ATHCO

Michael Obery is one of the most recognisable faces in Cape Town running. What most people don't know is that years ago he was battling drug addiction that nearly killed him. The turning point came watching his younger brother head out for a run at 5am while Mike was still coming home from a night out. His first run was 2km on the promenade. It snowballed into an obsession and by accident, into on...

Keaton Mac Farlane was the kid picked last in PE. He started going to the gym at 15 to escape everyone and his high school nickname became "Creatine." Ten years later he's done marathons, ultras, and Ironmans while staying jacked year-round, and he's trained over 200 people. In this episode he breaks down how to combine running and lifting without losing muscle, and why most hybrid athletes get it...

Carla Johnson got into running because of a boy. Her first marathon was a 4:20 she hated. A few years later she qualified for Kona the Ironman World Championships while working full-time in a mining job, sleeping seven nights a month in her own bed and training 28 hours a week. Then she walked away from triathlon at the top, discovered running was her real calling, and two years later became a top...

Stephani van Zyl did rhythmic gymnastics for 16 years. Her mom coached her. Her dad was supposed to be a South African Olympian. When gymnastics ended at 19, she spent five years trying to find the next thing triple jump, running, resistance training but injuries and scoliosis kept pulling her back. Then she found HYROX. First race ever: 3rd overall in Women's Pro doubles. First solo: 10th ove...

David Fick went from gym bro to 2:35 marathoner. Running saved his life after addiction his cousin dragged him to a run club in Durban and everything changed. Seven years later, he's the team captain of ASICS Front Runners South Africa, coaches over 20 athletes, and is chasing sub-2:30 at Berlin with a newborn due weeks before the race. But this conversation is really about what he thinks SA runne...

Michael Tones has been building brands since he was 10 labeling bottles in his family's factory in Durban. His dad was a serial entrepreneur who risked everything and lost everything more than once. Michael watched and took notes. Years later, a mate said "toss me a naughty water" on a Friday evening. By Monday he'd trademarked it. No plan, no product. He sold his house, went R70...

Michael Larter's girlfriend Amiee took her own life in 2017. After years of depression and healing, he founded the Amiee Howard Foundation to get teenagers access to therapy the group who can't afford it and don't have medical aid. Then he ran across countries to fund it. First South Africa to Namibia, 772km in 14 days. Then the entire length of Japan 3,300km, solo, self-funded, pushin...

Shaka started rugby at 14 five years behind everyone else. He came from a school with 90 boys, studied mathematics at Stellenbosch, and did 1,000 passes a day during COVID because he couldn't pass with his left hand. Now he coaches rugby performance and works at one of the top schools in the country, bridging the gap between what team coaches expect and what individual players can actually do....

Laura Kirkpatrick spent four years in med school, started a vegan business that landed in 30 UK stores, did three years in management consulting, and then quit everything to ride bikes and make films. She left with 10,000 followers, no brand deals, and one consulting bonus as her safety net. She came to Cape Town on a whim after a stranger on a training camp suggested it instead of Mexico. This co...

Kuba Nowosiński quit his sales job in June 2024 with three months of savings and one bet: what happens if I put 100% into content creation? Two years later, he has 116K followers on Instagram, works as head of business development at one of Poland's biggest social media agencies, and gets flown out by brands across Europe. He sits on both sides of every deal. He's the creator and the perso...

Gerrit Knein was leading a 120-million-euro company with 100+ employees. 13-hour days. Multi-six-figure salary. Managing director by 28. Then his son was born and he remembered a promise he made at 18 to be the kind of dad who's actually there. So he left. What came after wasn't what he expected. The freedom he'd dreamed about came with an identity crisis nobody warned him about. Now h...

Nika Bedeker has no content strategy. No pillars. No calendar. She edits on her phone, posts when she feels like it, and still doesn't think she's an influencer. But somehow, a lot of the good things in her life came from social media. Her fiancé. Her job. Her flat in Cape Town which she got by sending her Instagram to the landlord. Even her Milan Marathon ambassadorship, which she was convinced w...

Seb Prentice was 24 when his mom passed away. She was in London, he was in Cape Town. Three weeks from hospitalization to gone. At the time, he was earning R70-110K a month in tech sales, living rent-free in Sea Point. He quit, took his savings and his mom's life policy, and opened a gym. He moved out of his flat and into the gym itself to keep costs down. He started every single month in the...

She had no personal Instagram account. No following. No connections in the creator world. Just a consulting job she didn't love and a dream of hosting her own travel show. Three years later, Aakanksha Monga has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, nearly a million on YouTube, and was the first travel content creator on the cover of Forbes India. In this conversation, she walks us through everything...

Seven guests in seven weeks but this time it's just us. No guest, no script, just Daniel and Jannis talking about why ATHCO exists and what we're actually building. We met playing spike ball two and a half years ago. Our first idea was a creator-athlete retreat. Then it became an event. Then it got way too big and we had to pull it back. Now it's a podcast, a community, and a whole lot...

He had a first-class architecture degree. Clear path to director. But he looked at the people above him gray, overweight, stressed and knew that wasn't where he wanted to end up. Josh Lancaster spent years covering up insecurities with alcohol. Blackouts every weekend. Until one night at Leeds Festival changed everything. He hasn't had a drink in over 4 years. In this episode we talk about the con...

Emma Wilcock spent years in consulting while training CrossFit competitively on the side. Now she's a Product Manager at EvolveU (a women's fitness app) and competing at HYROX Pro level all without taking the "quit your job and figure it out" risk. In this episode we talk about how she made the transition from corporate to fitness tech, why you don't need a massive following...

🔔 FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.cc Newsletter: Subscribe for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession 👉 https://the-athco-collective.kit.com/135242159e 📍 FOLLOW DEAN: Instagram: @deanhorwitz_ Podcast: @trailchaserspod YDRun Project: @whydo.run 15 years in social media. 80+ podcast episodes. And a project to interview 1,000 runners...

🔔 FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.ccNewsletter: Subscribe for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession 👉 https://the-athco-collective.kit.com/135242159e 📍 FOLLOW LAZIEL:Instagram: @_lazielLaziel grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe a country with 90%+ unemployment and an economy that's been in freefall for over two decades. He didn't finish...

🔔 FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.ccNewsletter: Subscribe for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession👉 https://the-athco-collective.kit.com/135242159e 📍 FOLLOW LAUREN:Instagram: @lauren.gilesTikTok: @lauren_c_giles840,000 views a month. While working a full-time job as a software engineer. That's what Lauren Giles is pulling of...

🔔 FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.cc Newsletter: Subscribe for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession 👉 Newsletter 📍 FOLLOW CONNOR: Instagram: @connorrandrew_fit Connor´s Fundraiser:  Donate now! Horizon Gym Cape Town: @horizongym An 8 kilometer swim in the freezing Atlantic Ocean. A 109 kilometer cycle through Cape Town. A 50 kil...

🔔 FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.cc Newsletter: Subscribe for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession👉 https://the-athco-collective.kit.com/135242159e 📍FOLLOW HOLLY: Instagram: hollykimrowe TikTok: voicenotesformymom From a restrictive bodybuilding prep at 15 that spiraled into an eating disorder, to discovering healing through Cr...

FOLLOW ATHCO: Stay up to date and never miss an episode! Instagram: @athco.cc Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive insights on turning your passion into a profession: https://the-athco-collective.kit.com/135242159e FOLLOW NKOSI: Instagram & TikTok: @nkosinsumbu_ YouTube: Untold Stories 7785 Facebook: NkosiRuns Production Company: @Starkosiproduction ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ From growi...