowing up. This is pretty early on. And then yeah, what actually happened before Sweat Elite was actually a mobile app called Sweat Mobile, which was kind of a little bit like Strava, but we didn't really go very far with that. We couldn't really figure it out fast enough, we couldn't raise money fast enough, and I guess you could say
We didn't really know what we were doing. And then
Zach Bitter
Two.
Matt
Strava really took off at the same time. This is sort of the end of 2014, 2015. And then that sort of failed, and then off the back of that I thought I'd start just a basic website interviewing pro runners. And I just started with interestingly, one of the first people I interviewed was Hendrik Pfeiffer, who's now one of the best marathon runners in Germany. And one of the I don't really like to use this term, but he is one of the fastest sort of like non-African runners.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
That's a bit
of a weird way to put it, I know, because Africans are I just you know, they're they're they're phenomenal athletes, but he's one of the fastest guys in Europe now. So yeah, it's been a journey for sure. Lots of ups and downs, lots of huge challenges. COVID threw a big spanner in the works as well because Australia locked
down extremely hard and I got stuck here for quite a while. But no, it's cool, man. It's led me to, you know, meet people like you and jump on podcasts and fly all around the world. So plenty of stories to share. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, it's just interesting to kind of hear the background and just the way you kind of go about things too. Cause I find with content creation stuff, a lot of it is just, all right, I have this idea and maybe it'll catch, maybe it won't. And you have to be willing to throw it out there and kind of test it in front of a live audience, essentially. So you you
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
kind of have to have that tolerance to risk to a degree to try something. And then, you know, if you don't, you're definitely not gonna work. So it's not gonna be for everybody. So
It is fun to hear the different personalities that kind of arrive in those sorts of spaces.
Matt
yeah, yeah. I mean I've always been a pretty big risk taker and I've started a lot of different businesses of which most of them haven't worked. But I've always been fascinated about startups, I think, ever since I graduated from university. I'm not exactly sure what it was that drove me down that sp that that, you know, ch that you know path you could say. But yeah, I've tried starting a whole lot of businesses with a whole lot of different people. I'm involved in a fair few startups now.
And they're really hard, man. I mean, I know you're pretty, you know, into this as well. You know, we're having your own company set up with coaching and the podcast and stuff. And yeah, it's funny because when I first started the YouTube channel, I really started it off the back of thinking like Flowtracks workout Wednesdays were great, but they've kind of disappeared. And I wouldn't mind trying to do that in my own sort of style, but slightly different, but slightly that kind of similar. Cause I loved them so much when they first came out.
It might have been twenty twelve or twenty thirty, it was early, somewhere around there. And I used to watch them all. I watched them multiple times. And this is amazing. But then they kind of faded away. And I think I realized over time of my own journey, like why they faded away. And I think it's probably as a result of the financial aspect, because it's very difficult to to monetize those things in a way that that is yeah, I lost a lot of money basically, short story, doing that doing
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
that stuff, like a lot.
And I can dive into the details as to why. It's quite something that you really have to sort of think through because yeah, it sort of all revolves around sponsors are hard to get for that sort of content. So I'm talking specifically now about me filming a professional runner in their workout. Sponsors are not easy to get in that aspect because there's already lots of sponsors right there on the athlete's, you know, shirt. So, shoes, heads, whatever they're wearing, watch.
And athletes don't tend to give you much notice because they often don't know what they're doing for training until like the last minute. And so you're put in this situation where you have to book travel at the last minute, which anyone that's tried to do that would know it's pretty expensive, especially in the United States. It could easily be $1,200 to book a trip somewhere with flights, car hire, hotel for a few nights, bike rental. And YouTube doesn't pay very well. surprise, surprise.
if you get 100,000 views,
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
you might get 500 bucks, 600 bucks.
And if you don't have a sponsor, you're looking at a at a you know pretty significant $500 to $800 loss quite often. And when you multiply that by a hundred videos, it's a pretty nasty balance sheet. So yeah, I lost. I lost quite a bit of money and I but I learned a lot, but ultimately that kind of set me up to do what I'm doing now with a coaching company that's doing well and then sort of sharing my own journey, which I honestly never really wanted to do. It was more of an experiment to begin with to see.
how it would look to film like an eight week series leading into a marathon. I don't know if I was the first to do that, but I would have been one of the first to do like a eight to ten I can't remember actually if it was eight weeks or ten weeks, but leading into two thousand and twenty two Berlin Marathon, where I did a weekly video of every single like thing that I'm doing, talking through the whole week. I'm sure people did it before, but I'd never seen it personally done. and so I
I originally did that hoping that I would be able to take that same model and do it with elite athletes, of which I did actually do a couple. I did one with Nell Rojas. That was a bit challenging. I love Nell but she picked up Nike as a sponsor in the middle of that series, which threw my
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
whole plan off because I had arranged a sponsor, Saw Running, and that conflicted with that. So and then yeah, we did a couple more series with a few other athletes and they were pretty good. But
Ultimately one of the hardest things right now, of which I'm sure you probably have realised too, is that the rise of YouTube and the rise of, you know, social media has sort of caused a lot of or or meant a lot of pro athletes are doing their own YouTubes now and really
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
focusing on their own content and they really want to share their own journeys leading into marathons, which makes it harder for third parties like Sweat Elite or Flowtrack or Sidious Mag or any of these companies that or or the track all access, which is a new one that's pretty good.
to exist because yeah, athletes want to share their own journeys. But yeah, man, it's been a ride for sure and lots of lessons learned. It's been fun. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, it's almost like the athlete who's willing to do that is also the athlete who's probably gonna be willing to think, like, well, yeah, why don't I put this up on my own YouTube channel or something like that? So I was wondering about that, because like I like you, I love those float track videos. But when they would go to the college campuses and follow like a cross country team or something like that, that was always a lot of fun to see just the dynamics there. But my thought was like, I wondered with kind of like the influencer era.
If that would draw in more interest from brands for what they're looking at, well, how do we tie that sort of content creation thing to an athlete who maybe otherwise isn't going to do it? But, you know, if the athlete's going to decide to do it on their own, then it kind of still cuts out the content creator who's going to do like what you were doing. But now I imagine a lot of these brands that are sponsoring athletes are looking at their budget through the lens of like however much money they were going to spend on the marketing of that athlete outside of the actual contract, maybe they would go to
Something
like that versus a typical photo shoot.
Matt
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, for sure. I mean I think there's I think there's definitely room for both, but
I did learn for sure that when I started to do my own video series on my own journey, sponsors were surprisingly quite easy to get. But that also came as a result of growing the channel quickly and it being sort of somewhat well known before that in the running space. so I sort of recouped a lot of that loss by doing my own series. Yeah, it's a fascinating space right now, especially with the rise of the influencer
You know, the real world and there's a lot of debates going on right now, especially around I'd like to know what you think about this actually. There was actually an influential couple that I know. I won't say their name, not that they would mind, but they were asking the question about should influencers have any sort of qualifications to be able to be a coach?
Because there's a lot of people right now that are jumping on Instagram with no qualifications
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
and not really even much experience. And because they've got a big following, because they might be good looking or they've just spent some time in the gym and they've I don't know, whatever, and then all of a sudden they're coaching. And it's a tricky one, right? Because they could easily point to someone like Arthur Liddiard or even I'm pretty sure even Renato Canova doesn't really. I think he might have some sort of qualification, but a lot of the best coaches ever didn't really do any formal course either.
Now I did in
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
two thousand and nine I did like a very basic course with Athletics Australia, but I actually remember doing that thinking like, What is this stuff? Like this is not really very relevant, you know, it's like it's like all about mitochondria
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Matt
and stuff. And that's important and it's great to know that, but you don't really need to know that, like the d the deep the
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
finer details of that. So yeah, it's a funny old place right now, especially with the rise of yeah, Instagram and and and TikTok and whatnot. But
I don't know what you think about that. Do you think people should have a formal qualification to be coaching?
Zach Bitter
Yeah, I mean, I almost think this is almost like a meta issue with online content in general, where, you know, anyone can put a camera in front of themselves and start talking and sound like an expert or pretend to be an expert and convince people one way or the other. And I always wonder about like I mean, I think it's like at a certain point you have to put some of the responsibility on the person who's gonna go out and hire someone like that. So it's like
The way I think about it is like if you're gonna go and hire some popular influencer, it's not that hard to figure out what their background is. So I think it's just maybe more of like maybe we just need to be better about showing the value of what an actual real coach is, so that people are a little more informed and then they can say, like, well, yeah, this person is not a coach. They're an influencer, and then I'm not gonna go there for my coaching necessarily. I'm gonna go there for my motivation or whatever else you happen to be.
using their content for. But you know, people know what they know and don't know what they don't know. So I do see there is gonna be an issue there. I just don't know if it's I don't know how solvable it is really, because like,
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
how would you even police it, right? Like you could see we could say like all runners could stand up and basically say like, no, we will not hire influencers as coaches if they don't have certifications. But then at the end of the day, like, you know, they're gonna draw in people who probably weren't part of the running world to begin with and and and promote
Potentially start working with them. I do think with a lot of things like that, it ends up being something where if they're really bad, then they're gonna fail to get the person where they want to go in a certain amount of time before they pivot to something else. So I've seen this a lot with my own coaching where somebody comes to me after working with somebody who just has who's recognizable, decided to coach, but isn't really knowledgeable. They're basically just saying, like,
They're basically just telling us to do random stuff more or less. and that kind of gets them started. And then they realize, you know what, I'm not getting faster or this is clearly not working. And then they're still interested though. And then because they got into the world, now they actually start researching like, well, who are coaches that maybe know a little bit more about this and can actually guide me towards what my goal is? So I've definitely benefited from just the growth of the sport from the influencers, even the bad coaches. So
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Some of it it might just be like, you know, i you you're you're you're gonna you're gonna have some sort of failure rate with respect to hiring people to help you with things to begin with and that might just be something we just need a little more education around in general with respect to like who's gonna be well vetted and not.
Matt
Yeah. I think that's very well said. That's a very optimistic way to look at it. Especially when you said that last part when you're like, Well, if influencers are bringing people into the sport and then like they're sort of introducing people to running and then they might get slightly better and then all of a sudden they realise actually there's probably better people out there because they'll probably start listening to your podcast or my podcast or s someone that's been in the game for ages and they're probably Yeah, so you're right. It's it's it's it's it's definitely a good point. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. The big the bigger hurdle probably is like the sport itself really doesn't have anything that would stand out as like this is a really great gold standard certification where like if you don't have it, it's basically clear that you're not you're not giving it the attention required the way you would with like some sort of degree that would be required for a job. So maybe it's just a byproduct of the system itself not being set up in a way that's really conducive to vetting coaches. So
I don't know how you'd go about that either though, to to establish yourself as like the you know, the the governing body of coaching certification more or less where basically anyone who's serious is gonna do it and anyone who's not serious
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
isn't, and then you can have a pretty black and white determiner.
Matt
Yeah, I think that's a good call, 'cause in some other sports there actually is that, right?
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think 'cause I've become quite interested in HIROX lately. I think it's just because my friends are doing it. And you know, it's pretty clear, yeah, who's a good HIROX coach or not, from my understanding. And yeah,
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
I don't know, I'm not sure because I was about to say, do you think it really matters if the athletes actually achieve some decent standard in running? But then I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday during a run and I realized Renato Canova, who's I. I keep bringing him up and he's probably because he's probably the most influential coach that I look at.
to get ideas from. I don't think he ran very fast at all. I think he was like a 248 or a 250 marathon runner. So that's that's that's yeah you can't you can't start thinking about through the lens of has the runner become a pro because a lot of very good coaches and I'm pretty sure Arthur Lidiard also was not not overly fast. So yeah, it's a tough one.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Yeah, I definitely don't think you have to be a professional runner to be a great coach. I think that if you're not, then you may have a little bit more of a hurdle to get over with respect to just showing that you know what you're doing. But yeah, I think that's I think there's you're gonna always have that. And I mean we see that in the bigger sports too, where you get great coaches who are never awesome like football players or basketball players and things like that. So but
Yeah. Are there any content creators right now that you're really really excited about or you're watching a little more closely than others?
Matt
Yeah, for some reason Truett Haynes is a good story for me. I I
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
I just find him very funny. And I think after a long time of watching content, I got to a point a couple of years ago when I started to beg to get a little bit. I think this is just as a result of just watching so much content, I started to get a little bit bored of the same type of thing all the time. Which is harsh because I know that stuff is interesting to to people that have been in the game a lot l you know,
Nowhere near as long. But Truitt brings a lot of humor to it. And it's his mixture of like just really funny, you know, subtitles over his videos and humor, but also hard training. I've really enjoyed it. And yeah, he's the one that I'm probably following the most. And I think it's in part too because he set this really ambitious goal of trying to make the Olympic trials, which is sub-216.
And anyone that knows numbers well and has coached for a while is looking at him going, Man, you seem like really confident, but your numbers are like a long way off. So I'm really curious to see where this goes. And he's racing a half marathon this weekend, I think, or next weekend, and hopes to, you know, maybe put a time on the board that might show he's getting a bit closer to that goal, which I can only assume is probably maybe sub one ten or sub one nine. So we'll see.
but I think I think there's a lot of power in putting a very ambitious goal out there that's so far ahead of what you want to do that people are like, man, like this guy's not only put a goal out there that's that's so far ahead of where he's at, but he's also like broadcasting it and he's also keeps like acting confident and there's there's something about it that I love I love
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
personally. I think it's really entertaining. Who else?
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
Yeah, I watched quite a few on and off, but I'll I'll be honest, I haven't really
followed anyone super closely for a while now. I think Eric Slohberg does a really good job with his videos. He's a twenty-nine guy. He's just his cinematography and videography is really nice to watch and I think he's really knowledgeable and really understanding of the fact that like and and I actually learned this through my own videos that people want to watch especially I'm I'm speaking more about YouTube here, but people want to watch YouTube videos for a range of reasons. But one of them is that they actually quite like the scenery of
Where the workout is. So you probably liked Jim Wormsley's video, for the most part because it was Jim, but partly maybe because you saw such beautiful, you know, scenes and trails from Sedona. And I learned that in the comments section of a lot of the videos that I shot in Boulder where people were commenting on the trails and the mountains and everything. And it never occurred to me that people would be really fixated on that. And Floyberg's really good at showing the beautiful sides of Chicago, which is a stunning city.
So yeah, they're the ones that sort of come to mind first. But I sort of tune in and out of a lot of a lot of videos. I I actually I I I really like Rory Linkletter. and
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
I like his po. I probably listen to his podcast with Jacob Thompson the most. Rory's just got a character that I just yeah, I really, really enjoy listening to and watching and he's really real about things and really honest about things and he's a good, good one to follow as he tries to break the Canadian national record in the marathon, which is fast. Two five thirty six I think.
So he's gonna try and do that this year, or maybe in the next twelve months I think. So yeah, he's a good one.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Well, when Truett decided to hire Rory as a coach, I got so excited because like you, I've I've followed both of their content streams. And like I think the thing about Truitt that I find interesting is everything you said with respect to just like the confidence, that there's enough of a risk factor where he I mean there's just a good chance he fails, right? Like it, I think he would even admit that. It's but he's like has not lost any confidence in
still thinking it's worth it and that he could do it. And then he also comes from a background that's kind of different from running, but world class, like with his pull-up world record and that sort of thing. So there's like all
Matt
yeah.
Zach Bitter
these little like there's all these little moving parts in there that you can kind of talk yourself into thinking, yeah, man, that'd be sweet if he does it, or it's like he could epically blow up. So there's like that weird mixture there. And then the thing I really started getting interested in recently was I kind of had a feeling he was sort of just winging it with respect to the running stuff where he was just like
throwing a bunch of stuff out there and and doing what he does, which is work hard and and ignoring pain and whatnot. But you know, that has a like all every runner knows that has an end to it, where eventually you have to start organizing those parts in a way that lines up in a way that you can take another step forward. And I think he maybe kind of hit that roadblock a little bit when he hired Rory. So it's almost like you don't want him to like just
mindlessly go down the wrong tunnel forever because you kind of know where that's gonna go. So when you see him actually actively try to problem solve by hiring a coach who clearly knows what he's doing, then it gets you reinvigorated about okay, well what's gonna happen now that he's got this. And then when you hear Rory talk about it too, where he's like, Well I looked at all this training and it was like, yeah, there was all this stuff in here that we needed to change. And yeah, I think it just sets it up really really nicely to be entertaining. So I'm in on both of them.
Matt
Yeah. Yeah, the reason why
I'm giggling a lot because I think there's a reasonable chance that Truett rips parts of this podcast and puts it on his own video. So I wanna be I I wanna I wanna Well he's done that
Zach Bitter
We can only hope.
Matt
I don't , has he done that to you? He's done it to me twice actually. I've been having conversations with people where we're doubting him and he rips a scene and I love it. I think it's brilliant. That's so funny. But I would say there's a reasonable chance he comes nowhere near it, to be honest. There's a reasonable chance.
Just because of what I've seen in the data. Like he ran a five K recently, he seemed really happy with it. He ran fifteen, forty-seven, I think it was. And you just have to conch the numbers to realize that's basically the pace he needs to hold for the marathon. So he's
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
a long way off at this point. But you said something that's really important. He's broken the world record for the most number of chin-ups in 24 hours. And when you look into that carefully, you realize that a lot of people have tried to do that.
I don't know if they've tried to break it after him, but a lot of people have gone after that record and he's beaten them all. And that leads you to think this guy is an extremely strong-minded person that you don't want to doubt.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
Because you know if he figures it out, like he's the sort of guy that could endure something crazy. And if he just gets the right, you know, mixture of training and maybe he has to lose a bit more muscle because he's still quite big.
I love that topic of weight loss and muscle loss. It's fascinating to me 'cause I'm also a pretty big runner for my standard of time, I guess, in the marathon. But yeah, he y you sort of know deep down when you watch him and listen to him, you're like, I don't want to totally write him off because you know what he's done before, which is extremely difficult. So yeah, really could go. He could land anywhere between two fifteen or two twenty three and that's a big window. So it's fun to watch. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. I was trying to think of another draw that he has that gets me kind of interested. And one of the other things too is I like my favorite type of runner is the runner who really decides like I'm gonna go down this long, sometimes dark and twisty path to figure out exactly how fast I can do this particular discipline. And regardless of what that end time or end distance or whatever happens to be is, they walk away thinking.
All right, that's what it was. Like I did everything I could and that's just what it was. And I just think that's such a satisfying experience that I myself like to try to do. So I think like i if he doesn't get it, like I won't be less entertained or bummed out or think he's a failure. I just like the idea that he's actually gonna try to figure out exactly what he can do. And to me that's just an emp compelling storyline. So obviously I think it would be really awesome if he did get it because
it's
just gonna really blow up at that point because there's just enough polarization around his goal that the internet might explode.
Matt
Yeah. I'm I'm I'm
fully fully invested in his journey. I watch pretty much all his YouTube videos and he's not on podcasts too often. And I concluded a while ago, which I'm not sure I'm not a hundred percent sure, I don't think he actually jumps on podcasts unless they're in person. 'Cause I've asked him a few times and not heard back. And when I've tried to like you know
look at the podcast that he does, they seem to all be in person. So yeah, we'll see. But I just think he's fairly funny. Like if you just watch him and listen to him, he's my some people don't find
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
He is very funny. Some of the guys I train with don't think he's super funny. But for some reason I'm always laughing at his videos. And his editing style is so unusual. Like there was a scene last week where he was trying to drink like some sort of health cherry juice and he obviously
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
mucked it all up.
And he filmed it and just put the whole thing in where he mucked up like the amount he was supposed to put in. He was drinking it. He was like, it's disgusting. He could have easily edited it and made it look good, but he just left it all in and it's very funny. I'm always laughing.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
It's and I think that entertainment factor is big for me. I don't know, I tend to probably the most amount of content I consume in general is just comedians. I'm not really sure why. I just listen to a lot of podcasts and watch a lot of YouTube videos like Trevor Noah and Bill Burr and all these comedians. So
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
He sort of has a little bit of that aspect to it, which is what I like. So yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty funny, funny with the little zingers he'll drop in there every once in a while. So cool. Yeah, we can pivot a little bit here because you kind of brought it up a bit with respect to you. You found yourself maybe in a little bit of a polarizing topic recently.
Matt
Hm.
Zach Bitter
which was which I found actually found kind of interesting because like I had been listening to some of your episodes long enough to know that you had been just
pretty open about what you were trying to do with training and nutrition, everything like that. And one of those components was to reduce weight, to try to get a faster marathon time. And then I think with the whole Josh Kerr world record thing, which is was like, this is what got me like even more interested in just that whole thing because anyone who's watched Josh Kerr over his career, it's it's it's obvious that he has leaned out from earlier on his career to that world record. So then it kind of just begs that question. But in the running world
We just w I I think we've gotten to a point now where it's kind of taboo to talk about it because it's such had such a bad relationship scenario and there's all these horror stories around like basically like bone thin runners getting like told they need to lose two more pounds and then dropping out of the sport early and losing the prof there's just there's no shortage of those stories. So then there's that like kind of pendulum swing towards we can't even talk about this or this isn't even a piece to the puzzle, even though
Behind the curtain, you know, any professional athlete is making those considerations around diet, nutrition and what is their optimal race weight. But you start talking about that and then all of a sudden like you're gonna get a whole lot of that polarization because it's sort of the pendulum sort of swung the other direction far enough at this point.
Matt
Yes. I find this whole thing just really interesting because yeah, I mean you sorta said it. I I ran I ran my first marathon in two thousand eighteen and then it took me about three years to progress down to running two twenty. So at Indianapolis marathon in twenty twenty one. I guess I'm gonna share this story first to help people understand why I became interested in it in the first place. Because I actually had no interest in weight loss or
body weight really at all until about twenty twenty three and the end of twenty twenty three, so pretty recently. And then I've become very interested in it since. And you know, all the things you said I 've I've I've realized too is that there's all these different personality traits. But the story as to how I became interested, I ran two twenty forty six at Indianapolis in November twenty twenty one. And I didn't train
I didn't do a huge amount of volume for that. But what I realized at the time was I was very light and I didn't even really try to get light. I still to this day, I'm not super sure how I got to this point of being very, very lean. But I even remember my friend, Ben, an Australian guy. He texted me about 10 days before that 220 result, and he said, Man, you're flying in training. I think I did a workout maybe 12 days out of like 3x5k, and they were all at about 216 pace.
And he said, You're flying. And I remember writing back to him being like, the one thing that's different at the moment is I'm re I'm much lighter than usual. And I remember saying to him, I don't even really know how I landed here. I'm just somehow three or four kilos lighter. And I weighed myself eight days before, I think it was, or seven days before, and I was 70 exactly, 70.0 kilos. And then I raced, around 220. And then for the next two years, I did all these video series. I think I did four of them or five of them, trying to break 220.
And I kept running like 223, 224, 223. I basically just kept running 223 and 224. And I didn't even realize that I was about three or three and a half, four kilos heavier. I had no idea. And it was in December 2023, so this is two years and one month after the 220, I saw a picture. It just took one picture that I saw of myself in a race in Japan where I was running in Fuku Worker Marathon, so I got the picture after the race. And
I was running in a pack of like five with like five other Japanese runners who all went under 220 and I ran 222, which was my best result for a while. And it just struck me that I was at least eight kilos heavier than all of them. And two of them were almost my height. I'm pretty tall, I'm six foot. Two of them were pretty close to me. They probably would have been five, ten, or maybe five eleven. And I just sat there and went like, I'm so and then I went back and looked at like other photos of me in packs of running. I was like, I didn't know how I missed it before.
And I was like, I'm always so big compared to everyone running in these sub 220 packs. And so then I just sort of did a bit of research and a bit of thinking about it. And I was like, that's like five, six percent of my body weight. And then I started crunching some numbers and asking, you know, different Google, you know, questions in Google and coming up with all these different theories about what that means in terms of speed. And then I was like, man, like this is kind of an unusual thing. I don't know how I missed this before. And then I spent 2024 or 2024 actively trying to get back down to 70, and I got down to 69.
changed a couple of small things in training, but not that much. And then I pretty comfortably ran 219 in the Chicago Marathon. and then I ran 218 at the Indianapolis Marathon, leading pretty much the whole way. I wanted to run 216 that day, and I think, you know, if I had a bit of a better scenario with some pacing and help, maybe 217. I had a lot of cramping in my hamstring at the and I lost a bit of time there.
And then I just started to post a bit more content about it and I got a bit of heat back from people and we can dive into all that because it's very interesting. But yeah, and then I started to really understand like, you know, is there a line that people get to when they lose power and they lose strength? And there definitely is. I haven't found that in myself, but I've listened to enough people talk about it that I know that that's definitely a thing. Ryan Hall speaks about that quite a bit. I mean I'm
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
pretty sure most people listening to this would know who that is, but he's one of the fastest
marathoners all time, brand 2045, pre-super shoes. And he speaks about how he tried to get lighter and then found this point where he was actually getting worse, getting weaker
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
and slower and stuff. So yeah, then I started publishing content and I had such a spectrum of inbound comments and emails and direct messages and mostly comments on YouTube. And it was probably about 80% people going, yeah, like
Brilliant. Like this strategy that you're using, which I can talk about, which is very basic, it's basically thinking about being this so this is the idea of losing weight preparing for a race. It's basically about fueling for the workouts, so having a pretty high amount of carbohydrates in, say, the 12 hours before a hard workout. But then outside of that period of time, and once the workout's finished and you've had a post-workout meal or amount of carbs and protein.
You then try to remain in a calorie deficit for a while while you're doing the low-intensity recovery stuff. And I had hundreds and hundreds of people through all these different you know communication channels say, this is brilliant. Lots of people said they've tried it and it worked. And then I also got the roughly 20% of people that were pretty disappointed that I was trying to advocate for being in a calorie deficit, warning about red S, of which I didn't even know what it was at the time, that I've since learned, eating disorders and all these things.
And yeah, man, it's a conversation that could last hours, honestly, because what I've really learned, especially over the last sort of six months, is it really comes down to like personality traits as well, in terms of like who can do this safely, safely, you could say, and who probably can't. Because I've really learned that if you have any sort of history of OCD or obsessiveness you know, anything that you get obsessive about and really try and like you know take it to the extreme with like following a number.
See, I'm not like that. I'm really good and really balanced about being like, okay, I'm in a calorie deficit, but that workout didn't go well, so I need to correct now and really try and maybe just like don't worry about the weight loss for a few days and just like get back on top of the carb glycogen. So I'm pretty yeah. But what I've realized is, having heard from so many people, that not everyone can be like that. Like people get like Jake Smith, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.
he's
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
a British runner who rose to fame in twenty twenty when he ran sixty thirty-two for a half as a twenty-year-old, and then he paced a marathon with no real marathon training and ran two eleven. So I finished it off. When I heard interviews of him recently where he spoke about dealing with red S for three years and all these bone stress injuries and the way he described the way he approached weight loss, I was mind blown. I was like, this guy really lost it. Like he was even like reducing his
fluid intake to being like less than a liter a day, so he didn't gain weight. And I'm like, I think everyone knows that you don't gain weight from drinking water. Like that's crazy that's crazy. But that's how people can
Zach Bitter
Right.
Matt
actually think, like when they get really obsessed with this stuff. So yeah, it's a tricky one. I'm curious to hear what you know, what you think about the whole thing and any stories that you know about this. but I'm currently in the process of actually doing the whole carb cycling weight loss thing right now and it's working pretty well. So yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think y the what you said at the end of there, I think describes that cross in the road where it goes from being like a piece to a puzzle if someone is trying to get to some sort of performance goal versus all of sudden it's shifting towards, well, now the target's really not even pr like it like some people are able to just convince themselves like performance is still the goal when in reality it's not. Now it's just I wanna see a smaller number on the scale and that becomes the actual target, but they've like
Matt
Yes.
Zach Bitter
sort of deceived themselves and then and obviously we don't want to see people heading that direction because that's that's that's disordered right there. So if you know what you know what made me think about this too is like I think where the big issue is with all this too is everyone is going to be different with this. So like we oftentimes look at other people though and think like, I just saw Galen Rupp win this race.
He looks like this, that's what I have to look like. And if I don't look exactly like Galen Rupp, I'm never gonna be able to be my best. When really that person's best might be like a different image than that, but they're chasing after this thing that would cross them over versus just making meaningful progress to the point at which now they're in a really good state. So I actually did a little digging, so I was curious about that. I was just like, well, what are the ranges even at the very, very top of the sport? And I just looked up at the Olympic distance.
runners. So I think this was like a pooling of like 5K, 10K, and marathon, just to get a distribution of like the body fat percentage of the people that are probably as close, if not all the way to peak performance. And like the men's was like five to 10% and then a clustering around five to eight percent. And then the women were like 10 to 18% with a clustering around 12 to 16%. So the way I think about this is if you're the person who just genetically
your performance stops improving and you start seeing negative consequences at 10%, and you're looking at the person whose genetic spot has them at five percent, you're gonna find yourself in trouble somewhere along the way trying to get to that unreachable spot. But that doesn't mean that somebody at like, say, twenty-five percent can't look and say, like, okay, well, there's probably some meaningful improvement to be had here if my goal here is to improve through body recomposition. So I think that's probably where the like
The big crux of this is is oftentimes we get these like these false comparators that aren't necessarily going to be helpful for the individual versus kind of doing what you've done, which is just like make it a complete end of one experiment where when you got interested, the first thing I the first time I heard you start talking about it, you weren't trying to advocate for anything. You were just sharing what you were doing along with everything else. You're just being transparent about what you were doing to try to achieve this goal. And that happened to be part of it. And then I think it just kind of got more interesting and started getting some.
negative comments and positive comments probably started digging in more to figure out, well, what are they talking about with this and should I be concerned about that? And and and that's where I started seeing you kind of put up more content around like, what is relative energy diff d relative energy deficiency syndromes and things like that.
Matt
Yeah, yeah, well said. And I'm still learning. I don't pretend to know everything about this. I'm actually gonna be doing it. I haven't picked exactly which one yet, but a nutrition course because I've very clearly noticed that a lot of people want to do this. They want to actually lose weight while improving their running performance and they don't really know how. And it is a little bit tricky because timing of things
of which I know that you're pretty familiar with your background of experimenting with a lot of nutrition things, then the timing of things is really important. Really important. And if you're really busy and you have a job and you've got kids, it can be tricky to stay on top of all that. And so yeah, I mean I really noticed, especially over the last month or two, that pretty much all nutritionists in the space will advocate for not losing weight while you're training and always fueling at all times.
And that's the safe way to play it. And that's not a wrong strategy, of course. That's probably a strategy to eliminate pretty much as much risk as possible to remain uninjured. Of course, there's always a risk of getting injured, and I've got loads of stories of people, including myself, that get injured when they're training pretty little just because maybe something happened that was unlucky. but there is a and I'll actually, I'm not gonna name names, but since I put out this sort of this sort of content.
I've had 218 runners. I calculated yesterday. I had nine people faster than me reach out to me, of which one's a sub-210 guy in the States, one's a sub-210 guy in Europe, and they actually really wanted to learn specifically how I'm doing it so that they can do it. I had a w a woman reach out to me who's one of Australia's fastest marathon runners. She's going for the Australian record very soon, it probably gives it away who it is. She reached out to me as well and sort of said, this is really brilliant, I think I can lose one or two kilos, and that might help me get the record.
and yeah, it's it's very clearly something of interest, but there's still this this well, I shouldn't have said still, there always will be, this this subset of people that have have experienced a dark side to it which I don't fully understand because I've not experienced it, but I've read enough about it and listened to people like Jake Smith enough to know that it's a very serious thing. eating disorders
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
can be devastating, they can cause death in many in some situations, which is obviously something you have to take extremely seriously.
And Red S is obviously a very tricky thing to navigate to. So I guess I have to be quite careful, anyone has to be quite careful about the possibility of someone following the advice that I'd give and ends up picking up one of those issues, which I still don't understand that. How you can be, you know, in a state of not even really knowing what Red S is or an eating disorder is, follow this path.
and then end up in that state. So that's what I'm really trying to understand and trying to maybe think about how to avoid. But yeah, there's pretty much very few resources out there that can tell you how to improve your running performance and train hard while actually losing weight at a decent amount. And and and I've actually done this like many times before. Sometimes I've done it without even really thinking about it that much, but then I really started to plan carefully. And and I I've actually lost
twelve kilos in the last four months, which is like twenty six pounds. And I plan to lose another eight pounds, three or four kilos in the next two months leading to Melbourne. And I've had no issues whatsoever. Like as long as you follow the protocol pretty carefully, fuel pretty aggressively in the twelve hours pre workout, one meal afterwards, and then go back to a pretty pretty decent calorie deficit, but really focus on eating really good foods. So that mainly focuses around
meats and vegetables and fruits that are pretty high in sorry pretty low in calories for how satiating they are. So the best ones there are berries, and also apples are pretty good. If you focus on those same foods it is a bit boring. You can remain in a pretty decent calorie deficit through the easy days. Yeah, some work, some runs might not feel amazing in terms of your energy, but that's actually like a thing that you kind of have to just deal with.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
And
yeah, I've followed this many times and it works well and I've shared it with many friends and many friends have found success in getting faster and and and and the thing that a lot of people don't bring up, and you sort of touched on a little bit, it's like with the fat loss percentage thing that you said, like i if people are listening to me right now being l thinking like, this is irresponsible or maybe you shouldn't do this, a lot of people start at a point where their fat percentage is pretty high. And these is these are not elite runners, these are just like maybe a s maybe a three hour marathoner that wants to run sub two forty-five one day, and they might be listening to me going,
Yeah, like I actually could easily lose 10 kilos of fat and then be in a position where I'm quite healthy and I actually really like the way I look. And so
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
But then but then the person that's had an eating disorder and is already very lean comes at it from a very different angle with a very different paradigm of thinking about it. So yeah, I think it's something that I want to keep researching and keep talking about. but at the same time I have to fully understand and appreciate the fact that there are pretty significant risks.
But I think you might have heard me talk on the podcast about the fact that there are pretty significant risks in doing almost anything when you're training really hard for a marathon or or an ultra. if you're doing big volume, that's a risk in itself. So, yeah, people don't often talk about
Zach Bitter
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt
that. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. And I I think too, like the t a lot of times the conversation itself starts to kind of it ends up starting to be like like we're there the the the answers and the comments are addressing kind of two populations at once when really you gotta kind of like differentiate between the two because like you get the opposite effect where you have someone like say like Conor Mance or something like that where like he's probably gotta got to be like actively
trying to eat more than what he would desire in order to not find himself in a bad situation. Whereas you get someone say, like a good example of this, I had George Cush on the podcast recently after he won Comrades, and
Matt
yeah.
Zach Bitter
He took some time off running and gained a ton of weight. So for like no one's gonna argue George at his peak weight would be like making a bad decision to try to get back down to his collegiate
running weight. Like that was part of the process, I'm sure. so like it's home it's kind of like there's there's a there's a point at which it becomes something that's a value. And we don't seem to really know where to place that line of like, okay, here's where it becomes like societally acceptable to start trying to lose a little weight versus now you're just doing a disservice to everyone by even trying it or you're gonna hurt yourself by trying it. And
You know, I I can't think of any other way to really describe it other than it's it's a it's a very individual thing and you know, unfortunately there's gonna be people who are just dealing with eating disorders or find themselves in
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
that situation and then they, you know, they'll they they it makes it so the conversation is like a little bit harder to unpack. with respect to that. But you know, the the interesting thing too that I that I've learned about like the relative energy deficiency syndrome stuff is
It isn't necessarily just that I'm losing too much weight, therefore I'm getting this. Like you get athletes who get relative energy deficiency syndrome without losing any weight and then sometimes even gaining weight. And I think that is actually because look at one thing that you were talking about that I was like, okay, this is actually really good information because the reality is people are gonna do things regardless of whether we tell them to do it or not. So we do want them to have as much good information as possible.
And with relative energy deficiency syndrome, a lot of it is the timing where you could have somebody, you could have you could have a person or two people eating the same amount and doing the same thing. And in one way, they would get the right relative energy deficiency syndrome, in another way they wouldn't. And a lot of that is fueling the big workout sessions, not being scarce around your heavy training. And then when you are going to be
Eating less, doing it around times when it's you know the performance isn't the big target on the menu at the moment. So like you do have that sort of interplay too, where it's not even just like a number of calories, so to speak. It's the timing of it all and when you do it. And then the other thing you talked about too is like you don't necessarily want to be living in this deficit in perpetuity. You wanna like even
Matt
No.
Zach Bitter
in the mic, even in the micro sense, even the weekly sense, you want days where you're fully fueled.
And then you're picking and choosing your battles of when to to restrict in order to to lose. And those are gonna be the days where it's gonna be a little bit less performance based. And, you know, cars are where carbohydrates are so interesting because it's such a fast acting fuel source. It's like, you know, eating the carbohydrates before, during and after a hard training session, they had a lot of value add, but you know, eating extra carbohydrates beyond what you need on like an off season or a rest day, you know, that's not necessarily gonna benefit you and it might hurt you. So
A lot of this is just like there's these tools and where do we use them properly and then, you know, what's the individual circumstances that are driving the goal at hand.
Matt
Yeah, you said that very, very well. I've never advocated for anyone to be dieting for many, many months at a time. And when I tried to understand the people that have had red S, it seems like they've gotten quite interested in the majority of them anyway, quite interested in losing weight over a very long period of time and not ever having any break. a lot of things I could talk to there, but actually I I I went to Comrades and hung out with George a little bit before that win where he ran
where he won Comrades in June. And yeah, I went to mind blanking the name of his town, just north of Johannesburg, for about five days and ran with him a couple of times. And he actually told me, and he didn't say to keep this to himself, he's just a bit shy about sharing this sort of stuff, I guess, but he actually actively tried to lose quite a lot of weight before that. He said that he was 66 kilos or 67 kilos, maybe 66 high before Comrades the previous year.
He said he raced most of his NCAA career at about 65, and then he actually actively tried to lose muscle and fat before this one and got down to 62, which is similar to me, about maybe six six, seven percent of his body weight. and that really worked for him, obviously. He did it over a pretty long period of time. and you could tell when he was running the race, he was very lean. So yeah, he actually really did what I, you know, have been talking about for a while. He did it himself, and I think he
I think you mentioned too he got a nutritionist to sort of work with him, which is interesting because most nutritionists would not advise that. So I'd love to quiz him more on that. I didn't at the time. But yeah, yeah, a bunch of things there you said that are really important. I would never try and do it over a long period of time. And I think those periods where you gain weight again and sort of like reset yourself, you could say, are really important. and I
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
I always do that after a marathon. I'll I'll spend a bit of time just really going, you know, big with the carb, big with just just eating and who, you know, get
put on a bit of weight and then do it again. I find it really fun. I mean, a lot of people hate it and a lot of people hate counting calories. I think it's interesting. so it really depends on the attitude that you have going into it as well. So yeah, it's definitely a fascinating one and it really depends. Yeah, I'm really learning that it depends so much on like
I think you said it as well. Like I I I've never liked if you're losing weight, you probably like the idea of this is constant loss. Whereas I look at it more like a
Two days of like a little bit of a loss and then you're going into a workout where you might be like so it's almost like a downward trajectory with these little bumps where you're gonna probably gain a little bit of weight. But then the thing that
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
throws a lot of people off is and you would know about this, like when you have a lot of carbs, you actually then and especially if you have sodium with it, you actually hold a lot of water weight, which can which
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
can sort of then play, you know, 'cause I've I fluctuate about at one point five kilos day to day depending on what I'm doing with carbs and
and fluid and salt. And so if you're tracking it really closely, you can constantly be confused because you're like, why did I gain a kilo and a half in the last two days? You didn't. It's just as a result
Zach Bitter
No.
Matt
like your retention of carbs and sodium. And so that's why I actually don't weigh myself all that much. I weigh myself about once a week. And then I slowly see this trajectory down. So yeah the approach has got to be careful. It's almost like you've got to have
a strict approach to it but then you can't be obsessive about it at the same time. And I think that's where people go go
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
wrong a lot of the time. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah,
and you're spot on too. Like you have to let go of it at times too. Like you can't
Matt
Yes.
Zach Bitter
be thinking 'cause like I think where a lot of people run into issues with it too is they get to the end of their season and they're just paranoid that they're gonna gain a pound in the off season. It's like I've gained anywhere between five to ten pounds in off seasons. And I don't it's like who likes at that point it's like who cares? Like so you're resetting for the next build essentially. And and I actually
I like to gain at least a few pounds in an off season because usually when I'm starting up training it's like a gradual ramp up. So it's kind of nice just to kind of have that buffer where like you just have a little bit of extra to to rely on. because for me personally, like I tend to be able to get a little bit more when I get into heavy training, I have to be like actively trying to eat more in a lot of cases. especially when I start getting up to like some of these like 130 plus train mile training weeks and things like that.
so like I usually get down to wherever I rate what I race best at just by kind of going through the training process. And I think there's a lot of people like that. So I think where people get scared about this is they're thinking of that person where they're gonna start doing this additional training and then they're also gonna restrict and they would have gotten to where they needed to get with just the training. And that's the kind of individuality that we were talking about before. So
I mean, at the end of the day, like if you can access a nutritionist, I actually think like nutritionists are probably more open to this stuff when they can work with the person individually and actually monitor it closely and and kind of see the especially if the person has like some sort of like clear evidence towards it being a a a like a relatively low risk proposition with respect to what they're trying to do. 'Cause I mean I mean Josh Kerr was clearly working with nutritionists and stuff like that. So they obviously had a plan of where they wanted him to be.
and what they were gonna do to get there and we're monitoring it closely along the way. So I guess the unfortunate thing about all of this is just like not everyone can access that level of support.
Matt
Yeah. And nutritionists that have Instagram pages, they tend to be publishing, like you're sort of adhering to, like content for the masses and like broad advice. Whereas yeah, it's very clear by looking at Josh that he's really, really leaned down. I mean he even published some content after his Mar World record about how he does f days of fasting, like eighteen hour fasts, which is sort of like intermittent fasting.
Zach Bitter
really? Mm-hmm
Matt
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can Google that. You can just t if you type in G Josh Kerr
Diet fasting. You can find a couple of interviews of him talking about it. So he's experimenting with a lot of really interesting things, which many nutritionists would probably say is not a good idea. But you can't question the 342 man, can you? I mean he's he's but I mean I really noticed like I actually noticed in 2020 when he came third at the Tokyo Olympics in the 1500. I remember thinking to myself, even then, this is even before I
I really started to think like my own body composition, you could say. I remember thinking like he's kind of not very lean compared to everyone around him. Like Inga Britson and Chariot and Oli Hoare, all these guys were much leaner than him. And there's a couple of photos of him about ten minutes after the race where he's sort of like looking up at the sky and there's a bunch of cameras. And he if you look at those photos and look at him now.
It's almost like two D and and he was already a three twenty nine guy then, so he was already already like third
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
of the Olympics. But he's I don't know how much he's lost. I've heard rumors that it's about four kilos, but I reckon it could even be more. But yeah, he's clearly worked on it and it's definitely something that's clearly worked for him.
Zach Bitter
I
I think where Josh was probably successful with that is probably similar to his broader view of progression in the sport in general, where he sat down and looked at it like this is gonna be a very long-term project. I don't think like I think where Josh could have gone wrong in that scenario would have been like he sees that's thinking the same way you are, and is like, okay, I need to turn this over in the next season, versus all right, what's the next step in this process to do this safely so that I can still compete at a high level.
And take that next step versus trying to fast forward to today where he's breaking the world record at a mile. I think the the reason he's got the world record in the mile is because he probably took the baby steps required, did resets, and just kind of had a s a system set up where it was gonna be like closely monitored and then you know, he was able to to get to everything that he's been able to do. But his whole system just seems so dialed in right now. It's kind of fun to watch that level of detail, attention to detail.
Matt
yeah, yeah, he's very, very serious about it. And I guess having Jakob Ingerbritsen there is probably quite motivating because he's one of the best fifteen hundred meter runners of all time, so consistent. So I think Josh just knows that he has to be doing that stuff if he wants to be on top of someone like that. And there's obviously a whole lot of other guys that are also right there, Cole Hocker, who you could argue is maybe even more dangerous than Ingerbritsen at times. So it's such a competition I mean like any event really, but fifteen hundred is extremely competitive now. So he's sort of
I guess he probably realised he has to take everything to the absolute extreme and obviously that's also his body weight.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Well, we got Engelbergson back now, so it should be funny. He already took his quarterly shot at Josh Kerr on social media the other day. Did you see that?
Matt
No. I saw him come back and beat the Europeans, but what did he say?
Zach Bitter
Yeah, he said because I think someone asked him at at this point I'm think I'm pretty sure people are asking him questions just because they know he's gonna say something, but like they asked him something about like athletes' responsibility to compete at like certain events, and he made a point of saying like
I think it's doing the sport a disservice to not show up to these big meets, basically like kind of poo-pooing that Josh Kerr didn't go to European championships and instead chases the mile world record.
Matt
yeah, it's a good call. I
think these little rivalries or yeah, I think it's I think it's really really good for the sport. It causes a lot of conversations and in a fifteen hundred meter realm is especially good for that, has been for a while.
Zach Bitter
It is.
Matt
So yeah. It'd be really good to see the lead up to the LA Olympics. It's gonna be it's gonna be a very it's gonna be a very good event to watch there for sure with all the all the characters.
Zach Bitter
Yeah,
absolutely. I'm excited for it. Do you have enough
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
time to chat about Chinese running shoes? Okay, cool.
Matt
Yeah, of course. I'm actually
at a university right now chatting with you and straight after this, of which there's no time constraints really, I'm actually getting the results back from a test I did over
Zach Bitter
okay.
Matt
the last couple of days where I basically tested the best twelve super shoes coming out of Chinese brands. So that is UNTA, Leaning, three sixty one degrees, X Step, Dynafish, Keodan, Peak and I think that's all. Yeah, so they're the bleeding
brands coming out of China, of which I've done a lot of study, you could say, and spent a bit of time in China actually over the last six months. And I tested them all in a in a laboratory not far from here and I'll get all the results back we should have done this we should have done this podcast after that, but maybe it's best I keep that
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
to myself for a while because I'm gonna publish a YouTube video about it. But yeah, there's a there's been a I mean I noticed this from a maybe twenty twenty three, but really over the last year there's been a big I guess interest
Rise in interest in Chinese shoe brands. And I think that's in part as a result of the prices going very high with a lot of the brands, especially ASICs on Adidas. A lot of these brands are getting quite expensive, and that's a whole other conversation as to why it's probably mostly as if obviously it's a supply-demand curve, but it's also like, you know, them sponsoring a lot of athletes that pumps up the price. And I think there was this sort of realization.
In China there's a lot of brands that are creating shoes that are just as good or maybe even better in some instances that are like half the price. And so I investigated that and went to China and met a whole lot of brands and people and stuff and it's it's it's a whole other world there. And it's kind of a little bit hidden because they really focus all of their marketing and business development on China, but they're slow, especially the bigger ones like Untar and Lining, they're the two huge ones there.
They're slowly expanding, and I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years they're much bigger in or globally sponsoring more and more athletes. They've branched out a bit more to sponsoring some Japanese athletes. So Suguru Asako is probably the most famous notable athlete that's picked up a lining contract a couple of years ago, and he really helped boost the Fadian 6, which is the lining super shoe.
to international awareness, I guess you could say, when he ran Valencia two four fifty four in that shoe. So yeah, it's a fascinating space and I can tell you there's just so many great shoes coming out of that part of the world which probably people have never heard of. So yeah,
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
It's cool.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, I kind of recently started going down the rabbit hole and part of it was I watched your I think it was a YouTube video you did with Jack Krago. And
Matt
yeah.
Zach Bitter
I was just dying laughing because you guys were talking about some of these different models. And it was like, I don't know how much you did if you prepared at all before that, but he was like he's so fun to watch because he's so clearly excited about shoes. Like it's
palpable.
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
him talking about shoes if you could almost you could know nothing about running shoes and you would just get excited watching him talk about them because of how excited he is. And you guys are like bringing up different models and he's like just pulling them off the ground. It's like, I got this one here. And it's just like they're
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
like just right there waiting for him to like you could just tell he was just like waiting to show you like his new toy of
Matt
Yeah, yeah, he absolutely loves it. He was actually probably one of the pioneers in the internet of really bringing the awareness of these shoes to the world. I feel like I learned more about the Chinese shoes in that hour talking to him than ever before because yeah, you're right. I didn't really do this sort of thing at the time when I was really trying to learn more about them. So and he's still, yeah, definitely probably the number one content creator that that tests properly
you know, all the shoes coming out of that region. But he also tests shoes coming out of the West as well. So he tests the Western brands and compares them all. So yeah, it's a fascinating space and it's funny because even some relatively small brands in China, Keodan is probably a good example, which is the Jordan rip off you could say. If you know, they rose to fame because they had a big lawsuit. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Yeah. They've got like a fake jump man
logo on their running shoes, which is hilarious. It's
Matt
Yeah, but I can tell you, I have no skin
in the game with them. I don't really work with them. I have visited their headquarters, but they have some exceptionally good shoes. They have one shoe, it's called like the flea flayed or something. P-Y-L-E-I-D. It's a weird name. And they're really good. I wouldn't be surprised if they rank pretty highly in this of course the results I'm about to get are all the Chinese shoes.
ranked against each other. So they won't be ranked against say the Fastar or the you know Evo 3. but I wouldn't be surprised it ranks pretty highly. It feels to me a lot like Alpha Fly 1, but a little bit lighter. That's their main main shoe. But yeah, there's loads of brands coming out of China that are really good. And yeah, I think the cool part about it is they're a lot cheaper. So people that have a hard time justifying 350 you know US dollars, which is what some of these super shoes are now.
They can get shoes that are just as good from a smaller brand that are maybe half that price or even less. So I think that's
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
That's the interesting thing.
Zach Bitter
The
The price points I feel like are part of the interest with all of this. And yeah, and and and and there's this weird like scenario too where you have some of these I mean, Ant is pretty well known now, but it's definitely sort of a supply chain issue with respect to people really getting into that, even in the United States it seems. But some of those brands are smaller than that, it just seems like there's enough friction for the average runner that they're just not accessing these. Like you're not going into these specialty shops in the US and picking up a dyno fish or anything like that. So
Matt
Yes.
Zach Bitter
There's still some I think growing and marketing that needs to be done. Or maybe you know more about this too, because like I I can't remember where what podcast I was listening to and they were talking a little bit about that, like just like is there gonna be like this wave of Chinese running shoes that just flooded the US market? and someone was saying like that's there's a lot more hurdles there than maybe it looks on paper because
A lot of the US running market runs through specialty shops, which in and of itself will increase the price point. So then by the time they would get actually embedded in the US buying market, their price points would be getting up a little bit closer to the shoes that they're trying to compete with.
Matt
I think that's true and that is the challenge. And then there's also the US is slightly different to the rest of the world with the tariffs as well. Like the tariffs in the US are much higher. That's a Donald Trump yeah decision. So you're right though. I mean I have learned that. I think once they really start to branch out, the prices will probably go up quite a bit.
and hopefully they remain, you know, for the most part underneath the you know the prices of these really expensive super shoes. But yeah, no doubt. unfortunately import tax is a is a is a thing that we have to all deal with and but for example in Australia there's no import tax from China, whereas I think the US
is like a hundred
Zach Bitter
okay.
Matt
and a hundred and twenty percent or something like that. So it it
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
There can be a pretty significant difference between, you know, reselling them here as opposed to reselling them when I say here I mean Australia, as opposed to reselling in the US.
But yeah, there's no doubt. Like these, Chinese shoes will probably remain pretty cheap for a while, especially if you buy them directly from Talbot and AliExpress, the way that you can buy them now. But once they do start to become more popular over the next five or ten years, which I think they will, and I only say that because if you look at almost any other industry, especially the car industry, electric cars, I'm not sure what it's like in the US, but in Australia, like the Chinese, the Chinese electric cars have taken over the roads, basically. They're everywhere.
and I think that's the case with a lot of industries as well. And so yeah, I think the prices probably will rise quite a bit due to the reasons that you said. Like you know, specialty running shops, which is how a lot of people buy their shoes, will make their margin. They'll spend a bit of money on marketing and then yeah, it'll probably rise a bit. so yeah, maybe the whole appeal to it will fade a bit in that regard with the pricing. But I still do think that at least a lot of the shoes that I've been using and trying are from China.
The durability of them tends to be exceptional compared to a lot of shoes that I've tried in the West. And you brought up Dynafish who I'm actually working directly with, which is a project I'll probably talk about another time. But I've used the Dynafish trainer for a while now and I reckon I've put about 300 miles into them, maybe 500k. and they're as good as new, basically. They really are. and I can really tell when a shoe starts to get a bit worn down, I can if I can really feel it.
and then I brought up Keodun and their super shoes. I met the engineering team there and they seemed to think that they had tested their shoe with a lot of elite athletes over a thousand kilometers, about six hundred and eighty miles, and they seem to think that their super shoe basically stays as good as new for that long. And
Zach Bitter
wow.
Matt
most super shoes, now I don't know that for sure. I've not tested it. I've only tested the shoes but I haven't run a thousand K in them. But they were adamant about that.
They were like that's their goal, to make them so durable that for a thousand kilometres they're basically at their best. Now, look again, I'm gonna repeat, I don't know if that's actually true, but if it is, then that's a big jump from most super shoes that probably last a hundred miles at best, maybe a hundred and twenty miles, before they start to degrade a bit. and I believe I I kinda believe it, to be honest, based on based on
trying a bunch of shoes, I think and it's funny because I think especially in the States, I think the opinion about Chinese products in general, and I think Australia is the same actually, it's not just the States. I think there is a bit of an opinion that the Chinese products in general tend to be lower quality. Whereas I have actually started to develop in the opinion that they're actually in running shoe space, maybe better quality in terms of durability. Maybe performance,
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
not really.
I would say they're probably equal across the board, but I think durability wise they're probably even better.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. Yeah, I'm interested about the durability side of things because if I actually do, do you follow Dustin Jopert at all? He does the runrat lab Instagram account where he he I think if I if I remember right, he had the first like certified third party testing protocol that got like passed as like validated essentially where like if he like ran his testing model across like some some shoes they could actually make performance claims, like legally make performance claims based on the research.
and he was telling me that his Zoom X foam actually lasts a lot longer than people think, where he had an original pair that he had up to four hundred miles on and he was still clocking that roughly four percent performance efficiency efficiency gain at four hundred as he did in the beginning. So I don't know if there's just like individual wear patterns that make a difference with some of that stuff or
I'm sure there's variances from all the different foams and things like that. But I think some of these super shoes actually probably do last a little longer than people think. But for whatever reason, that narrative kind of got brought out early on that they're pretty quick to die. And sometimes the shoes just actually do fall apart. It's like it's one thing if you can be and I suspect since he had the shoe that long, he was just probably really gentle on it. He wasn't wearing it all that often. And that might be part of the reason why it's been able to tolerate that much versus someone, you know, pounding them like multiple times a week then
Yeah, maybe they just start to fall apart and deteriorate quicker in that scenario.
Matt
Yeah, there's a lot of factors there. I think body weight's a big thing and from my understanding it also can be a bit dependent on the weather conditions that you're in, I think. Like if you're in hot and humid conditions, they can break down faster. I remember hearing someone that was training in the middle of a summer somewhere really warm and their foam fell apart really quickly and they came to that conclusion. And I think it was also something to do with them storing them in the garage where it was hot. Yeah, so there's a lot of
Zach Bitter
yeah.
Matt
factors there's a lot of factors at play. I think Nike is one example across the board that's been pretty good with durability.
But I've been hearing a lot of people recently. Maybe I shouldn't say it because I probably haven't heard enough, but there's been some bigger brands, especially with some super shoes that have not lasted very long. As in like what you said, like almost falling apart.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
whereas I've not I've I I've tested a lot of these Chinese shoes over a few hundred kilometres and they're really as good as new. So yeah, there's I I I don't feel like I have enough data at this point and enough experience 'cause I've only really been quite interested in this for about six months to probably speak
really confidently about the performance of them and the durability of them. But the early signs to me are really positive for sure.
And I just think it's it's it's also interesting to see what they're doing with different you know different tech. Like l interestingly a lot of people don't know this, but Linning made a super shoe called the Dragon Flight, of which you can Google and find. I think they're selling. I think people are selling them on X X dot com for like fifteen hundred bucks now, of which I was lucky enough to get a pair. And they made this shoe that was 79 grams in size nine, which is slightly lighter than the Evo 3.
The sole is bizarre. It's basically like the back and the back side only has about half a sole. But it didn't pass the World Athletic Standards because the plate had broken some geometry rule, which is quite complicated.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
Yeah, yeah. So the stack height wasn't an issue. It was actually
like thirty two though and the stack height's forty millimeters, so it's quite a bit below that. But I've got them and I've used them and they're really, really fast. Obviously the weight is just phenomenal. but Leaning is working on trying to now make that same shoe legal. So they're basically working on a reiteration of that this year. and if they get it right, I think it could potentially be the fastest shoe in the world for a lot of people, mostly because of the weight because of the weight. Yeah. So
Zach Bitter
wow. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Matt
I and and that'll come out in the tests
that I just finished because I threw them in the test despite the fact that they're actually not allowed. I put them to the test anyway. And I'll be clear on the YouTube video that these are actually against the rules, but I'll just test them anyway. because I know Lenin is coming out with one that's going to be very similar very soon. So yeah, it's exciting. There's lots of lots of really cool things coming out of there. And yeah, you said it before that UNT is already pretty well known. UNTA is an absolute beast when it comes to the financials. Like they're they're they they're huge. They took a big stake in Puma a couple of years back.
Zach Bitter
Yeah,
It was like fifteen or twenty percent I think, wasn't it?
Matt
I think it might have been even more. It was about that. I thought it was
Zach Bitter
What was it?
Matt
twenty five. I thought it was twenty five, but you could be right.
Zach Bitter
Okay, interesting. Yeah, so yeah, the Puma's interesting to me 'cause it seemed like their running line was starting to really pick up momentum, but the rest of the company was struggling quite a bit. So I was kind of curious what they're gonna end up doing with everything in the long term. But sounds like they're bringing in that anti-money.
Matt
Yeah. And and funnily enough, the the I
I think the thing that people would know the most about Puma is the Fast R, which has risen to fame as being probably the best super shoe in the world right now for most people. UNTA has a super shoe called the C ten two point and it's almost exactly the same as the Fast R.
And when I started posting about it, a lot of people were like, that's a ripoff of the Fast R. And then I tried to think, I tried to research. I was like, I actually think UNTA might have come up with this first and then and then given it to Puma and they've made one very similar. They've got some slight differences. I have both. So they're not exactly the same, but they're very, very similar. and UNTA, interestingly enough, when Puma put out their shoe and it became popular, UNTA massively jacked up the price of their C10.
From like two
Zach Bitter
Okay.
Matt
sixty to la now like three ninety US dollars. So unfortunately
Zach Bitter
wow.
Matt
Unfortunately that's now a very expensive shoe, but it's one that I've got. I've used it quite a few times and it's really, really good. So yeah, it's almost like
UNTA are maybe like replicating a lot of the things across both brands and then focusing on the Chinese marketing, you know, for UNTER and Puma for the rest of the world. So yeah, but I
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
maybe four or five years ago I thought Puma was lost in running. I I was like, I I knew I knew I knew New St. Vault was, you and some of the sprinters were big, you know, advocates of it, but in the distance I was like,
Zach Bitter
Field event stuff basically, yeah.
Matt
yeah, but now it's it's it's come back and they've got some phenomenal shoes.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, their product development stuff is great too. I went to TRE, the running event here in the States in December and got invited to go to Pumas. Like they did this like private showing of some of their concept shoes, which are just like cartoons, basically. Like like
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
little cartoons that would never be legal shoes, but they're basically doing the whole Formula One thing where they make whatever would be the fastest possible shoe you could actually wear and perform in.
And then they just pair it. I mean, that's how the fast R got developed essentially, I think, is they kinda pair down one of those c those concept shoes, which may have been an anti shoe, who knows.
Matt
Yeah, it probably was. They probably developed
They probably started in the UNT in the UNTA labs because UNT has been around for a long time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Zach Bitter
So you guys play around with this. Yeah. Well what's keeping
What's keeping Anta from just signing a bunch of pro runners? Is are they just not concerned with that at the moment from a marketing standpoint or
Matt
It's a good question. I don't know. I've not met UNTA. I've met Linning, and they kind of answered this question to some degree. I think once you start to sponsor athletes in the West, you need to have something pretty clear like this, like a channel to buy.
And I think that's still lacking in the US to many, many people and also in Europe and Australia. People still don't really have a reliable source, especially retail, like physical retail brick and mortar stores. Not many anyway. But now I think that's slowly changing. I know ANTA actually has flagship stores based around the world. When I was in South Africa visiting George, I saw one in Johannesburg.
So yeah, I think it's more like they're a bit just concerned about the fact that if they're spending all this money on athletes and people are being influenced by them and they want to buy, there's just not very reliable ways to do that in a lot of the world yet. But that's probably well, it is coming because I know UNTA is expanding their flagship stores already. And they just put one up in Dubai in the last twelve months and they've dropped a few more around the world. So yeah, I think this wave is just beginning with the Chinese shoe brands from my perspective.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
And that that makes sense too because some of these like Chinese brands that are signing like NBA basketball players, like that's such a global sport at this point that I'm sure they're thinking of it through that lens where it's like they're still gonna have plenty of people. like I mean, the NBA is just super popular in China. So they're just probably targeting their own market with those signings versus even being concerned with the US market.
Matt
Yeah, it's a good question how it relates to basketball 'cause I know Linning especially has been pretty pretty generous with sponsoring a lot of NBA players. I've not really thought about that. Yeah, I guess the jury's really open with it with all this and my understanding of it. I tried to meet UNTO when I was there, but I could never get the right contact. But Lin
Zach Bitter
Mm.
Matt
Linning was very open for me to visit their headquarters and that's where I scored that dragon flight chew, which is super, super fun. But unfortunately I can
Can't race in it otherwise I'll get a whole lot of flack for cheating or whatever. So yeah. But I'll still train in it once every once every now and then. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah,
just a super trainer until they update.
Matt
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
D did you go over to China just to tour the shoe stores? Is that why you were over there?
Matt
No, I actually went over there for a different reason. It was to do with a mobile app that's still being developed. and then that was delayed a lot and so I sort of really didn't have too much to do and I thought maybe I should just go back to Australia for a bit. and then one thing led to another and I met Dinafish very early on, who you brought up before. I'm not sure how familiar you are with them, but they've become very, very popular over the last six to twelve months. So I met with them and then it sort of just expanded from there and I just
I sort of realized that I'd sort of neglected really understanding how shoe tech really worked over the last seven years, especially over the last three years as the tech had really improved. And so I just sort of had this realization one night when I was just watching a v an interview of Stephen Scully and actually talk about how he tested a whole lot of the best shoes and he realized that the fast R was about a minute, fifteen seconds faster than the next best shoe, and then his
His underarm shoe was about three minutes slower than this over the marathon and I started to realise like I have had the attitude for years that like all the best super shoes were just my man, they're kind of the same. And I was like, I was
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
wrong. Like I, I think this is something I need to look into more carefully and get more familiar with and take me down a path of doing that, yeah. So I'm just really trying to learn more about it. I visited a whole lot of factories as well to look at how they're making them. I don't know why, I just thought that was interesting, which it was.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
yeah, so I was actually there for a different reason and that was delayed so I had a whole lot of free time and most of the factories and the brands are based in the very south, very close to Hong Kong, within a few hours train and I was in Hong Kong at the time for the mobile app start up. So it's just a short train ride really from there. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It is so that Dy Dynafish only has those two models, right?
Matt
Yeah. They've only got one
Zach Bitter
Is that just
Matt
trainers, the Xionen. And then they've got a super shoe, which is not very well known yet, and I don't even know the name of it, but they're coming out with a super shoe at the end of the year that they're pretty confident will be one of the best ones. But their trainer,
Zach Bitter
Okay.
Matt
their Xionen, X I A N I O A N I think I said that right. that's that that's exploded. even when
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm.
Matt
I'm running here on the Gold Coast, there's people everywhere.
A lot of YouTubers picked them up and talked about it and there's a bunch of Instagram pages that test all the shoes and Dinofish is always ranking as one of the best ones. Yeah, they've made this shoe that kind. Have you tried it before, by the way?
Zach Bitter
I haven't, no. I actually reached out to them and I've been talking to one of their employees. It's just trying to kind of see what they were, what they were up to. But like what you mentioned, like the trainer that they have that just blew up, that's what caught my eye the first and got me introduced to them and then I would just start poking around because I couldn't at first I couldn't find any other shoe on their line. I'm like, there's no way there's just one shoe for this brand.
And then I
Matt
Mm-hmm.
Zach Bitter
I came across yeah, I'm blinking on the name of their super shoe right now too, but that actually looks pretty cool. I mean they're both just like super light shoes too, like sub two hundred gram grams. So
Matt
Very. Yeah.
And their trainer is this really really interesting piece of art, you could say, where it strangely feels really natural and and just generally comfortable at any pace. So I've done two hundred meter sprints in thirty seconds and jogged, you know, nine minute miles or so or even slower and it just feels great at any speed. It's really unusual.
It's almost like it kills the idea of having a rotation. Because people people
Zach Bitter
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Matt
that buy are they like they're I I actually like to p phrase them as like if you're going on a trip and you want to take one pair of shoes to do everything in and you're not racing, it's absolutely ideal. 'Cause you can just do everything in them and they feel great. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
Yeah. And at less than four ounces it's like barely taking up any sort of weight in your bag either. It's like a pair of socks.
Matt
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, they're
They're really good. I've really enjoyed mine.
Zach Bitter
Awesome. Well, Matt, I've taken up plenty of your time, I think. I should probably let you get those shoe results in and then we'll all wait patiently for you to release that YouTube video. But before I let you go,
Matt
Yeah.
Zach Bitter
if you don't mind sharing with the listeners where they can find you, website social or anything like that.
Matt
Yeah, cool, man. Thanks so much for having me. It's been fun. Like I said, I've probably listened to maybe five or six of your episodes over the years, and I really enjoyed the episode you put out recently about questioning Wada's rules around different things, which was fun to listen to. But yeah, I probably post mostly on Instagram and Strava. They're my two favorites. So just Matt Fox, you can find me there. I have posted on YouTube, but not that much recently, because I've come back from an injury over the last sort of 12 months.
But that's also my name and Sweat Elite. Yeah, they're the main ones. I pretty much post every day on Instagram Strava. And yeah, I'm preparing for the Melbourne Marathon in two months, where I'm hoping to run faster than my best, which is 218. So that would mean 217. And it'll be a bonus if I can get close to Kip Churge, who's racing, and I know he's in his best shape.
Zach Bitter
Yeah.
Matt
He ran 218 last month, and that made me go. Maybe if I get in shape, maybe I can try and chase him down at the end, we'll see. Yeah.
Zach Bitter
You should check what his splits have been looking
like with those like mid two teens that he's been doing recently, 'cause if he's fairly even with that, you should just maybe sit on him, use him as a pacer. Yeah.
Matt
It'd look good for the photos anyway. I mean if even if I blow up in the
last ten K I'll have some good photos to
Zach Bitter
Yeah, you'll
have plenty of them if you do, that's for sure.
Matt
Yeah. No, thanks a lot for having me on, man. It's been fun.
Zach Bitter
Yeah, I appreciate it, Matt. Take care.