Hyrox Phoenix recap with James Kelly

(upbeat music) - What up, it's your boy Matt Mason, coming at you live from inside a tin can. Let's just go ahead and get the awkwardness out of the way. I don't have my mic today. Is Rich trying gonna fire me? I don't know, he doesn't even listen. RCEO is, he's out there basking in the fact that he just qualified for worlds in both races. He'd not listen to a race parade, but today is a very special episode. You know why? 'Cause we got the boys and a very special guest joining us all the way from Down Under. Up, we have the slowest member of any high school girls four by four relay team in the state of Wisconsin. This dude's got more super shoes and still probably get crack 60 on a 400. That's right, we got Brack and Crocker. Brack and how are we doing today? A Paul, a Paul. I can't run a thing on this earth, but I can break 60 and give me that credit. Alright, let's go ahead and get right next to the next intro 'cause I do wanna talk about this 'cause he reached out to me all the way from Down Under. Some's call this man the closer. Some people, some people say he looks a little bit, he should probably bring the hair back, gotta give him a little bit of a hard time. But all that matters is what Georgie thinks. That's right, we have Georgie's fiance James Kelly, JK, how are we doing today? I'm very well, thank you, Lads. Matt, just a preface. I still I believe that I would not crack. Yes, so VK, this is what I want you to hear. I know, I will fight through the screen today. So JK reached out to me, 'cause JK sometimes listens to the show for me. 63, 62 and a half, 63. Matt, he doesn't think you can crack 60 and a 400. My belief is that any man who can break 60 in a high rocks should be able to break 60 in a 400. And any man who can make the lead 15, absolutely can. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to say his name, 'cause that's rude. You are completely wrong there, because I know myself so well, I do not have that speed. I do not have that speed. I will never tell you, you have earned the right as an athlete, to have respect. All right. I will never go against you in most things, but I will say that most athletes who don't raise short distance greatly undersell their ability to raise short distance as their top and long distance grows, they get less and less confident in the bottom end. And then they shock themselves. So I just believe that it's not that you're wrong. It's just that you haven't tried it. Fair, fair, because I can't remember the last time I had done a 400. Flat out. Flat out. You have built from sub 70, the first quarter of a high rocks before. Sure, yeah, I've done that multiple times, but yeah. But the difference between a sub 70 and that top end speed that you need for a sub 60 is difference. But hey, maybe we will get to a point where I do test this theory after maybe after worlds, maybe in the off season. And maybe, maybe instead of running a, maybe instead of running the gold coast marathon, maybe you can train that top that top end and then we can see if you can break 60. And hey, just on that note, that's definitely probably more that's something that I'll be probably doing in the off season more so than running a bloody marathon again. Well, we'll get into that in a second and the final member of today's panel, everybody's favorite stats guy. Matt B. Davis said, "FU, rock's opt, high result, rocks fit, whatever. I only care what Jack Bauer says about the stats. Jack told me before the race, he started 10 minutes behind me. He said, Matt, don't let me catch you. And it came down to the wallballs because I got absolutely fucking starched in Phoenix. And Jack Bauer almost caught me from 10 minutes behind. Jack, how are you doing? Well, we were both lying on the finish area, the ramp. So I estimate, I didn't see you cross the line within five to 10 seconds of each other. So I almost did it. You almost did it. You almost did it. And like any good CEO, you mentioned that Rich is out there. He's too busy making money. We're just the poor people doing all the hard work right now for his brand. Hang on, I thought, yeah, I thought Rich would be here, but it might be because I picked him on the weekend. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure. Rich, I wish you a hit, mate. I'm sorry that I beat you on the weekend. He's big time in all of us. He's big time. Rich is out there. Big time in us. Rich is out there. Big time in us. Yeah, the race brain crew is we were out in force in Phoenix. We were down there. Michelle Navarro stuck her nose in it. Jack Bauer stuck his nose in it. Jack is out of PR. Yep. Hell yeah, Jack. Jack's getting a PR. Michelle did not get a PR. However, Michelle did actually like race. She was in the top heat, which was awesome. And she I was really it was really awesome to watch. Michelle, you should be very proud of your effort. It was great. And you will undoubtedly be there with the big dogs again. The homie Rich did that work. He did get pipped by JK. So you know, well, why don't we just go ahead and why don't we just get right into it. So we're going to talk about Phoenix today and then we got JK here. So we're just going to get into some whatever, you know, BK is the best question asker and all of hybrid fitness podcasting. So we'll just see where that takes us. Can I start with the question then? Matt, can you tell us how the fantasy results went? Yeah, I can actually. So actually, you know, what reckon I would love to do that because there has been a lot of people talking about how bad my fantasy performances have been, but not anymore. I went back to what makes me successful. I made the right picks in the right rounds and here are your updates. Michelle Navarro, I believe with her first fantasy win, 35 points. And then in a tie for second place, one bracket crocker and your boy, me 39 points, unfortunately, Dylan Scott decided to use his best solo performance on Saturday night instead of Thursday night. Had he run that race on Saturday night, I would have absolutely cooked the field because I took three, four and five on the women's side from the four spot and in last place. My night be good at stats, but might need to reconsider his draft strategy. Jack Bauer, bring it up the caboose with 43 points. Jack, anything you'd like to say for yourself? Jack congrats on bragging from the third step of the podium. I mean, you absolutely crushed us. He bragged a lot of more. Third and fifth. I picked the last second, last and third, last women and still tied him. Yep. Hold on. Yeah. You know what? I picked Joanna and back-to-back drafts. So sorry that you just get an instant one point, the last two drafts. I remember what I got. I MVP was Jake Warren. Weiss in a row. Your MVP was Jake. Yes. So you took both Aussies. So F you. Yeah. Matt, I do have one thing to say and I posted it in the group chat. I thought the best thing that I saw, the best graphic that I saw all weekend was who do you think is going to win or who's teams the best and chim made it for us. And the three of us were on the- everyone except for you was on the- Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On new work and wins. Yeah. She just excluded you from your own graphic. I'm on my way back. I am on my way back. We're re-we're re-calibrating. We're re-thinking some things that don't worry about the boy. The boy is going to be just fine. All right. On to the men's race. This was an exciting race. We have got your 2024 world champion in first place, Alexander Ronkiewicz, 53-16, one second off the world record in second place, our co-host today all the way from all strut James Kelly with a 53-39 in third place, race brain, CEO Rich Ryan, 53-57. He actually also came across the line. I think it came down to like 0.2 John Noble, 53-57. I feel like I've got to tell this story really quick just because we're going to give people the real. So I got to meet Sean Noble on the weekend. I actually met Sean Noble late on a Saturday night. And Sean Noble started chirping me. So Sean listens to the show. So Sean, if you're listening to this, love you, it was great meeting you. Sean was chirping me for not drafting him. He said you should have draft me, and he said only Jack Bauer knows what he's talking about because he took me. And I said, it was pretty late on a Saturday at this point. And I said, I'm not going to repeat word for word when I said because it's not safe for the airwaves. But I said, Sean, if you want me to draft you in a race, don't make a pre-race excuse. And then he told me that he would be more than happy to show me his MRI. And I said, look, I just made the best decision with the information I had. There was a brief moment where I thought that Sean Noble might choke me out. Thank God Dawson Miller was there to intervene and explain what was happening. But my point in bringing up this story is if you are an elite 15 athlete and you are listening to race brain prior to an elite race, I have a couple questions for you. One, why? Two, who cares what I think? I'm sitting in an air conditioning office space in St. Louis, Missouri. And my opinion of you or your performance has no bearing on how you're going to do on the race day. And number three, if you're that upset about it, pull a Dylan Scott and give me the double fingers when you cross the finish line because it doesn't matter. JK, your thoughts? Oh, yeah, Matt, yeah, you nailed it, you nailed it there, um, yeah, look, I'll be honest with you guys. I do not listen to you guys at all now because of what you just said, Matt, like it is, it is the amount of times like in the past and a year, more maybe 18 months ago that I did listen and, uh, your opinions directly affected me. It was amazing. So like I've made, like I've controlled or I've, I started to take, um, I started to control what information I put, uh, put it, right? And it's just them right, um, important for me as an athlete, no, as an athlete, not an influencer, um, that I, like, sorry, but I don't care what you guys think of my performance or not. Um, and hey, like it's, that's not me, um, hopefully you guys don't take offense to that yourself, right? Um, anyway, either shouldn't care or you should only use it as motivation. Those are the only two things anyone should ever take away, not that we're media, but the only thing you should ever take away from my media is I don't care. Or great. Now I'm going to prove you wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, you know, it's, it's an interesting one, Bracken, because we do live in a world of media, social media. Everyone's got to say, um, and you can either make, um, you, you can either choose to, um, choose to play the game and choose to, um, um, let the information that you receive affect you. Yeah. Right, but hey, like, let's use Dylan Scott as an example, right, like he obviously would be very upset/not happy with his Elite 15 Thursday night performance. But then as you said, Matt, um, absolutely smashed it on Saturday night. And, and to me, that shows so much more, um, um, what's the right word, um, well, I respect that a lot more as an athlete, um, knowing that, hey, like he's just not posting shit on social media, just to validate himself. He's actually showing up the next day and actually proving everyone else not, not wrong, but, um, proving everyone else that what happened on Thursday night is not him full stop here. Yep. It's interesting to see you in this sport, really what we saw in OCR, which is we're a victim of our own success, it was a nothing sport and then it became a sport and the people rose with it. They didn't grow up with it. So like professional sports, by the time they're 13, they're already in a national spotlight. By the time they're 20, they've gone through media training. They've had 10 years of people talking about them online. By the time they're 25, everything bounces off their skin or in our sport, most of us, not all, but most of us were kind of normal average to above average athletes, but not in the public spotlight and not in the media in the social media comments spotlight the way they suddenly are. And so we saw it in OCR. We see it here. People take things very personally and get very offended by it because there's that blurring of the lines between competitors, friends, fans, media and athletes were like in the NFL. It's very obvious, like everyone's out to get me or they're my teammate and I don't care if they're out to get me excited, they care about my team. Here everything blurs and people, they don't have media training and it shows and that's not a knock on them. People weren't prepared for the moment they're in right now. Exactly. And like what I'm about to say is my own personal opinion, take it or leave it slash, use it to not use it, but listen to it or not, but in my perspective as an athlete at the top end of a sport now, if I have an injury leading into a race, if I am sick leading into a race, you would have to kill me before letting my opponents know that I have an injury. Like I'm sorry, lads or sorry, anyone who has done that, but there is no way I would let anyone know that I'm injured or sick. And we see that time and time again and hey, I'll be honest, not just our sport. We see it all over the world these days, people making excuses, telling the world that their lead up to a race hasn't gone to plan validating themselves before the race has started. And look like my opinion, that's sad. Yeah. If your leading goes according to plan, you're already the exception to the rule. It's a fallacy that everyone shows up at 100 percent. Most pro athletes are injured in some way, most times of the year. Even if it's something small, everyone is dealing with something. Exactly. Yeah. On the Sean piece specifically, Sean, if you're still listening at this point, I just want to say from all of us at race brain, it's never personal. I think that every 50, every elite 15 athlete that I have met, I'm a fan of. They're all, well, that's not true, but most of them I'm a fan of, there are some that I'm definitely not, but I'll keep that one to myself. But it's never personal, right? I think that was the funny thing to me as it was this realization of like, look, I'm just the guy with a podcast who's a super fan of the sport who knows a lot about the sport. I didn't realize that my words had impact to the athletes, but then the more I thought about it, it's like, hey, man, it's not personal, right? You know, it's just not like Charlie Botrol, funny thing about Charlie. I met Charlie too. And BK, I don't know if I shared this in the in the group chat, Charlie right after you lead 15 race, I'm like, waiting to talk to Rich. He walks up to me and he goes, hey, man, guess you and Bracken were finally right about me. And I go, what? And he goes, you and BK, you were finally right about me. And I was like, you listen, first of all, you listen to race brain. And he was like, yeah, every week, I was like, oh, wow, that's crazy. And I go, for the record, I never said anything. Bracken was the said that you were going to wash yourself. And so I think like, but he was, he was in good spirits about it because he said like, you know, look, I just can't wait to race again and prove Bracken wrong. And I think that's the right, I think that's the right at you. I think that would be my main point is like, look, if we just got up here on, on a podcast, let's just be honest, if we just talked about how great everybody is, it'd be really boring to listen to. It is the hard part about having opinions, right? Like I said, the same thing about James. So James has raced at a higher frequency and keeps making podiums than anyone I've seen in the sport. Like at some point, it has to come down and I said it about Charlie, anyone who races more than everyone else is going to get that comment. Not because I was right or wrong about Charlie, it's because of the pattern of racing. Like those things are just commodities in the sport and commodities must be known and talked about. What's your about Dylan too, right? No one on this podcast would agree that Dylan is not a top five top four athlete in the sport right now. But every single race that Dylan toes the line, he runs the risk of having a bad day. But no, no, no more so than anyone else is just he puts himself out there more. So then it's bound to happen. And there is the two things can be true at once. I can believe that Charlie has raced too much in my opinion and also be extremely disappointed if he ever has a bad race like me saying, I think that it's probably not a sustainable schedule is not the same as me hoping I get proved right. I I spent a decade trying to make my living racing at at first. I wanted no one else to fail. I mean, no one else to succeed. I wanted everyone to fail except me. And by the end of it on my way out, I got into the point where I respected everyone else's hustle so much that I just want to see every one succeed. So if I say someone's heading for a drop off potentially, it is not me saying, I hope it's good Lord. I hope they find a way not to because I know what you're going through from a different perspective. I lived it. You're living it. I know the stress that eats at you at night. I know how bills look when you don't have an annual salary guaranteed to come in. I want everyone to be successful. But I will talk about potential negatives because this can't be a fully a fluff piece. For sure. The buy-in, the buy-in, I'll use the word or the phrase buy-in from athletes and not only us to lead 15 athletes. These days is crazy, right? So you could say like a lot of people's whole life is high rocks. And look like there's a part of me that thinks that's great like obviously people have a lot of motivation in the sport now. It's a positive environment to be around, health and fitness, racing, et cetera, et cetera. Until when, though, until high rocks is their only thing in life and validate themselves from their racing and their racing only. You know, just to preface this, right, like I'm not out here saying that I don't feel that or like I'm just saying what I've gone through the last three years being in this sport and how I've developed somewhat of a mentality to understand that hey, if a race doesn't go to plan like Melbourne, that's okay. And not only that's okay, but and just quickly the biggest thing that I'm proud of after my Melbourne race was that I lived in my embarrassment. I lived in my my sorrows and my anger until it was like nah, like I'm going to prove more so myself wrong here, right, and others, but people just don't know how to lose to finish that off. It's difficult in any sport. Confidence gets taken away really, really quickly. It might take a decade to build it up in one moment to lose it. But I've never met a sport other than triathlon and maybe cycling that you can train as much as athletes can train in high rocks. And so the investment, like 100% in on high rocks and 100% on a marathoning is not the same thing. Even though you're both all in, the time investment is so huge that if you put it all in and it goes wrong, it's really easy to think, well, I did like what else could I can't even do it with all that. And it's really hard to keep that I can still go out and race. That was a fluke because how could it be a fluke? I just trained 15 to 20 hours for five years. How could that be a fluke? There are no flukes. So it's really difficult for people to stay locked in and not let one race define them because they're so invested. One of the biggest things that I have learned or taken away from my coach, Andy Pericini, is the statement of, you are your best data point. You aren't your worst. You are your best data point, right? Alex Ronkovick last year, he can talk to himself, but he probably had the worst year of his career last year. Now he's come back with the vengeance and people only know him as Alex Ronkovick of this year and the World Champs of 2024. They don't know him of eight place Alex Ronkovick of the World Champs of 2025. They don't know him of placing six at Hong Kong. So you're right, Braken. Someone like myself and the way the athletes are racing these days, of course we're going to have bad days, but people don't remember the bad days. I'm James Kelly that almost broke the world record last year and I'm James Kelly that came from behind and placed second in Phoenix from nowhere. I'm not James Kelly who placed 12th and was an embarrassment in Melbourne, right? Yeah, for sure. For sure. With on that note, this race was crazy. We saw things and we saw athletes try things. We have not seen yet. I'll be interested to hear JK's perspective actually being in the race. But I think first and foremost, the storyline has to be Alex Andrew Ronkovick as JK said coming in and winning 53-16. That's a one second off of his world record. There was actually, we were there in the venue. We thought he originally did it when he first crossed the line in high rock study. He did it too. They later clarified that he just missed it. I mean, this is going to be kind of weird because JK's here. But BK, like, can anybody stop Ronkovick right now? I had the exact opposite takeaway as you. My takeaway was four men could have won that race and they all almost have equal claim to that title. Yeah, Ronkovick took it, but Ronkovick was losing twice late in the race. So yeah, he closed it out and he gets the glory. But James, if his swing happens a little bit earlier or Ronkovick is no rep to a little bit, James wins that race. And if Rich has a wall ball like we've seen him have before, Rich wins that race. And Sean Noble took that thing by the throat and looked like this might just be a breakout grab it by the throat and go moment and he didn't close it out. But I took it as an all four men could have won that race and Ronkovick had the best last move. Second best lap. James had the best last move, but Ronkov played it just a little bit earlier than James did. I totally agree. My thought is looking back at the smager that Alex was in toe-to-toe with Dylan until the wall balls right here, four people enter the wall balls, very similar time as each other. Alex still finds a way to come out. I think that he definitely is beatable despite having one second off the world record and the world record last two appearances. But it just confirms you need to do something to him before you reach wall balls because he's not dropping that thing. He could do 120 reps. You better be clean on your reps because that's the only way that you're making enough time as soon as you aren't to the wall ball station. But he is beatable. Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea because I didn't see him the whole race off the sphere. You ran straight just race of the race. I did, man. I did. Yeah. Well, you said that though, Jake, because that's a BK, I don't know if you realize this. But run one, the leaders in run one on the solo race came in six seconds faster than run one in the doubles race the next night. Rock and Luke Greer. Yeah. Rock and Luke Greer took run one hotter than the doubles teams took it the night before. I think that's the thing that blows my mind about ronk is you go back to two or three years ago and he outstationed everybody with the exception of maybe hunter, but he couldn't run. This is his knock, right? And then now I'm looking at his run times, which is a little bit, it's not completely accurate just given the fact that, oh, wait, no, they didn't put the, okay, no, they did not do the rock zone time. They did, they did make it like an elite course. It's total runtime BK 30, 30. If I were to told you that ronk is running 30, 32 years ago, you would have laughed. No way. He ran a 410 mile. Yeah, he's, ronk strikes me as someone who is only out there racing. If someone leads, I am leading, you know, I give someone surges, I am surging. He, he put and for whatever reason, I don't know him personally, but for whatever reason, his body abides by those racing rules. He sometimes it doesn't work like we saw it at worlds, but more often than not, he can run what a normal person would consider a foolish effort strategy and his body hangs in there. And then like Luke has the running chops to run that way. He doesn't yet have the high rocks chops to keep it the whole time, but he has the running acumen to go out at that pace and be just sipy an effort, right? Yeah. If jk is the story of the back end of the race, Luke Greer was the story of the front end of the race because everybody that was there was like, what is this dude doing? He is running way too hard. And then he'd, you know, he'd start to fall back in a station and be like, all right, well, that was fun. Flash of the pan. And then he would surge on that next run and try to overtake ronk and take him by 5 seconds. And then he fall back and like, all right, well, the sleds are going to get him. And he just kept doing it. And so that was cool to see, you know, kind of to your point, someone actually trying to put those, those surges in early, doesn't seem to have affected ronk in the back half of the race. But that was, you know, something I thought was very interesting was Luke Greer's tactics and to your point, if he does, if he is able to figure it out, like he'll be, you know, up there competing for a top five spot in no time. So James, I want to ask you, because for a little bit, you were that ronk style. You surged everyone into skierg to start races off. Like that was you would surge at whatever it took to make your point there and coming out of it. And now for a few races, we haven't seen that. And you came into this one and you did not, you know, go up and play with Luke. What was the, what's been the evolution of you as a racer to reflect that strategy? To put it simply, it was before Anthony Persini and then now with Anthony Persini. Before Anthony Persini, I would just take off like a rocket and try and hold on. Not necessarily think a lot. And I think there's a part of me that thinks sometimes that's actually a good way to race. Not thinking and just going. But if I want to be in the elite level, the elite field, I needed to focus on my strengths a lot more. My strengths can be and are a different part to the race. It can be in that middle section and then also obviously it can be at the end as well. So that's what we, that's what we focus on. I also think since Melbourne as well, we just went back to, we just went back to how I got, how I got a name in this sport. And that was probably more so that 2024 season and the 2024 World Champs in Nice. When again, I wasn't necessarily in the picture until the lunges and then popped out and placed third and that was the game plan all along. You know, like the comeback from Thursday night, yeah, look sure that you can call it a comeback but it was tactical, right, it was, it was purposeful. As I said off airbracking, it was almost perfect from me and I say almost perfect because Bronx still beat me by 20 seconds. So, you know, like I focus on your strength, focus on opportunities to improve absolutely. But I think a lot of people underestimate the power of really focusing on your strengths and to, to, to make them absolute weapons. And that's what I've been able to try to do and continue to do with Anthony. Yeah. So, for those of you that have not gone back and watched the race yet, I said that if Luke was a story of the front half JK, it was a story of the back half coming into lunges. JK, I believe, was sitting in six place, about 53 seconds, coming into lunges behind to mosh to verdict and then put in the fastest lunge of the day for the elite field. Let me just get this stat right. Your lunges were done in 238, which is crazy. And then you actually, I don't know, you probably do know this because I'm sure you've already looked at the data. I don't know why I said it that way. He looked at the data. You actually negative split run eight from run seven. So coming out of the lunges, you ran about eight seconds faster and run eight and then you had to have one of the craziest cadences I've ever seen in men's wall balls because you, well, actually, I've saw it live. It was the craziest cadence I've ever seen and you went unbroken and did your wall balls in 319. So JK did sandbag lunges and wall balls in about five minutes and 45 seconds, which is one of the fastest combinations that we've ever seen a male elite athlete hammer that. So I guess like, you know, I mean, you kind of said that that was the plan all along. But when you, what do that feel like for you? So you, I mean, you knew how far back you were because basically it was, there was rock kind of leading it. And then there was this pack of John Noble, Rich Ryan and Tomash that they were kind of working together and you, you know, you probably knew that you were about a minute off. Obviously, you have to have crazy self belief to be an elite athlete. But when you got to the lunges, did you think like, oh, hell, yeah, it's on? Or did you, was there any moment of like, I don't know if I can surpass? To be completely honest with you boys, I, I thought I was gone at the farmer's carry. I thought it's going to be, it's going to be really tough to qualify. And I mean gone to qualify. I, I then got into the lunges and I'm smoking because after the race, I told this to Anthony, that my central nervous system must be like very fresh because I picked up that sand bag. And I was like, hang on a second, Mike, is that is this 30 kg and all of a sudden I was just popping. I was, I was, I was doing my thing and halfway during the lunges, I noticed that I had scraped a lot of time, a lot of meters from the lads that were ahead of me. And then I started, I started believing a little bit more just, just seen how fatigued a lot of them were in front of me. So then same thing when I ran into the wall balls, I picked up that wall ball, boys and I was like, and I did my first rep, I was like, hang on a second, like, this is light today, normally it's a little, normally it feels a little bit heavier. I did my first 10, I'm like, here we go. And you know, consequently like, because when you started wall balls, you were 20, I think Tomas and Sean, if I remember correctly, obviously don't have these numbers, but just watching on the screen, I think that they had both clipped 20 because wrong in rich, we're in the 30s and 40s and then you out wall balled everybody to the end. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did look over while when I started and saw, because Luke Greer was ahead of me, he had two or three ahead of me and then Tomas and Sean and, and yeah, they had 20 or also, but it was more the feeling, right, I'm just, the feeling of those wall balls and the feeling of those lunges, like the feeling of the wall ball and the feeling of the sandbag was, was very light and I just put that down to what Anthony and I've done since Melbourne. In terms of just being able to freshen myself up and get back to, I guess, more of a higher fitness level, and sorry, I should probably shouldn't say it that way, not a higher fitness level, but a fresher fitness performance, right, you know, like it wasn't until the final wall ball though that I, I didn't know I was in second place either. I thought, I thought rich and Sean would have finished by then, but it wasn't until that final wall ball that, that across the line and obviously saw that I was in second, so yeah, but look, self belief, you know, like I'm the first to, I'm the first to say that no matter, no matter where I am in the race, I'm still continuing to tell myself that I can win. It's not second or it's not third, it's hell, it's not just to qualify, like I'm, I'm always thinking, thinking hey, like I'm always out there to win. There was, as I said, there was moments in that race that I thought to myself, Jesus is going to be tough, but yeah, from the lunges onwards, there was, there was, there was light and I saw the light and rent towards it. Yeah. While we're talking about wall laws, I think we definitely need to address what happened with Rich during the race, that you want to give a recap on, on Rich's the buckle. Yeah, so I was actually going to just talk about it in terms of like the judging as a whole. So for those of you that may not have seen the race, if you go back and watch the clip, you're starting about, I don't know, 20 reps in, Rich starts getting tapped on his ankle, right? And so this is something that the Elite 15 athletes have agreed to in the briefing ahead of time. If you've never been in the Thunderdome, it is impossible to hear. I would be curious from JK's perspective as an athlete has actually been wallballing in the Thunderderman and league race, but you can't hear shit. So if you're telling an athlete that they're being no wrapped, it doesn't matter what you're telling them, they can't hear you. So what they've decided is that if you're being no wrapped for depth, they will tap you on the leg and that tells you that you're being no wrapped for depth. If you go back and you watch Rich's wallballs, which I have now watched a couple of times, and it wasn't just Rich, it was other athletes as well. There are athletes getting no wrapped for quality reps, just full stop. It happened on the men's side, it also happened on the women's side. And so Rich actually came in and he passed Ronkevich, his cadence was faster. He passed Ronkevich at 30 wallballs. So he got two wallballs ahead, and then all of a sudden no wraps start flying in. I mean, he's just getting tapped. Rich is trying to wave. They've been instructed that if they have a problem with their judge, the elite athletes can wave someone else over. I think it was hard for them to see because he was still wallballing, so he didn't stop and wave. He was throwing the wallball and then going like this, had judge finally came over. They actually took nobles judge off, though, because they were confused. And then they did finally get it right. I think in fairness, it's hard to say that that is completely what cost Rich, his spot because Rich will be the first to tell you. He did eventually lose his head and lose his cool a little bit with what was happening. And I think that that was the beginning of the end. But it's not really just that. I mean, we saw it all weekend, co-learn, got a suspect penalty on the burpees. We saw Lauren Weeks getting no rep for depth, which makes no sense. Lauren Weeks basically touches her butt to her ankles on every wallball. Now that doesn't change the outcome. Joanna won by, and this is no disrespect to Lauren Weeks, but Joanna won by over two minutes. That wasn't going to change the outcome of that race. But then we also saw in the men's doubles race, Hunter and Jake got one of the most questionable warnings on sandbag lunges that I've ever seen. So I guess it definitely does apply to Rich, but I think it applied to the whole weekend. I'm a potent of judging, and the standard is the standard, and we should hold the standard. But what I will say is, as an observer of the sport and someone who watches it, I think that we have actually tightened the screw too far the other way. And we are now over-judging, and we have judges inserting themselves into the race when it doesn't need to be inserted. I just think I don't know what the answer is. I'd be curious for the panel's perspective, but that's what happened. Rich started getting no reps for depth. Feel free to go back and watch the video. If you can find a bunch of no reps or the amount that he got for depth, I'll pay you 100 bucks because I'm certain that you won't be able to see it. And then I also think on burpees specifically, we're now judging them so hard. It's no longer appealing to watch. There has to be some balance between the Hunter Hop, which was borderline cheating, and what we're doing now, because the athletes are so timid and so passive, these burpee broadjumps are horrible to watch. It's just not fun anymore. And then we want to see athletes go fast. So I guess that's the context that will now shut up, and I'm curious with the panel things. Yeah. It's not necessarily the judges want to be seen on camera and like, look, I made a difference, but I feel as though it's kind of they want to justify that they're a judge, see, look, I'm paying attention. I can call someone out on a rep, even if it's not justified because that happens. I'm sure a bunch of people with office jobs like you submit something and then it gets review comments. And it's like, I did the same exact thing as last report, didn't change anything, but suddenly it's wrong this time. Like I feel as though the judges just want to let you know that they're a judge. I don't know. I don't know about anything. I know we're opening ourselves up to the the form police online by saying his reps were good. Now, I'm actually in agreement with you. I didn't see bad for my belief on getting parallel in videos is that you can, it's kind of like a pregnancy test and that there's no such thing as a false positive. There can be a false negative, but there's no such thing as a false positive. So with this, I think that a rep, if it looks like you're too high, the angle could be wrong. If someone's like not getting to depth, but the judge is allowing it, it could be that the angle's wrong. But anytime someone looks like they got to full depth, they definitely got to full depth because you'd never see it too far. And Riches along with several of the women, Lauren Weeks, was going full depth and under. You don't see false negatives in wall balls. You only see false positives, I guess, opposite of a pregnancy test, but it's like you can only judge one of them. So I, I'm in agreement. I think the judges are bad, not across the board, but they're so strict and the punishment is now severe enough that on burpee broad jumps, people will neuter their form immediately if they don't want that red card. Like that 30 centimeter thing suddenly got shifted to like one finger with for some people. It's just right. It's consistent. And it's not. Again, and the sliver stands bringing your back foot up. Is that really an advantage? Your back foot not being like being behind your front foot. It's for stepping past it, not stepping to behind it, right? Like, anyway, I don't, I think the video was pretty accurate. This race of showing that people are being dinged for things that they don't need to be. James, question for you as an athlete. Do you adjust your approach like at certain zones, if you see someone ahead of you getting a yellow card or you're like, oh, I got a, the form police are out right now. Or you like, I'm just going to try to get away with, not saying you're trying to cheap it, like get away with something until they call it. No, I don't look at or think about anyone else apart from what I'm doing, right? If I, if I've got a warning, like that's when I will change my cadence, change my technique, et cetera. Now, I don't know any inside word here, but from my end, I actually think the judges have been told, if you see a rep that is on the borderline to call it, then not, then not to call it, right? So, I think maybe even six months ago, maybe it wasn't as if it was that, that, that, that, like that was the message, it was like, no, you just call it as, as you see it. If it's a second thought, I think they're told to call it as a no rep, not a rep. That's how I said. It's like, if there's a second thought that it's a, it's a no rep, it's a no rep. It's not the other way, right? That's all I said. Now, look, I'll be completely honest and transparent if I was rich right now and I got, and I got those no reps on the weekend, I'd probably be thinking otherwise, right? Let's be honest, like it's the way of the world. I'm, I'm sitting here right now coming second and getting hardly no reps on the weekend and going, no, what's, like, it was fun or fun? And that's the truth. And like, that's, that's exactly what everyone would be like. However, I think it's how you should be, though, too. I actually think that that's, I think that's how you should be. I think that's the problem is that it's been inconsistent. You might, it's like, now we're, now we're messing with people's livelihoods or potential to qualify for something because the judging is, let's be honest, my view of something is probably different than brackets. So we're, we're introducing that element of like, maybe you get a judge that's, I'm not saying you did, but I'll just say elite 15 athlete A gets a judge that's more lenient than elite 15 athlete B. And that can be the difference in prize money, that can be the difference in placement, that can be the difference in qualify or not qualify. Well, now it is. The races are tight and people are coming off the stations with momentum or without it. Absolutely. Racking. Like we see like how, how many races, like, lightly has qualifying split us, spots being, being, you know, second, you know, and, and, yeah, 15, actually 15 seconds separated rich and Sean from Tomashe. So in theory, if that had gone a little bit worse for Rich, he could have been on the outside looking in. Yeah. As, as, as he just said, they might like, what, he, like, what is the answer to that? You know, like I, I don't know, um, so with wallballs, if you don't go to full depth, you're shorting the rep a little bit. What would you say to raising the height of the targets so that you need to get your legs involved to get it there and not care about depth? God. What are your thoughts on that? EK wants us to do a hundred reps to 11 feet, like what our legs are cooked. Well, maybe we've talked about for the broad jumps, make it a hundred meters or 120, I mean, make it 120 meters and take the rules out. Like fall forward, jump like crazy, but we're going to do a lot of reps and the distance is going to neuter your form a little bit. What if we make the wall ball higher, like you're going to have to engage your legs and drive, but we're not going to judge depth anymore, especially since full depth is faster than half depth. And I will die on that hill going to full depth, you can bounce. You can't bounce if you're breaking muscularily. So what if you just raise it, is there a, maybe that's not the answer, but how do we keep it so that judges who clearly can't identify a hip crease and a knee at the same time? I have to do that. Maybe that is, maybe that is an answer, bracket, maybe it is a little bit more knowledge and understanding of what the, what a rep, what a wall ball rep actually is as well, right? And I've got no idea if our ox goes through standards and I'm, I'm assuming they do with their judges. They do. And I would, and I would, yeah, absolutely, I hope they would. But I know for a fact, I've thought about this for the Burpee broad jumps. I've thought about the concept of no matter who you are or no, yeah, no matter who you are, but we are jumping a meter every time and a meter no matter what. So everyone is doing the same amount of burpees, which ultimately means whether you're a, whether you're a taller athlete, smaller athlete, doesn't matter, you're doing exactly the same amount of burpees, which ultimately means fitness takes over. Everyone is lying to, lying to, lying to, lying. Correct. Correct. Which means fitness of the Burpee broad jump takes over. That's what I think the Burpee broad jump should, should, should, should be. So everyone's doing the same amount. Now, I'll be honest, I reckon Dylan Scott would probably do something a lot, maybe 38 to 40 burpees per 18 meters. I do between 44 and 46 depending on how I'm feeling. Now like that's not me saying that I'm worse off. It's just because Dylan's got a better, better broad jump than I do, right? And if we actually just went, no, 80 meter burpee broad jumps, everyone has to do, if it's a meter, what's that for 80? So it's just 80 broad jumps for a meter. And that, that is, that is testing burpee fitness then that's fitness testing. To me. That's kind of like, that's kind of like the PFT because in the PFT, they have you do burpee over the line. Right. You don't have the burpee broad jump, you burpee, and you jump over the line, you just go back and forth instead of be the number of burpees. I don't know if I like it or not, but what I do feel is that I'm in favor of anything that removes judges opinions. And so like what I, I actually would have to answer, what are we testing? Are we testing burpees or are we testing broad jumps? Right. Are easy to score broad jump combined with it is hard. So point to point line to line, like who cares how I feel about the test, that is scoreable. That's easy. I wouldn't back that change, even if I thought it takes away athleticism, what, if they're not trying to test athleticism, I don't know what they want, why, I don't know why they put the burpee broad jump in. Same thing. Do they do it? Do they do it because they want to test squatting or the ability to throw a ball into the air? Which one matters more to them and then create the exercise rules to reflect that? Yeah. I want to throw it to Jack because he's been trying to jump over the point. Yeah. So my idea without changing the target height, the number of reps for something like squat depth, most of the athletes, especially on the men's side, it might be a little more difficult on the women because you have a little more varied height, it seems. But why don't you just put like a detachable bar on the side of the rig and have a judge, just eye level right there, just looking the entire time you have one, like that particular zone. So everyone adjust it when they get there, like a bike seat, like a bike seat, because raise or lower it, and then just you're staying eye level, they just like raise their hand. You just put it to the knee. That's all you have to do. Yeah, because like Lord Rantala and Mark Howe have access to this technology that you can actually, you like put it on your clear, yeah, clicks and it shows you if they're getting to depth or not. That would be interesting. That's the only question is technically you'd have to put that on the elites from the beginning because you can't, no one wants to slow down when they get in and fasten something to their knee. I don't know how well you could run with it. And free one does. Yeah. And there's got to be a technology way, like lasers or something, I just, you know, it's not going to be perfect. And I do, I don't want to be too critical of Hierox here because I think that they're, I think that they're trying to clean up the, not that I think they're trying to clean up the sport. They're, they're making it more standardized and I appreciate that. So what, what I don't appreciate and that's why I wanted to, I didn't want to just talk about this in the context of Rich because it wasn't just Rich. It was elite athletes all throughout the field. And what, and actually it wasn't just Hunter and Jake in that doubles race. Three teams got knocked for hip extension. And I don't think those judges know what hip extension is. So like, that's my, that's my problem is it's, it's not about Rich Ryan. It's about you, you're never going to convince me that Lauren Weeks doesn't go asked to grass on every single wall ball. And the last two races, she's getting knocked for depth and I can't see it. So yeah, I think that's the problem is like we need to, we don't, we want to, it's like we want to see people go fast, you know, I think that's why I used the example of the Hunter Hop. I understand that it is probably cheating. But damn, when Hunter was doing the Hunter Hop in 2023, burpees were fun to watch. And now what's not fun to watch is to watch an elite 15 athlete go down, look at their judge, see where they place their hands, look to make sure that they're not going to get, you know, penalize, step up and then jump. It's not exciting. No, it's not a judge placing her feet down before the landing. That was, I forgot about that. That was wild on Hunter and Hunter and Jake's race. So Jake, you probably haven't seen this because you probably haven't watched it back. The, I'll stand up. So the judge as Hunter and Jake were doing burpees, she was placing her foot before they took their jump. And it was, do you even know what you're doing? Because they could easily jump past that or they might not get used to him. Jump to the mark. And jump to the mark. So anyway, we'd like to see judging get improved. Let's move on just because we are approaching the hour mark hats off the Sean Noble guy said he was going to go and he was, he was going to go for it and he did. I believe Jack, keep me honest, that's Sean's first sub 54 as captain of the Sean Noble thing. Yeah, captain. Yeah, I think he's got two in the 54s before this race and now he is in the 53s. Now Matt, was it you before the race when everyone's like, this is a flyer, this is, I'm not sure. But I think it was me because he said he had to get a grade two solely a chapter. But then I think you also said, but if there's anyone who can pull it off, just wing it and see what happens. It's him. I think you. Yeah, Sean Noble, I did say that. So if you are listening, mate, I gave you props. Come at me. I didn't buy it. Yeah. I've had a calf tear. I know what it felt like to try to drive power into the ground the first time. I know how uncomfortable Toa felt at pace the first couple of times back. I know what carbon plates did to my psyche when I came back from a calf tear. And so I just thought, no, I'm not buying it. You don't have a puncher's chance of racing hard when you haven't run since your soleus tear. And I was wrong. I was unfamiliar with your game, Mr. Noble. Sean, it was a hell of an effort and excited to see what you can do once you get fully healthy and back to training. This race though, boys, was tight. Eight place was 55, 18. We normally start to see that. We normally start to see that kind of trail off. I mean, I mean, obviously we've got a lot that's going to happen between DC, Brisbane, and London with the regionals. But that Warsaw race is set up to be quite the race because one of Bow Will's in or John Win is not going to win Brisbane. And so they're going to have to race in Warsaw. There's a good chance you think about that European race. Tomashtro Vertik still needs a spot. Al Plow still needs a spot. Luke Greer is going to be running that race. Louis is going to be running that race. And then there's a whole host of other Europeans who didn't run this race, who were going to be in that as well. And then, you know, it's not a guarantee that Cole learned wins that DC race. I mean, I'd say he's probably the favorite right now, but Cole might have to go to Warsaw. Again, we talk about this every week. I mean, the depth of field on the men's side, it's what? Crazy. Crazy, yeah. I have a question on that topic for James. So far, this season. Also, James, if you have to go, we understand you just. I'm good. I'm good guys. Okay. So far this season, we've seen Alex, Dylan, James, like you've been in one race and we haven't seen Hunter or Tim. They weren't here this race. Now we've seen how close everybody is to Alex. This world championship, you're going to probably have legitimately seven to ten people who could truly podium and or win just based on some of the performance that I've seen. What's going through your head in terms of how you think the race is going to play out? Because I think it's almost a guarantee that it's just going to be who can hang on from the front. That is likely going to be what most people end up doing. But I don't think that that's necessarily the winning strategy given that we've seen people come like yourself come from behind. So the first thing I'll say about that, Jack is in my eyes, there's six that that can win. Now you guys can decide the six, I'm not telling you anything. There's going to be nine, I'm going to say, I'm going to say ten, that can podium. There's a difference, though, there's six that can win. There's probably going to be ten that can be up on that podium. And to answer your, I guess, question, it is going to be insane, isn't it? Just thinking about it now and being, oh, sorry, I'm relieved that I don't necessarily have to qualify anymore, I'm already getting excited for it. But there's six that can win, there's ten that can podium in my eyes, geez, it's going to be fascinating and the females is so different, isn't it? Well, sorry to say that that way, I'm not trying to disregard some of the females there, but you'd probably go half that, you'd probably go three that can win maybe, maybe because I've done it before and six that can podium. Thought? I've got a heart tech on that, but we'll wait till we get to the women's race. On the men's race, I think what's interesting is, and what I would love to see is we get robbed that we only get to see the six that can win in a race at World Championships. Because the one thing that is interesting to me about this race that I would have loved to have seen differently, and Rich talked about this a little bit, so I don't think he's going to mind me saying this, I think prior to this weekend, Rich wanted to win, I don't think Rich believed that he could win. I now think that after this weekend, I think Rich probably believes that he can win because I think if the wall balls maybe go a little bit differently, he needs to keep his head on his shoulders for sure, but the other thing that I thought was interesting, and he talked about this on his own podcast, he probably could have put a surge into Ronc on run eight. He was running better than Ronc at that point in the race, but he made it, he even admits he made a decision to just run on his shoulder instead of trying to drag to take Ronc for a ride, and who knows how what Ronc would have done, right? Does he go with them? Does he let him go? I'm Alexander Roncovich, and I can go 100 wall balls I'm broken, and I've never seen you do it, and you've never been here before, maybe, but does he try to go with him? I don't know. My point in bringing that situation up is, Jack, I don't think that it's going to be someone leading from the front, because the last time we saw that happen, if we go all the way back to 2024, we saw Sandy Ronc, and we saw Sandy and Ronc work together against Hunter, and it almost ruined, I mean, it did ruin Hunter, but it almost ruined Sandy. So my point is, is that if we have four or five guys that try to take it out, there's no guarantee that they don't all blow themselves up, and that we don't have someone that else that can win, that doesn't play that strategy, that doesn't come from the front. And so anyway, I guess my point is, we don't ever see the top five, top six guys all together until Worlds. We didn't see it last year, Hunter was signed up for this race. He didn't race, he ran on Saturday though, Tim didn't come, right? So like this was a great peak into Worlds, but the race could have been entirely different at Hunter and Tim. As a yearly fan of the sport, it's frustrating when you don't get all the best at every race, but from a world championship storyline, there's no better than a little uncertainty to find out who's bringing what to the table. If everyone's done the same thing each week, the only thing left is a Hail Mary. Otherwise it just plays out how it plays out every year, I think the men's side is deep enough though that I don't think it would be that way because I, because there's so many, because to JK's point, there's so many guys that can win right now. They might all try a different, you don't know what package they're going to bring to Worlds. Here's what I mean by this, JK just showed he can come from the back, but he didn't win. It showed he can front run, but he didn't win. Hunter came in fresh to Sunday and didn't win. They all kind of did, but just came up one notch behind what would have proven to be a strategy at Worlds. So now we look and we're like, JK could go back to front running days or he could roll the dice, but we actually haven't seen it wind up in first from eighth. We haven't seen that yet in rich could do it, but we haven't, like we saw him go for it last year, but we haven't seen him run his race and wind up, but I like that little bit of intrigue that still, if JK gets three more tries against him and Hunter and Ronc, I think we're probably going to know what the strategy is going to be at Worlds. If we've seen it work, I just love that we haven't yet seen many people's ultimate strategy work. Right. Matt, Matt, you've got to realize as well from now on in, you are going to see a lot more of the top tier athletes racing against each other a lot more due to the new structure. I know we didn't see Hunter and Tim, but from now on, a lot of us are going to be racing now. You're going to have to race majors because the points are worth it, but the points are worth it. Exactly. Next season, we're talking about right now, and right now, as far as I've heard, I showed up and was warming up and I was like, what the heck is Hunter jogging around for? I thought he was hurt. I thought he was only doing solo and then I double, yeah, doubles. Then I see him do a solar race on Saturday and I'm like, wait, you're here. Why didn't you run that solar race? There's clearly got to be some strategy involved in like, hey, I probably don't think that I'm just going to save it for Sweden, already got his qualifying spot, but the fans, I think of the sport were pretty disappointed to see him show up on Saturday and skip a race that he was at just to give us that head-to-head matchup against all the top dogs because it was a fantastic race, and who wouldn't have wanted one more guy at the front? Yeah, but just wait till Hunter's not hurt, he's going to be absolutely amazing when he's not hurt and be and be fresh after not having two races under his belt. Yeah, look, I don't know, if Hunter McIntyre has, he can do what he wants, he's a three-time world champion, but if that's the logic Jack, that doesn't really make sense to me because even if he wins that pro race on 105 points and in order to get 105 points in this race, he would have had to finish in fifth place. So does Hunter not think that he, is that why he didn't run? He doesn't think he can get top five. I can't, I have a hard time imagining that's why Hunter McIntyre doesn't line up. He probably doesn't think that anybody in that field can beat him. The moment Tim undeclared, someone in the pro field messaged and said, I guarantee Hunter doesn't race anymore either, if Tim's not there, he's not going to race. And I don't know if that led to it or not, but the reality is, the moment that happened and maybe even prior, his only priority was the doubles world record. He wanted to be fresh. He and his partner for that to attack that. That was, he, I mean, he's been, what do you always say, collecting partners like infinity stones, trying to take down all the doubles records? He didn't take our perfect for each other because Jake is the English Thanos and Hunter is the American Thanos because they just collect doubles partners. Yeah. Anyway, my take is that his injury thing was just a smoke screen so that he could be fresh for doubles. Yeah. I wish he would have just said we're going after doubles, but I think he knew he would get flack for doing that at any lead 15 race. But then he's going to, but then okay, but then I'm going to, but and again, I run the risk of Hunter's posse, absolutely bullying me online because that's always a, you know, I could wind up here to part of sports, but, but, but, but why do I care about that? I don't that's what I'm going to say what I'm going to say. That's, no, I don't because if that's the point, then why should, why race Saturday night at all? Well, I don't have an answer for that. I know it was only because my, because my point is, because I agree with you, he wanted the doubles record fresh, but just say that. Say I'm not going to race on Thursday because I want the doubles record and then I'm going to race solo on Saturday to get the points. I don't say I can't race solo because I can't, I can't go hard back to back days and don't say that and then try to go hard back to back days. Do you think it was just he saw fast times and thought, oh, I might be able to snag a world record? No. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the reality of the matter, right? Racking your right. He wasn't injured. Let's just preface that. He was not injured. So that's the first thing. The second thing from my end, he knew Alex was coming over. He does not want to race Alex until World Champs. Hmm. Third thing is he needs five races under his belt. And that's why he raced. He raced Saturday night in the pro because one, it was a fast course and potentially he was thinking that he could break the world record and two, he needed 105 points. And due to the fact that he placed second and got a 54, he only got 100 points. That's the fact of the matter. I don't want to give him anything here, but as you, as someone said before, Hunter can do what he wants and he will continue to do what he wants because we've seen that for years and years on end. Even to the point, I was getting, I was getting annoyed that Dylan Scott wasn't coming over to Melbourne. Alex Ronkavik didn't come to Melbourne. Guess what? They can do what they want because they prove themselves in Hamburg, you know, until next year and until until until next year, right? But yeah, just wait till Hunter's not injured. Oh my God. He's going to be unstoppable. My only thought is the last time. It seems that it seems as though, I'm just adding onto this. But the last, the last time that he basically disrespected the field, it did not go well. And it seems as though the only person he cares about is Tim. Tim wasn't here. Tim never said he was going to show up. He scratched. He didn't show up. Period. We knew Tim was not showing up. Hunter originally was supposed to show up, but it seems as though if I'm James Alex rich, anybody else who has the chance of winning Sean world championship at this point, you're just getting overlooked. And Hunter does not believe in you right now. And I think that that is going to backfire a world championship. Yeah. Hunter. Good. I don't know you guy reckon. Well, Hunter does exceedingly well when there is a face and a name. One person, he's the only threat to me being the best in the world. He goes up on the wall. There's a dagger through it. He goes to sleep looking at it. He wakes up looking at it. He did it for years in OCR. He fabricates it when there is no next person for him to fight. He comes up with one and he puts it there. But high rocks has now gotten to the point where OCR got where like James said there's five or six. You can't be singularly focused on five or six people. And so you have to just then choose one. And his is his most recent biggest opponent, which was Tim. But the fact is on any given day, Tim will take six that world championships. He may win it nine out of 10 times, but on that 10th time, there's five other people who could who could beat him. And I don't think he wins nine out of 10. But even if he's the favorite, there are still five or six other people who all can be Tim. If you are your best data point, we have some data points in this sport. Of course, scary. And so you can't focus on one. That's difficult when that's your M.O. But my only and we got to move on because we've got to give the women their due. The I will say and JK, you don't have to stick around for that piece. It might just be me talking to myself because everyone else got obligations. But the last point that I will say on that is, what I do know that he also cares about that was the world record and Ronx set the world record in Hamburg. And then he almost set it again. So I hear your point. And yes, Tim is the world champion and Tim did beat him in that race. And I get that. But I think that when we do the power rankings coming up, all I'm saying is there's going to be a very strong argument that Alexander Ronkovich is the man to beat right now. And with that on to the women really quickly, your top five, Joanne O'Wetrick, a 56-03, and then we got Lauren Weeks, the 58-31, Vivian Tafuto, 59-01, Linda Meyer, 59-16, and rounding out your top five Gabrielle, Nikola Baker with a 60 minute. Look, I said this before the, when we did the draft episode, that I would continue to pick Lauren Weeks ten times out of ten. If Lauren Weeks is available and I've got the first pick, I'm picking Lauren Weeks, but there was only one more race where I could watch that happen where I wouldn't have to rethink that strategy. And I am now going to go on record and I'm going to say that right now on February 4, 2026, the women to beat in the women's field is Joanne O'Wetrick. We thought that that race, that that world record from Glasgow would stand for a long time. We thought that was going to stand for a long time. I mean, Bracken Jack, as historians of hybrid and OCR, can you help contextualize 56-03 by a second year athlete and not just doing that in any race, but doing that in a major against the greatest of all time. That had to be one of the most dominant, complete performances that we have ever seen on such a big stage. I can't contextualize it. We knew she would get to a level like this. None of us thought it was now. And this was a historically fast course, which we rarely can say about North America, but it wasn't historically two minutes fast, right? The men's side was historically fast for a major, but no one ran 51. This is disgusting. When's the last time we saw two and a half minute win in a major, Jack? What is that? Meg, maybe at Worlds, in Nice. That's 24. How about the only one? Even then she ran a 60 that day. I can't make sense of this other than she is still getting better. This is a Bob Beeman-esque type of improvement. I know that Glasgow wasn't too far off, but the fact that all last year's Raining World Champion, Linda's in there. We've got multiple-time World Champion, Lauren Weeks, Vivian, the second place in a major earlier this year. They're all in the field finishing two and a half to three minutes behind on a day where just Joanna was unbeatable, hurt level. Lauren Weeks got second with a 58-31, which is still incredible. Fastest, it's one of the fastest, I don't know this off the top of my head, but I would imagine it is still a top 10 fastest time of all time in the women's field and she got beat by two and a half minutes. That's a crazy stat. Lauren Weeks runs a top 10 time all time and gets beat by two and a half minutes. By almost a station. Yeah. Yeah. Just to give some perspective. So, when Lauren Weeks was seven or eight months pregnant and she ran World Championship, she was about seven and a half percent behind the winner. This race, she was nearly five percent. So just ridiculous how dominant Joanna was. And it sucks to center the bullseye on Lauren to put this in context, but she's the wrong scanner to the sport. I don't know, Jake, what do you, did you see this time in her wheelhouse this soon? To be completely honest, no, no. As her coach and I've been coaching her for 18 months now. Her Glasgow race against Lauren, what was that eight months ago, maybe? No, 9 or 10? I think it was a march. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Like 10 and 11. That was the most impressive thing that I've seen from her until now. She ran this race all by herself number time. And this time even six months ago at World's. Sorry, I've got my, my, my timing wrong. World's champs when she plays second against Linda. I think the biggest thing for Mayan as a coach was how do we make sure that she's as well rounded as possible, not just a runner? And if you have a look at her stations now, like she is as much of a station athlete as much as a runner now. And that's where she's gained all the time in the work. That's, that's where she's gained all the time in the world. In fact, it's hilarious to us. You know, I obviously coach Joe and, and Jess Petro as well. And before the race, we all were staying in the same Airbnb. And it was great. You know, like a week where the five of us, the five, including Ted Petro, Jess Petro's husband, and then Georgie, my fiance, we were all just in such a good place, not thinking about the race and not, not mentally getting worked up until we had to. And on Thursday night, Jess and Joanna, it just, it just, she was able to turn it on. She was just able to turn it on. She's, it's been fascinating. There's been a few people that message her and ask if she's been, she's been working on her stations. And it's hilarious because you're like, well, what else do you think we're working on tonight? Like, so anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's a phenomenal. It's, it's, it's just been absolutely amazing what she's done this year. Absolutely amazing. And I can't be more proud of her to back that up. She only had one station where she wasn't first or second. And she was fifth in rugby broad jumps. Everything else is the, the class of the field. And her running is on another level. It's like, what, how can you beat her right now? Yeah. And I would say like we've talked about with other athletes. Like, you know, that's a weakness. You've got to, if you're going to make a move on it, you got to make it there. But like, honestly, it's going to take a lot more than burpee broad jumps to catch Joanna what you're right now. I mean, guys, two and a half minutes. Well, what she closing, three, 24 on wobbles, unpressed. Well, Bracken, she's basically six five. She's like touching. I mean, you talk about wall, she's going to get to depth at six five. Anyway, like, to, to your point, James, she's turned into a station monster to close at three, 24. There used to be two people on the planet who got three who closed sub 330 as Meg. It was Lauren. And then there was a Swiss cross fitter. And that's it. Yeah, I think Mary MZ only one that's got, I think she's done it. Stop three. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, to go three, 24. I don't know, just gross, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 206 push, 250 pull, 313 burpee broad jump, 415 row, 123 farmers, 249 lunges, 325 wall balls. I mean, whatever the, I don't know what you call your, your training program. I know Anthony's got the hybrid engine, but whatever the James Kelly closing plan is is working to 49 lunges into three, three, 25 wall balls. I mean, that's crazy work. And I mean, you know, it's, again, like, I think if anybody can figure out how to come back, it's Lauren weeks. Right? Like, if anybody can figure out how to get back on top, it's Lauren week. So I'll never take, I have nothing but massive respect for Lauren and massive respect for Anthony and I, and I'm sure that we have not seen the last of Lauren weeks, but we are, we are watching whenever Lauren weeks and, you know, hangs it up. I think like the person who's going to carry the mantle is emphatically already here. I mean, I don't know that we're going to see someone come in and push. I mean, it's going to take a freak athlete to come in and push Sean at this rate. Would you try a different strategy next race? If you're Lauren, because trying to break Joanna on the run doesn't seem to be effective because she's just so tough and can hang in that kind of like Alex, doesn't matter. You go out, Luke, rear, you run faster than doubles for that opening 1000. He's still going to be there. He's going to go with the leader and I feel like Joanna's going to do that no matter what. Yeah, Joanna's, she's fought fire with fire. So Lauren has to do one of two things. She's got to be able to hang deeper into the race and keep pressure on her or she has to change it up and let her run unfettered from the front and see what you can do with momentum at the end. I mean, Lauren closed in 401, right? So this is the first time we've seen her probably above four and wall balls in a long time. Well, she was getting with the judge. The judge. So, right. So take 30 seconds away from that. It's still a two minute gap. Take 45 seconds away from that. It's still 145. The gap is big. So you either have to say this is an outlier and I double down or yes, something changes. She's not going to the world to take second. That's not why she's showing up. No. So, I mean, hats off to Joanna. The grand slam is 100% on. It would be, I'll tell you one thing. If I'm pick one in the next draft, you can actually, I don't think it matters. I think, I think it's probably fair to say, Joanna Wetrick is the first pick in the next draft and it doesn't matter who's in first place because there has not been a more dominant athlete this year, men or women than Joanna Wetrick. I mean, right now, she is just in a league of room. Great follow up race by Vivian. We're getting a lot of Vivian hate in the people are saying that Vivian was overrated. You guys are crazy. That's nonsense. You just don't follow the sport. If you thought the Vivian is overrated, we used to make jokes on this show that just go ahead and put her in the fourth place spot, right? That was Vivian back in the day and now she's once again gone under sub 60. Good to see Linda Meyer come back with a sub 60 race, 59 16. I know she's been working on her running and the depth of the field here is pretty good too. You've got to go all the way down to 12th place before you see a 62. So, and I was 62, oh, oh, flat. I don't want this to turn into a let's let's like gloom and doom Lauren because she's earned the right to trust that she's going to be just wants to go back. Okay. What's that? I said, you want to go back? No, no, no, but I'm going to speak to the chase pack. Yeah, yeah, chase packs are there now. And we've seen it worlds a few times where Lauren has had a wall ball back onto the podium. But what did Vivian close in? Three 27 and, uh, and then Linda, I think had the number one wall ball three 20 flat. So if you get to wall balls now with this quote unquote chase pack, you're not wall balling yourself back into contention. So what Johanna's now done is she's put people in this position where if you come with me and you don't beat me, you may wind up 7th or 8th because there is no, there's no wall ball in your way back in anymore. These chase pack women have fixed their wall balls. You can't make up six spots on wall balls on these walls. Yeah. The women have historically been better at the wall balls in the man. And I think that is still true. So yeah. All right. And one more of the Vivian. She left world record holder first place in doubles also. So her past four big races, solo, third, second, seventh and third. So she's been on the podium, three of the past four races individually and as a heck of a doubles team. It's so really good weekend for her. Yeah. Shout out to Gabrielle on the core. Go ahead. No, no, you guys Matthew. I was going to say shout out to Gabrielle on the core of Baker for locking up that qualifying spot. Her and Lena putters impressive. Gabrielle on the core of Baker has now come over to the US three times this year and ran the same time twice. And then I this is a PR for her at 60 flat. This is someone who's coming on strong. Don't call the A pack region region week. The A pack region's got some dogs. We got some people coming on A pack. I've heard there's two mages in a pack next year. Rich hates that. They can travel. No one else can. I think the problem is I think the problem is going back to the to the chirp that we received from your sister, JK. A pack is a massive region. I think that's the problem. You've got how far was the flight for you, JK to get from Australia to Hong Kong? It's nine hours to Hong Kong. Brother in nine hours. I'm in Eastern Europe. I mean, I'm so far from where I'm at today. I mean, that is crazy. So there's probably going to be a main Asia race would be my guess. And then they'll continue to keep one down in ANZ. Is that proper? Oh, sure. New Zealand. Yeah. By the way, I have not heard. I heard this too. I just wanted to tell I just wanted to say that for Rich's sake, because I told you Rich doesn't listen. True. Actually, counting those dollars right now. He's kind of those dollars. Whatever we want about him. That's right. Rich is a dopper. All right. Rich definitely. Rich definitely dubs. Real quick, on the men's pro double, our elite doubles, Jake Williamson Hunter McIntyre took the win 48 35 Rich Leo took the second spot 49 18 and Gustav Cordua and Sebastian Iverson got that final qualifying spot in 49 30, pipping James Kelly and Jake Deerden by one second. Had to get that jab in there. Should have run a little harder. JK. And then on the women's side, Lauren Weeks and Vivian DeFuto with the new world record of 53 11 securing their qualifying spot at Worlds as a result of Lauren Griffith being injured. Joanna Wettrick and Jess Petro took second, which also would have been a world record 53 21 Danielle Low and Vicki McIntosh 53 53. And then you got to actually go down to Melanie Mar and Jennifer Nicholas in the fifth spot that got the second qualifying spot 55 28. And then friends of the show cat bossbender and Morgan Sholes representing and taking that final qualifying spot 55 41 doubles is going to be electric. I am pumped to see that race. The men's race is going to be legit. You got to think Rich Leo, Polio should be more healthy than Hunter and Jake had probably established themselves as the favorite, but people can't forget about him and Runk lurking out there. They also put down a crazy fast time. A lot of people, you know, JK and Jake, they're not guys that make excuses, but Jake Deer didn't literally ran a 221 marathon two weeks ago, not exactly great prep to then have to go fast and then Lee doubles got to think that they'll be a contender on that men's side. And then on the women's side, I mean, good God could Lauren Weeks and Vivian DeFuto. And I honestly, I guess Joanna and Jess is this the year? Maybe let's end on this unless Jake has anything else he wants to talk about with us. Is this the year that we see a women's double team go sub 53? Are we going to see a 52 from female team this year? It won't matter. They're both going to get to see neither them are running within 10 meters with their partner on course. That's you. That's right. That's actually probably fair, but I don't think any of these teams are running within 10 meters of each other. I mean, JK, you and Jake, you and Jake kind of do that. You guys definitely get separated. Jake and Hunter got separated at one point. I mean, they're not really calling it. No. Cheaters and they're all doping. Just rich, rich. It's going to be exciting that women's doubles at worlds. It's a funny triangle. Anthony coaches myself. Anthony obviously coaches her, his wife, Lauren and Vivian. I coach Joanna and Jess. So where it's exciting. It's exciting. This little battle that they've got between themselves. Boys, I'm going to take off. I'm going to go for a run. Yeah. You're good, man. We got it. We all got it. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. Bracken. Always a pleasure never a chore. Jack Bauer. Thanks for not pipping me. That would have made my week terrible. Any final thoughts from the ads? Thank you, boy. This will talk soon. She was. Yeah, good job.