Paul catches up with Lucia, a friend from Watergate Studios gym in Bridgwater and fellow veteran of an accountability WhatsApp group that turned into far more than a weight-loss chat.

They open on the eternal struggle of having an unusual name (Lucia has been called everything from Lucinda to, memorably, "Lucifer" by an ex's grandparents) before getting into a genuinely candid conversation about body image — what it actually means to look in the mirror, see excess body fat, and hold that alongside the fact that you can run a marathon, lift heavy, and show up at start lines anyway.

Lucia's running story starts with hating PE at school and dropping out of her first-ever 10K entirely, watching everyone else collect their medal. Over a decade later — after having her son, discovering Couch to 5K with a hand-me-down running buggy, and years of CrossFit — she ran the London Marathon in 6 hours 58 for Parkinson's UK, her dad's condition. The unplanned highlight: spotting her father waiting at mile 4, a surprise he'd arranged himself. What follows is an unflinching account of the parts of marathon day nobody prepares you for — the walk from the finish line to your bag, sitting on a curb in Crocs you can't get back up from, and the brutal admin of getting home afterwards.

The heart of the episode, though, is Lucia's first triathlon: a 750m swim, 20K bike, and 5K run in Clevedon, the town she still calls home. The week before the race, she came off her bike three separate times — including once while stationary — leaving her, by her own account, genuinely afraid she might not survive the bike leg. She talks openly about that fear, the friend from her tri club who talked her through open-water panic in Marine Lake, and the decision to spend ten deliberate minutes in transition just to get her head back in the game before finishing the race smiling.

Funny, honest, and full of hard-earned perspective — this episode is about redefining what an athlete looks like, getting out the door even when you're terrified, and finding the version of exercise you'll actually keep coming back to.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul sits down with Rebecca Harries, a market researcher of 20-plus years who's spent her career on the other side of the microphone — and for once finds herself being interviewed instead. Rebecca's running story starts with a first 10K she hated so much she swore off running entirely, until a friend talked her back into it years later. A reluctant Parkrun phase and a "why would we join a running club?" moment followed — and thirteen years on, she's a running club leader, seven marathons deep, and still chasing the next PB.

The conversation centres on the run-walk method that turned Rebecca's running upside down: a precisely tuned nine-minutes-and-seven-seconds run, one-minute walk structure that let her smash a half marathon PB she'd set over a decade earlier — without changing her training at all. She and Paul dig into the mental trick of only ever having to run nine minutes at a time, the men who show up mid-race with unsolicited "encouragement" for women pacing themselves, and why the sweetest revenge is simply overtaking them eight miles later. They also cover her seven marathons (London: euphoric; Brighton: relentless out-and-backs; Worcester: "hell on earth"), the twice-weekly 7am runs with the same three friends she hasn't missed in over four years, and the accidental ultra — Race to the Stones, 50K, signed up ten days before the start line.

The conversation also turns to bigger change: Rebecca was recently made redundant after two decades in market research, and is now launching Conkers and Thread, a business upcycling old denim and shirts into bags and clothing — built, fittingly, around the same make-it-yourself instinct that's carried her through running for over a decade.

Warm, funny, and full of hard-won running wisdom — this episode is about pacing yourself, showing up for the same four people every week, and reinventing what's already there.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.

Paul catches up with Dan, a 19-year-old ultrarunner he first met in the French Alps in February, where Dan was volunteering with Altitude Mission... a Christian charity running free "Beer and Burgers" nights, refuge beds, and mountainside "Ski Angels" support for seasonal workers.

Six days before this conversation, Dan finished the Lakeland 50... 50 miles and 3,000 metres of elevation through his home turf in the Lake District, with barely any structured training behind him, two concussions, a knee injury, and a hip flexor strain picked up days before the start line.

What follows is a wide-ranging, genuinely moving conversation. Dan opens up about years of bullying, crushing social anxiety, and a suicidal crisis at fifteen that he faced almost entirely alone, and the faith journey that pulled him through it, now the foundation for the confidence and warmth Paul witnessed firsthand watching Dan work a ski resort full of strangers.

They talk honestly about the difference between physical pain and a genuine reason to stop, Courtney Dauwalter's "pain cave," and why showing up for people on a mountainside, at a bar, or fifty miles into a race matters more than any finish time.

The conversation also covers the mechanics of ultrarunning: why Dan skipped the marathon altogether and went straight to ultras, the running pedigree of a family where both parents have run the Lakeland 50 twice and his dad's completed the 100, aid station strategy (salty potatoes over gels, four and a half sandwiches, a hard no to sweets by mile 27), and why he's already eyeing the Lakeland 100 next year. Paul, naturally, asks to come suffer alongside him at a future race.

Funny, candid, and unexpectedly profound, this episode is about ultramarathons, faith, mental health, and what happens when you decide to keep going anyway.

The PKS Running Club Podcast is a running motivation podcast for everyday runners — real personal stories, honest conversations about health and fitness, and a growing community built around showing up, not chasing elite times. Hosted by Paul, it's a health & fitness podcast and community sports podcast for anyone running at their own pace, from first 5Ks to ultramarathons.

New episodes every Wednesday. Follow @thepksrunningclub on Instagram, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, and share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it.