Kia ora e te whānau. It would be easy to start this post off with something like “the internet sucks” and again, that would date us. In today’s context, the internet is, and with that comes its joys, its horrors, and the amplification of the worst angels of our psyche. In the physical world, moments come and go; in the digital world, a senseless act is immortal. Camille Herron, who returns to Dirt Church Radio for a third time, remains one of the greatest talents in our sport, having set multiple world records across various distances. In 2024, the wheels fell off over allegations of Wikipedia tampering. Contracts were lost, and the pile-on was massive and brutal. Ali Pottinger and Andrew McDowall speak with Camille about her career, the recent challenges she has faced, and where she sees our sport heading in her first podcast interview for 2025. We encourage you to have a good listen to this one, if for nothing else, for an incredible Greatest Run Ever. Dirt Church Radio- Best Enjoyed Running
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DCR IN THE WILD
We’ll be at Northland 100 in July. Come ask Matt why he’s so slow.
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Our mates at Squadrun have come up with a special four-week training trial for listeners of DCR. Now as you’ll know from listening to DCR over the years, Squadrun is the baby of Kerry Suter and Ali Pottinger, and they have coached thousands of runners to success at a bunch of events we love and cherish and if you’ve been to any trail races on either side of the Tasman you’ll have seen the Squadrun colours being represented strongly. So, if you want to give it a crack, here’s the link.
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Phoney War
It’s hard being in a triad with Andrew McDowall. He’s better at running and literally composes music for a living. I’m mediocre at running at best, and never really composed much. Although let’s be strengths-based here. I mean, sure, AMCD does have OVER A BILLION STREAMS of music he’s written, but is he referenced in the New Zealand-based edition of Trivial Pursuit? No (not to his knowledge, anyway).
And while I’ve never run Western States or held an NZ age group record, I was in a band that took our $5000 NZ on Air grant and bet it on a horse, made a music video about it, and spent the profits on fireworks.
I had some fun playing in that band*. I remember the first time we got given a NZ on Air grant for a song we wrote called YOU ALL SUCK. We pocketed the money and snuck into the University Acoustic Department at night to record our debut E.P. for free. It was incredible. It was my 27th birthday. We did our thing, and then, giddy and stoned, we went into the Anechoic Chamber, which is perhaps the quietest place in New Zealand.
I think after that we had a small cake to celebrate, and the guitar player provided me with the solemn rite of everyone in the postgraduate program of that department. I was instructed to rip a random page from one of the acoustics textbooks that lined the shelves of the space.
I duly did that, feeling quite punk rock in the moment, and we went back and finished tracking our parts.
Looking back, 21 years later. It was a bit of a ball-bag thing to do. I imagine someone completing a master’s thesis on..god, I dunno….Acoustic Stuff, and then turning to page 432, but finding that there is only page 434, and the information is missing. I mean, it probably never mattered much, but still.
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