#143 - Menopause is Bullshit with Jane Pangbourne

We can't believe we haven't talked about menopause before, so we're putting that right with the fantastic Jane Pangbourne who is all about the no bullshit approach. There's also tales of a very sad race recce followed by the race itself, which was actually a lot of fun, some Australian things, "Ladies", and a very severe Code Brown, which led to Amy shaming herself (but not like that)...

Various illnesses might have delayed this one but don't worry, we give you all the fun details. We switch funny run club names for funny Australian names, wonder if everyone in South Korea wear moon boots, run up and down hills a bit, and really get into Strava's latest and most bizarre feature update yet.

So apparently Amy isn't the only one keeping track of her wild toilet stops while Stewart is still really into run club names combined with the inherent silliness of English place names. We also write a smash hit 90s teen film, break some amazing gossip from 2015, and just laugh at the idea of editing wikipedia to make yourself look good.

Amy has another fairly normal running story that she manages to make into a whole drama, which explains the tree on the episode cover. We get into some weird club names, weird places to run and race, and just plain fucking weird reasons anyone would pay someone else to run their Strava activities for them.

The road to selling out is almost complete as Stu officially becomes one of the fast bois, and Amy talks up how much fun she had doing hill reps and nailing her progression run. It's the twist no one saw coming... We get back to our core principles of insulting vast swathes of our listeners, laughing at your injuries and questioning all of your life choices.

GB Olympian Stewart Harding shares his story of running at the Olympics and completing the Olympic marathon unlike the so-called 'greatest marathon runner ever'.  Amy heads back to the middle boring bit of England, which has apparently got a lot nicer recently even if she inadvertently chased away all the local wildlife. There is also a long story about trying not to poo. Finally, and we can't emphasise this enough, do not enrage the sparrowhawk.

Huge BS merch news if you like your neck tubes to be multi-functional! We've had medals, we now have coasters, we ask what's next? We've got a complex story from Race to the Stones, mourn the passing of some trail running companies and add loads of great entries onto the injury list, as well as the 'definitely not injured' list. 

The running world has been shaken to it's very core with a massive revelation on this episode, and no we don't mean dark mode on Strava. We get into the peril of running on holiday, and dealing with wild animals, stubborn bowels, and horrible nice weather. We reveal how running through injury can only have good outcomes and mock multiple people becoming unstuck for using Google maps to plan their runs.

We speak to running coach Jemma Lewis on why she's only into coaching women, how she got onto a Marks and Spencer advert and how much she regrets camping in Wales. We also have far too much fun talking about things that are probably extremely normal in American races, have less fun talking about gross illnesses that children get, and celebrate pour listeners who are out of action especially if their injury was caused by something funny. Stu gives his review of Man vs Horse (tl;dr DO IT) and Amy delves deep as an investigative journalist to crack the mystery of running heels.

Hold onto your hats because Amy has done TWO things to report back on, including a big first in her running history. As she copes with a ton of raceday-related stress and staring into the abyss, Stu prepares for a very long race by running a very short race, and has a whole exciting new set of niggles and potential injuries to look forward to.