Meraki Performance

Small Acts
Strong Community

Because mental health doesn't get better just from self-care.
It gets better when we feel seen, known, and safe where we live.

None of these take more than 5 minutes. None of them cost money:

1. The 5-Minute Porch - Be a familiar face. Sit outside with no phone.
2. Learn One Name - The barista, the cleaner, the neighbor. Being known is a mental health intervention.
3. Leave It 1% Better - Pick up the trash that isn't yours. Care is contagious.
4. The Extra Chair - Pull out a second chair. Open the circle. Say "we have room."
5. Borrow + Lend - Ask for a cup of sugar. Interdependence is the goal.
6. Celebrate Quietly - Don't just double-tap. Text them directly and specifically.
7. Check The Strong One - The caretakers need care too.
8. Invite The Edges In - A community is measured at the edges, not the center.
9. Share What You Know - If it helped you, pass it on. No gatekeeping.
10. The Weekly Anchor - Consistency turns contacts into connections. Same time, same place.

You don't need a big annual event to build community.
You just need small, boring, consistent repetition.

From 0km and injured to 42.2km in 11 weeks.


On June 8th, Elaine emailed me 8 weeks post-injury, she hadn't run properly since, and walked her way through a race in May.

The UTK 50 in November was the main goal, but she also had an entry for Sydney Marathon this weekend gone by.

I was honest: UTK 50 was super doable, but Sydney was a push. So, we made a deal;
- if we can get to a pain-free 5km by 8 weeks out, we commit to the marathon prep.

Juune 15th: We started. Strength, cross-training, and a return to run plan working closely with her physio .

July 7th (Week 4): First pain-free 5km. That was the green light.
From there it was an 8-week prep with realistic goals, detailed nutrition, and zero pressure on time. Just complete it and enjoy the experience

August 31st: Sydney Marathon. First ever marathon. 4:30:00.
It may have included some tears at the finish line. I suspect part of that was remembering that 11 weeks ago she didn't even know if she'd make the start line.

Elaine's words:
"It felt extremely daunting to go from 0km and mandated time off running to a full marathon in 11 weeks, but you broke it down in a way that didn't feel impossible or all-consuming. Having tried faffing around running without a coach for 11 months before working with you and injuring myself pretty painfully twice, I really feel that prep could not have gone any better, given the circumstances.
Tldr coaching is awesome, bring on kosci 50 💪"

So proud. Next up: Kosci 50.

If you're coming back from injury and want a plan that works WITH your body, not against it, DM me and let's chat about your comeback🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️

Nutrition Timing

This is the part of performance nutrition for running that actually makes or breaks your race.

It's not just WHAT you eat. Everyone obsesses over gels vs. chews vs. chicken and rice.

The real game is WHEN.

Get the WHEN right and your long runs feel strong, you recover in 24hrs not 72hrs, and you don't hit that wall at 25km.

Here are the 4 Fueling Windows I use for every athlete from Half to Ultra:

Window 1: Pre-run - 60-90mins before
Goal: Top up liver glycogen.
Rule: 1-2g carbs / kg. A 70kg runner = 70-140g carbs. Think: Toast + honey + banana. Simple, fast, low fat/fibre.

Window 2: Intra-run
Goal: Maintain muscle glycogen so you don't bonk.
2.5hr: Up to 90g carbs / hr (you have to train your gut for this)
Rule of thumb: 1 gel (25-30g) every 30 mins.
Don't wait until you're tired.

Window 3: Immediately Post-Run - 0-15 mins after
Goal: Shut down cortisol and refill glycogen
Rule: 1-1.2g carbs / kg. That's 70-85g for a 70kg runner.
Flavoured milk / banana + sports drink. Before you shower, before you stretch.

Window 4: REBUILD - 0-60 mins after
Goal: Rebuild + Refuel.
Rule: 20-40g protein + carbs.
3 eggs + rice + fruit / Chicken + potatoes / 25g whey + oats.

Nail the WHEN and the WHAT becomes easy.

A full day in my life right now, living in Korea 🇰🇷
Month 20 on the road.

I get a lot of questions about this schedule, so I wanted to show it properly.

It starts at 12:20am.

I know that sounds crazy. For a long time I fought it, trying to make my day look like everyone else's. But my athletes are mostly back in Australia, Ive been living across all the time zone's, and this is the window where I can do my best work and still have a life the rest of the day. So 12:20am it is.

I wake up, I walk. The streets are empty. No messages, no noise. I just create.

By 2am I'm programming. I like doing athlete plans first. If I'm tired later, at least I know they've got what they need. That part feels like a responsibility I actually love holding.

Around 3am I train. That's my time. No one is waiting for me to do it, but I know who I am when I don't.

The morning is gym, breakfast, and check-ins during cardio. Usually 20+ client's messages/videos/voice notes. I get to watch people get fitter while I do the same. That's pretty special if I stop and think about it.

Then groceries, cooking, the admin stuff no one sees, and then some kinds of training or most recently, hiking.

And by 3pm, I'm done. That's intentional. Time with my wife. A hike, a market, dinner together. We’ve spent more real time together in the last 2 months in Korea than we did in a year of busy life before. I'm so grateful for that.

By 6:30pm I'm sleeping. And I get to do it all again tomorrow!

20 months ago this was just an idea. That maybe we could live slowly, city to city, 1-3 months at a time. Work hard in the quiet hours and live in the loud ones.

It’s not glamorous most days. It’s supermarket dinners and dark gyms and trying to order pork soup in broken Korean.

But it’s ours. And I’m really, really grateful for it.

If you’ve got any questions about coaching or how we make the nomad life work day-to-day, I’m always happy to share what I’ve learned so far. Just comment or DM.

A month in Busan 🇰🇷

Before we came to Korea, it was just "Korea."
One word. One idea. One kind of person.

Two months in, that idea has broken apart.
Busan is not Incheon. Incheon is not Seoul.

Busan speaks faster. Walks slower by the sea.
It lives outside. The aunties here don't nod from the market stall, they come out their resteraunts or run across the beach at you to come shop or eat wt their shop. The uncles don't watch you from the gym, they run past you up the mountain at 6am and grin when you try to keep up.

Incheon was a flat city environment.
Busan gave me hills that don't end. Stairs that turn into trails that turn into temples. The sea makes everyone softer and tougher at the same time. Same country, different rhythm entirely.

That's what slow travel does. It zooms in.

From far away, it's just "Korean people."
Up close, it's Busan people and Seoul people. It's old and young. It's the fisherman who has done the same harbour walk for 30 years vs the uni student who moved here for the surf. It's the dialect I can't understand even though I thought I was starting to understand.

It made me think about how we do this with everything. We label from a distance to make it manageable. Running. Business. People. A whole country. A whole culture. One flat story.

But you have to stay long enough for the story to get textured.

For a month here, we built a small life again. So ordinary. So full.

It's about staying long enough in one place to realise you were wrong about it. And then staying a little longer to be wrong again.

Return To Sport Is A Low Bar

Anyone can get you back to sport pain-free.

How? Put you in bed. Feed you 10,000 calories a day. 16 hours sleep. Do absolutely nothing.

Yeah, you'll be pain-free. You'll also be weak, unfit, deconditioned, and you'll have to work twice as hard just to get back to where you were before you got injured.

That's not rehab. That's just hiding.

When I'm building a rehab plan, I'm not programming for Return to Sport.

I'm programming for return to performance

The question is never just "is the injury healed?"
The question is: "what did you do with the time you had?"

Respect the injury. Absolutely.
But don't use it as an excuse to get soft.

When I got injured, I couldn't run. 12-16 hours of running gone.

So what did I do? Cry about it? Take 3 months off and complain about losing fitness?

I replaced it with 25 hours a week on the bike.

Same engine. Different vehicle.

You can ALWAYS train something.

Injured leg? We train upper body.
Can't run? We build aerobic capacity on the bike, the ski, the pool.
Can't load heavy? We build work capacity, we build muscle, we build habits.

Rehab isn't time off from being an athlete.
Rehab IS being an athlete, just in a different arena.

Do what you can. With everything you have.
Or don't complain when you come back and feel like s**t for 6 months.

I don't coach athletes who want to return.
I coach athletes who want to return better.