BACK HOME IN New Zealand, there were nights the road had already iced over, and I’d pull my gloves on and run anyway. Ten kilometres, every night, for a year. Mates thought I was mad. But getting out the door when everything in you says stay on the couch, that’s been the shape of my whole life.
So when I got my shot at a HYROX two years ago, in Brisbane, I couldn’t wait. Then I hit my head a couple of weeks out, and the doctor said if I raced and something happened, I wasn’t covered. I had to pull out. Gutted doesn’t come close to describing it. On Sunday, in Sydney, I finally get my race. And this time I’m running it for more than just me.
It goes back to when I was 18, the first time I moved away from home. I travelled around NZ before I landed in a little city called Tauranga and started at uni. I’d never thought of myself as someone who struggled, but turning up somewhere new on your own, not knowing a soul, has a way of getting to you. And I noticed something straight away. The girls seemed to gel within days. They were in and out of each other’s rooms, cooking dinner together, always talking. The blokes weren’t like that. A couple of them knew each other and kept to themselves, but most of us barely managed a nod. After dinner we’d disappear behind our doors, and once they shut, you had no idea how anyone was actually doing.
So I started something. A group chat first, then a coffee once a week. I called it ‘Lads Coffee Connection’. I didn’t want to call it a men’s group. The second you call it that, blokes picture a room full of people on the brink, and they stay home. “Lads” is anyone who calls himself one. We’d meet on a Sunday and climb Mauao, the steep little mountain at the end of Mount Maunganui beach that half of Tauranga walks up before breakfast, then come down, get a coffee and have a yarn. The hike was the trick. It’s hard to sit across from a stranger and open up, but walk up a hill beside him, both of you out of breath (it’s a brutal climb, so the chat comes between gasps), and you just talk.
Image courtesy of Devon Keen
By the time we sat down, it was easy. And the help never came from me. It came from the other blokes. One would say he hadn’t seen his kid in six weeks, and a bloke across the table would say he was in the exact same boat, and the two of them would go for a coffee, then a sauna and a run together. You just have to ask the question. Blokes would show up even when they were doing fine, just to be an ear for someone who wasn’t. About 400 men came through it in Tauranga, and another 300 when I took it home to Dunedin, from blokes in their thirties to one in his late seventies. The truth is, I needed that group as much as any of them. I set out to help a few lads connect, and it turned out to be the thing getting me through too.
I’d always run the group for free, so I’d never had anything to fundraise for. Then I found Race for Impact, the charity side built into HYROX, run by High Impact Athletes. My partner and I scrolled through the causes, and the second I saw mental health, that was it. And where the money goes counts more than you’d think. The people who run it have done the homework on which charities stretch a dollar furthest, so I don’t have to. That makes sense to anyone who trains. You chase every gain you can, your splits, your reps, your PBs. This just lets you chase the biggest one going, how much good your money does.
My own page is tiny, a few hundred bucks off my gym and my family. But that’s the whole idea. Everyone chucks in what they can, and it stacks up fast. Racers have raised more than AU$8 million through Race for Impact so far, and the mental-health fund alone has already supported more than 107,000 people. All of it from people who could could spare a coffee this week.
I’ve been training for Sydney HYROX at the Anytime Fitness where I work, up at half five most mornings with my partner, dragging the sled, doing farmers carries, getting the HYROX sessions in where I can. My old crew are flying over from home to race it with me, and I can’t wait.
On Sunday it’ll hurt. I’ll love every second. I’ll finally get the race I missed, and what I’m running for isn’t just mine anymore. So if you’re doing it tough, or a mate is, come and find us. Lads Coffee Connection. Sometimes a coffee and a yarn is where it starts.
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