Dirt Church Radio Trail Running

How often does it seem within our running culture that more is more? And how often has this approach been ruinous to our physiological and psychological wellbeing? Luke McCallum is a man who knows this to be true. A massage therapist employed by Sports Lab (who also has a tidy 70 minute half marathon pb) Luke spent two months on a working holiday in Iten, Kenya. Whilst in Iten Luke worked and trai...

Kia Ora Whanau, this week we have the distinct pleasure of speaking to Holly Page. Holly is far from a regular runner in the sense that she is the current Migu Run Skyrunning World Series champion. Holly very much is a regular runner in that she won said world series with a full time job, no major sponsorship, and perhaps a less than concrete manner of getting from race to race (read: hitch hiking...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week we have the pleasure of speaking to Christchurch’s Sam Manson about his journey from precocious trail running talent to elite multi-sport athlete. Sam, who by his own admission does not come from a sporting background, decided one day that he would win the Coast to Coast multisport race. To this day, he doesn’t know why, however, in classic kiwi style he set about knockin...

Kia Ora Whanau. With Matt out the weekend after Riverhead Rampage, Eugene took the reins and steered the ship into shore (ummm?) with an incredibly interesting conversation with Gareth Morris. Gareth is an elite athlete in his own right, winning a silver medal at the 21st Commonwealth Games in 2018 as part of the Queen’s Prize Pairs rifle event for Team Cymru. Gareth is no slouch on the trails eit...

Adharanand Finn is the British author of Running with the Kenyans , Way of the Runner, and his new book Rise of the Ultra Runners: A Journey to the Edge of Human Endurance . Running with the Kenyans was the Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year, won Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Award. Adharanand is also an editor at the Guar...

Kia Ora Whanau. Camille Herron sucks the marrow out of the long bones of life. The Comrades Champion and five-time world record holder ( 50 and 100 miles on the road, 100 miles, 12 hours and 24 hours on the track) was involved in a car accident days before she was to fly down to Aotearoa/New Zealand to compete in the 2019 Tarawera 100 mile endurance run. Emerging from the upside down wreck of her...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week Matt speaks to Dr John Onate, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the University of California Davis. John is an accomplished ultra runner, speaker at Rob Krar’s trail running camps, the Western States Endurance Run and UTMB. John is also the medical lead at the Devil’s Thumb aid station at Western States. John was in New Zealand to run the Shoto...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week’s episode of Dirt Church Radio is pretty much the complete package. Big call, we know.. but whakarongo mai whilst we break this down... A little race happened on the weekend, heard of it? Yeah. Tarawera, and by all accounts it slayed, being the biggest and most successful iteration of the race yet. We have a quick catch up with the men’s 100 mile winner Jeff Browning, aka...

Kia Ora Whanau. So often in trail running, the quality of adventure is measured by us stepping outside of our usual surrounds. Somehow, a hill that we’ve not climbed before takes on more meaning than one we have, or a sunrise somewhere else becomes more epic than our own domestic sunshine. Tim Sutton knocks that paradigm on his head with his focus on Adventure as something that you do where you ar...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week, Weston Hill and the No-Plan-Plan. Eugene and Matt speak with Weston Hill, who tore it up in Europe last season following his nose and the No-Plan-Plan. Weston first came to our attention as the young kiwi ripper who paced Grant Guise at his 2017 Hardrock attempt, then came 13th out of 1900 runners at one of Europe’s premier races. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves her...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week Matt and Eugene have the privilege and great joy to have a conversation with Vajin Armstrong. Vajin has been consistently at the top of the Aotearoa/New Zealand trail and ultra running standings for the last nine years, with three Kepler Challenge victories, multiple Tarawera Ultra podium finishes (including victory at the 62 km event in 2018) and a slew of impressive res...

Kia Ora Whanau. Anna Frost is arguably the most successful trail and ultra running export New Zealand has produced and the person Eugene and Matt both had at the top of their “must talk to” lists from day one. Anna burst onto the scene in what was the first wave of the professional ultra athlete, running for the mighty Salomon team. Going from spending weeks travelling around Europe partying and s...

Kia Ora Whanau, Welcome back!! To paraphrase Run The Jewels, when we started this podcast we didn’t have no arc, no plan, and certainly no expectations. Every week it seems that we are staring over the microphone at each other, shaking our heads at the pearls of wisdom that each person we are privileged enough to speak with drops on us. Courtney Dauwalter is no exception. Although perhaps she is a...

Kia Ora Whanau, Meri Kirihimete and welcome to Dirt Church Radio’s Christmas special, or Dirchmas as we like to call it. It’s been a roller coaster ride for us since we started off waaaaaaay back in July this year and we thought we’d look back with a fond eye on the happenings for the year, the standout performances, the scandals (well, scandal) and also recap with the greatest of our guest greate...

Kia Ora whanau. This week Eugene and Matt speak with Scott Worthington, co race director of The Revenant. This race, which bills itself as an Ultra Adventure Run will be taking place between the 18th-20th of January at Welcome Rock, which is 45 minutes south of Queenstown, Otago, will comprise four loops over 190 km and 16,000m of vertical ascent. A 60 hour cut off time, navigation only by map and...

Kia Ora Whanau. The year is screaming to an end but still we are bringing you the hits. For our 21st go around the podcast microphone Matt and Eugene find themselves ensconced in the luxurious environs of DCR acres and speaking with the force of nature that is Ruth Croft. West Coast (of the South Island of NZ, not like THE West Coast) native Ruth came to running through family adventure and a comp...

Kia Ora Whanau. For our 20th installment of DCR we bring you our coverage of the 31st iteration of the FreshChoice Kepler Challenge. Eugene and Matt travelled to beautiful Te Anau, also known as the Chamonix of Fiordland, to take part in the Kepler proceedings. It would be Eugene’s first time competing and Matt’s third. Whilst there we were planning to engage in a live podcast, our second in two w...

Kia Ora whanau. Something different for you this week (and us, actually)!! Eugene and Matt bring you the first ever DCR live show, from inside Thomson Whisky Distillery at Hallertau Brewery. Nestled in amongst the copper stills were our hosts, an audience, a bunch of tasty beverages, and our guests- Dr James Kuegler and Mr Andrew McDowall. James Kuegler is a well established running coach, under h...

Kia Ora whanau. This week, Eugene and Matt have the pleasure to sit with Marianne Elliott, for what really is an interesting conversation with an interesting runner. Like most of us, you won’t find Marianne topping any podiums or with a laundry list of sponsors to fund her globetrotting lifestyle, however Marianne’s story is no less interesting in terms of using running to engage with others, perh...

Kia Ora whanau. We’re back, refreshed after our one week break and storming right out of the gates with the indefatigable Dylan Bowman. Dylan has many fans in Australasia, having won Ultra Trail Australia and being a two-time Tarawera champion (and second fastest finisher of the original course behind Jim Walmsley). Dylan spoke to Eugene and Matt from his home base of Colorado and we went deep int...

Kia Ora Whanau. When Nancy Jiang was five, she moved with her parents from China to New Zealand. One of her first memories was noticing the other children in her street and at school tearing about in bare feet. Nancy immediately thought “I want to do that” and quickly adapted to the largely barefoot childhood that many New Zealand children enjoy. Nancy’s burgeoning love of running started at schoo...

Kia Ora Whanau. At the end of 2017, Vibram trail athlete and Christchurch boy Scotty Hawker had every right to expect that with continued hard work and focus 2018 would be a year of stellar results. Having come 11th at UTMB and taken the victory at Ultra Trail Cape Town, Scotty was prepped and ready to go. Sometimes though, even the most well thought-out plans do not go exactly how we want and tha...

Kia Ora Whanau. What were you up to when you were 22? Possibly (probably) not coming third at Western States Endurance Run and travelling the world exploring, running for Salomon, and espousing your passion for a plant-based diet like our guest this week, Lucy Bartholomew. Lucy joins us for a wide ranging conversation about her history with the sport, her ongoing successes and her beliefs that tru...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week Eugene and Matt have the pleasure of speaking with Majell Backhausen. Majell is the global content and community manager for Salomon running. Yes, that Salomon. Majell talks to us about his journey, from his beginnings playing Australian rules football in his hometown of Red Hill, in the state of Victoria - to his current base of Chamonix in France, via putting in countle...

Kia Ora Whanau. This week Eugene and Matt have the distinct pleasure of our first two-on-two podcast, as we speak to Andrew Glennie and Steve Tripp, the gentlemen behind the Crush The Cargill 24 Challenge. Billed as “the longest 24 hour race in the world”, Crush the Cargill takes place in Dunedin, racing up and down Kapukataumahaka (or Mt Cargill) for 24 hours to benefit the Valley Project, which...