Clean Break Chats

Most of the conversations on this podcast are about the person with the drink in their hand. This one is about everyone else in the house.

Lucy Hopkins Munn is a therapist in Bristol who specialises in working with adult children of alcoholics. Her dad was an alcoholic for the last 20 years of his life. He died two years ago. She spent somewhere between 10 and 15 years trying to fix him - clinging to every story she heard about someone who found running, or yoga, or AA, and thinking, if they could do it, surely my dad can. None of it worked. It was never going to. Because it had to come from him.

That’s the heart of what she sees in her clients now. People who come to therapy for something that seems unrelated - people-pleasing, a fear of difficult conversations, perfectionism, anxiety in a relationship - and then it unfolds. Their parent drank. They grew up treading on eggshells, keeping the peace, protecting a sibling, pretending to the outside world that everything was fine. And a child doesn’t have an adult brain. If you tell a child they’re lazy, they believe it. It settles as truth. Then you’re 35 and wondering why you can’t say no to anyone.

Lucy describes the particular kind of abandonment that comes with it - a parent who was there in body but not there. And the guilt and shame that follow a child into adulthood, two of the worst things a person can carry.

Andy brings it back to the middle lane. He was never an alcoholic. He was a good dad 70% of the time, and checked out the other 30%, and that’s what made him stop. Lucy is clear: the impact on kids doesn’t only start at the sharp end of the spectrum. Routine drinking at home - the beer every evening, the wine every night - is enough.

They also get into why British culture is a perfect storm: a drinking culture, a stiff-upper-lip culture, and a generation that was never taught to talk. Why men struggle to even name an emotion. Why the removal of alcohol is often the first time in someone’s adult life they have to sit with a feeling instead of drowning it. And why anger isn’t a failure - it’s a sign you care.

Plus Lucy’s work with the Ben Raemers Foundation, offering free therapy to the skateboarding community after a semi-professional skater took his own life, and NACOA - the National Association for Children of Alcoholics - who run a helpline for anyone, of any age, growing up around alcohol.

Find Lucy on Instagram @lucystherapyroom. She works in person in Bristol and online anywhere.

Andy’s got a new fluffy mic cover and has spent his whole life believing his voice is monotone. Rich points out that’s just another story he’s telling himself. The listeners can decide.

Four weeks to Valencia. It’ll be Andy’s sixth, making it his most-run marathon. And this year, Yomif Kejelcha - who ran a sub-two-hour marathon in London and holds the half marathon world record - is racing it. Valencia has been quietly building itself into the city of running for years, holding the half and 10K world records, and the marathon is the last one missing. Perfect storm.

Which makes today, the final day to enter, a problem for Rich. He’s three weeks post-York, still feeling it in the legs, worried about the knock-on into Manchester in April, and absolutely wants to be on that tarmac on the same day as a potential world record. Andy asks him the coaching question: what’s your why? Rich answers it. Then spends the rest of the episode messaging people on Facebook who’ve got spare bibs. You’ll find out on Instagram whether he got one.

Andy’s also got a reflection worth hearing: his favourite marathons over the last few years have been the ones where he wasn’t chasing time. Barcelona, York. He learned more from those races than the ones where he went all-in - and that learning is what gives his brain permission to push when it does matter.

Then it turns to connection. Last Sunday, Rich set an alarm for 4:30am and Andy for 5:30am to drive hours each way for a 10K at Knebworth with the group. Andy met Stacey face to face for the first time after two years of Zoom calls. He spent the drive giggling at how absurd it was - and said it was the best Sunday morning he’s had in a long time.

Rich is honest about why those mornings matter so much. He still loves his mates. He just doesn’t see half as much of them, because everything revolves around the pub, and he doesn’t want that. Alcohol makes boring things less boring - so if you stop drinking and keep doing the exact same stuff, it’s going to feel boring. You have to find new ways to connect. A run, a coffee, a sauna. People who share the value. Andy puts it plainly: being in rooms where people get you is what cemented his sobriety. Alcohol-free isn’t the easy option. Swimming against the current day after day, year after year, gets lonely. And when the door’s shut, it’s shut - but open it a crack and it gets loud fast.

Also: the Clean Break Collective, what it is, and why you’re already a runner whether you call yourself one or not. CLICK HERE FOR MERE DETAILS - https://portal.take-a-cleanbreak.com/collective-page

Andy’s back from Spain, still full of cold, having spent the week closing down an office he’s been paying for with nobody in it for three months. Twelve years of paperwork shredded. Three bin bags of cables thrown out - including 38 HDMI cables he has no explanation for. Another door closed in the long process of moving a whole life back to the UK, bit by bit. As he puts it: life is one big experiment. And an experiment, by definition, is something where you don’t know the outcome.

Rich has put his watch back on. He sat in the gym car park for 15 minutes doomscrolling before he could go in, and isn’t sure whether that was the data talking or just avoidance. He knows now that he needs some data if he wants to keep progressing. He’s just not sure how much. He’s letting it play out.

Meanwhile, Valencia is five weeks away and there are bibs going spare on Facebook. Rich is tempted. Andy gives him until the 6th of November.

Then it turns to alcohol, and this is where the episode earns its title.

Most people treat alcohol as a reward. Busy week - have a drink. Finished a marathon - pint in the pub. Andy’s flipped it entirely: his reward is not drinking. Why would you reward yourself with something that damages you, makes you feel terrible tomorrow, and stops you being the person you want to be? Rich puts it more bluntly. It’s ethanol. It’s the same stuff you put in your car, slightly more refined. Next time you’re stood at the petrol pump, think about that.

They also get into the knowing-doing gap - how most people gather information for years, reading the books, following the accounts, listening to the podcasts, and still don’t take the action they know they need to take. Andy describes how he was a good dad 70% of the time, and checked out for the other 30%. The gap between those two versions of himself kept widening. And the elephant in the room - alcohol - was always the last thing on the list. If it had been the first, everything would have moved so much faster.

And then the line that makes all of it worth it. Eight years on, Andy says there’s a win in his pocket every single day. However bad the day, however much life throws at him: I didn’t drink today. I’m winning. It’s a foundation that’s always there.

Two months to Christmas. Rich lays out exactly why now is the moment, not January.

Plus: Andy’s Valencia plan from Coach Rich, a proper stats breakdown of the York race, Nebworth 10K this Sunday with the group, and why a spring marathon needs six months of foundations - not sixteen weeks.

Andy’s got man flu, he’s in Spain with no microphone, and five days on from York he still can’t walk properly. But what a day it was.

It nearly didn’t happen. Forty-five minutes stuck in traffic at the park and ride, a bus that backed up coming into York, a pee in a bush on the university campus, and three of them crossing the start line within five minutes of arriving. Lesson one for anyone doing a marathon they don’t know: plan ahead. That stress is the last thing you want.

Then two very different races.

Rich went out with the 3:15 pacer in sight. Felt better at halfway than he did at Valencia - 1:37, two minutes inside PB pace. Went through 30K in 2:17, the fastest he’s ever covered that distance. And then at 32K, the wheels came off. His back, which he’d been carrying for weeks and ignoring, seized up. His hips went. He stopped for water at 21 miles, knew the moment he stopped he’d never get the momentum back, and spent the last five miles run-walking. He looked at a bus stop around mile 24 and seriously considered sitting in it to wait for Andy and Johnny. He finished in 3:27 - his second fastest marathon ever - and then discovered a blister the size of a tangerine on his big toe. New socks. On race day. Don’t.

His verdict on the naked running experiment is honest. The experiment was never about a PB. It was about rediscovering the joy of running after six months of feeling flat, and it did that completely. But if you’re chasing performance, you need data - especially on race day. He went out too fast, carried an injury, and probably ran his long-run marathon pace blocks at half-marathon effort without knowing it. Would he recommend it? Yes if time doesn’t matter. No if it does.

And then Andy and Johnny.

They ran 30K at 5:08 average, a touch quicker than planned. At 37K, Andy’s quads were on the edge of going. At 38K, Johnny overtook him and Andy shouted “wind it in.” At 38.5K, neither of them could speak. Andy went into coach mode - head up, chest out, eyes on the Shell garage, the body achieves what the mind believes - and they turned left into the most evil hill finish in marathon running and went for it. Sprint finish. 3:35. Only the second negative split of Andy’s 15 marathons, and by a distance the best race he’s ever converted. Johnny sobbed on his shoulder over the line.

In the final 500 metres, Andy turned to the crowd and shouted: this is my boy, running his first marathon.

Eight years ago, Andy stopped drinking because of his relationships. Because he wanted to inspire his kids. Because he wanted to be a hero to them. He doesn’t think that moment on Sunday happens if he’s still drinking. He couldn’t have forced it. It had to come from Johnny. And it did.

Valencia in six weeks. Andy thinks it’s finally time to go out at 4:50s and find out.

Marathon eve. Andy’s nerves have finally kicked in. Rich is reading Murakami. And Spencer Matthews has just told the world that a marathon is easy.

That’s where this one starts. Rich and Andy take the comment apart - the context he tried to give it, why it still doesn’t hold up, and what it does to the single mum running three times a week who hears “easy” and wonders why it’s so hard for her. Rich gives it a name: the modern-day influencer ivory tower. Say something polarising, let the algorithm do the rest, and if people take it the wrong way, that’s a them problem.

Then it’s into the real stuff. Andy is running York with Johnny tomorrow - Johnny’s first marathon, Andy’s 15th. They’ve done the gold, silver, bronze conversation like any coaching client: sub 3:40, sub 3:45, sub 4. Going out at 5:15s, seeing what’s in the tank at 30K. Johnny’s head is all over the place - his entire Instagram feed is marathons, gels, contradictions, and a thousand things his dad’s already told him.

Andy lays out what 14 marathons have taught him: the race starts at 30K. Everything before that is about staying calm, not weaving, not accelerating, not spending mental energy on whether you’ve got it today. Get to 30K relaxed and then it’s less than an hour in the office. And the thing nobody tells you - when the pain hits at 33K, it’s a disaster (or isit!!); when it hits at 38K, you can push through. Same pain. Different distance to go. That’s not your body. That’s your brain deciding what’s possible.

Rich brings in Murakami: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. He walks through what he learned at Valencia - shorten the stride, drive the arms, increase the cadence, coach yourself out loud if you have to - versus Paris, where he admits he mentally checked out.

And then Andy turns it on Rich. No watch, no phone, no data, no plan for four months - and now 6,500 runners, a 3:15 pacer, and a course with 160m of elevation. Rich admits it: he’s never felt more relaxed before a marathon. Because for the first time, he’s got an excuse to fail.

Plus: Gary’s first ultra, 57 miles Glasgow to Edinburgh, just under 13 hours. Stacey executing Chelmsford Half. Jane at Blickling this weekend. And the Yorkshire pudding wrap debate that Andy is refusing to lose.

Nine days to York. Andy’s taking nine pills a day - Heights vitamins, magnesium, D3, lion’s mane for his focus, turmeric for his joints - and isn’t entirely sure he hasn’t just been sold to by a podcast ad. Which opens the door to a much bigger conversation about influence, avoidance, and the things we reach for without noticing.

Andy admits he’ll sit in his car for 20 minutes scrolling before a run he actually wants to do. Rich picks up his phone to Google a recipe and loses half an hour to a Runner’s World article. Andy picks his up to get a two-factor authentication code and surfaces 45 minutes later with no idea what he was doing. They both clock it: this is the same mechanism as drinking. Escapism. Avoidance. The thing that closes the tabs in your head.

Then Rich brings in a neuroscience of addiction webinar he attended this week. What makes something an addiction? Three things: compulsion, reduced control, and a negative state when you stop. Andy hears all three and maps them straight onto his ADHD. They walk through the six systems addictive substances act on - dopamine, GABA, glutamate, endogenous opioids, acetylcholine, endocannabinoids - and why blackout drinking isn’t your brain losing memories, it’s your brain never laying them down in the first place. Andy asks the obvious question nobody seems to be asking: what does that do over 30 years?

They get into Professor David Nutt - fired as the UK government’s chief drugs advisor for saying alcohol caused more social harm than any other drug - and his finding that if alcohol came up for approval today, it wouldn’t get past the first round of testing. Alcohol misuse costs England £27.5 billion a year. The tax collected from it is £12.5 billion. The maths doesn’t work, and nobody wants to talk about it.

And then Rich spots something. An influencer on Instagram, two years alcohol-free, now talking about how “it was never about the alcohol, it was about the moment” - and how his relationship with drinking is “different now.” Scroll down: #PernodRicard. One of the biggest alcohol producers on the planet, paying people to sell moderation without ever naming a brand. Grow the pie, not the slice.

Andy’s response is the title of this episode. The moment is always there. Only the liquid in the glass changes.

Also: Rich on finally liking himself again. Andy on eight years alcohol-free and why the gift keeps giving. And RunDot has Andy’s predicted marathon time eight minutes inside his PB.

October's theme in the Clean Break Collective is 'the stories we tell ourselves'. And this week's episode turns into a live example of exactly what that means.

It starts with Rich asking Andy a simple question about the stories that hold him back. What follows is Andy going back to the beginning - a remedial class at 12, dyslexia that was played down as "very minor" while he was having to learn how to write again, failed A-levels, and a decade of job-hopping in his 20s because every time something got hard, the voice said: if you stay here too long, someone's going to find out you're not good enough. So he walked out before they could.

Rich asks what feeling that story is protecting him from. There's a long silence on the podcast. Then Andy gets there.

They dig into how the fear of failure quietly becomes a fear of success - how Andy comes back from running 230K through the Amazon and finds himself saying "anyone could do that," because somewhere underneath, he's still not sure he's allowed to have it. And how Rich recognises the same thing in himself.

Rich brings in the work of psychologist Tara Brach - the trance of unworthiness, that persistent background belief that you're fundamentally not enough, shaped by the things people said to you and the failures you never forgave yourself for, until it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like the truth. He walks through her RAIN practice - recognise, allow, investigate, nurture - and the idea of radical acceptance: not lowering your standards, just seeing clearly where you are without the layer of judgment on top.

And then Andy lands the line that gives this episode its title. For years, he thought he was broken. He kept looking for the fix. The moment things changed was when he accepted there was no fix, because there was nothing broken. He was neurodiverse in a neurotypical world. He just needed tools, not repairs.

They also get into why alcohol works so well as the volume control for all of this - not enough at work, have a drink; anxious at the party, have a drink - and why taking a break from it means you can finally look at the thing you've been turning the volume down on.

Then Andy flips it. Two weeks to York, no watch, no data. What's the story Rich is telling himself? The answer is more honest than you'd expect - and his gut says 3:10 to 3:15.

Also: Andy has three marathons in five months, has accidentally entered a 100K walk along the Jurassic Coast, and there's a gaggle heading to Knebworth 10K on November 1st if you want to join them.

Matt Baxter was a middle lane drinker. A few glasses of wine through the week to take the edge off a 12-hour day in financial services, football with the lads at weekends, nothing anyone would have flagged. But there was a moment during the 2022 World Cup Final - Argentina versus France, one of the best finals ever played - when his kids went home to watch it and he stayed at the club drinking with his mates. He doesn't remember much of the game. He does remember getting home and thinking: why did I make that decision?

That was the beginning of the end. Dry January followed. Then his wife Hayley - who'd been through breast cancer and had been told alcohol was a potential contributing factor - went alcohol-free on the same day. Neither of them have gone back. Matt was the one bringing the bottle home. He knew it. He took responsibility for it.

Three months into sobriety, he found himself on a coaching course. Same one Rich was on, same cohort, spring 2023. First day, Andy Ramage walked in to observe his first ever coaching session. Stomach dropped. Pushed through. Came out the other side thinking: that felt terrible and brilliant at the same time.

He's now a youth sports mindset coach in Leeds, working one-to-one with young athletes across football, cricket and beyond - including 8 and 9-year-olds at professional academies who are terrified that a misplaced pass will cost them their contract. Sport is the vehicle. The work is always bigger than the sport. School, friendships, home life, self-worth. And underneath it all, the lesson he keeps coming back to: that voice in your head telling you you're not good enough is your voice. Which means the good voice is yours too. Learn to turn the volume up on the right one.

This week, Matt joins Rich and Andy for a conversation about the midlife chrysalis, the coaching space that most people never get to experience, what it's like to reflect back on your own sporting career and realise you were playing with the handbrake on - and why the parents are as much part of the process as the kids.

Also: Rich crying under a blanket watching an octopus movie and taking it as a sign he needs to start tapering. Andy turning 51. And three weeks to York.

Find Matt on Instagram @EliteMindset_Coaching.

Four weeks out from York. Andy's doing a 3-hour long run this afternoon - on a Friday - because that's what life as a busy parent, business owner, and marathon runner actually looks like. Rich has his 2:45 in the morning. Johnny is 18, 75 kilos, and annoyingly fresh at the end of every long run. The juggle is real, and this week's episode starts right there.

But the conversation quickly moves somewhere sharper.

Rich has been noticing a pattern - influencers, podcasters, and now alcohol brands actively pushing back against sobriety. Not just defending their own drinking, but going further, calling out people who don't drink as over-optimisers, killjoys, lacking in resilience. There's a beer brand called Rolies positioning itself as the healthy athlete's drink - partnered with Hyrox, vitamins added, 4.3% ABV - with ads that say "no longer the boring one at parties" and "tastes like success." There's a guy on Spencer Matthews' podcast who said Stephen Bartlett feeling rough after a couple of glasses of wine represents a lack of resilience. And then there's the podcast Rich watched where two runners laughed about how nobody understands running people who don't run - and then in the same breath called people who don't drink insufferable.

Rich calls all of it what he believes it is: emotional blackmail. The belief that you need alcohol for confidence, connection, relaxation - none of it is innate. It's conditioned. You weren't born with it. And the industry knows that, which is exactly why the marketing works the way it does.

Then there's the moderation question. Is moderation possible? Yes, for some people. Is it possible for everyone? No. And if you've been trying to moderate for years and it hasn't worked - that's not a failure of willpower. That's data. If moderation was possible for you, you'd have done it by now.

Andy talks about sitting on the rim of the jar - that horrible middle place where you haven't decided to drink and you haven't decided to stop, and you're just stuck. The most turmoil lives right there. Make a decision, one way or the other.

And Rich makes the link that underpins everything they do: aligning your actions with your values. When they're misaligned, you feel stuck. When they align, you flourish. Which - as it happens - is exactly what several of their clients are doing right now at 75 to 80 days.

Rich has been running without a watch, without Strava, without data of any kind, since June. Andy checks his Garmin sleep score before he's even properly awake. And somewhere in the middle of this week's conversation, Rich lands the line that stops everything: you need to take a clean break from your data. Same as we'd say to someone who isn't sure if their relationship with alcohol is healthy - try going without it, and see how that feels.

It's a longer conversation than that, though. Rich and Andy get into what data actually does for you - the compass it provides, the ceiling it creates, the anxiety it generates when it contradicts how you actually feel. Andy's Garmin has been telling him his sleep quality is poor for years. He ignored it, felt fine, called it wrong. Then his numbers improved, and suddenly the watch is trustworthy again. Rich clocks exactly what's happening there.

Then there's Johnny. Andy's son ran his longest run ever this week - 28K - smashed it, pushed his dad in the final few kilometres, and came off it saying he doesn't want his watch in the marathon. The countdown was causing him anxiety. The data was getting in his head. He wants to run to feel, stay with his dad, and cross the line together. There's something in that.

Rich has also just entered the Lakeland 50 - 50 miles through the Lake District, 3,000 metres of elevation, July 2027. It came through the ballot with a 48-hour acceptance window. He's in. Andy is confirmed for Kyrgyzstan the same month to complete his BTU Global Race Series with the Mountain Ultra. Both of them heading into the mountains next summer.

And then there's the line from Coach Bennett's Runner's World podcast that Rich references - how do we know the most impressive performance on marathon day wasn't from the person who finished 37,500th? The 45-year-old single mum, two jobs, three kids, can only run three times a week. Her world isn't conditioned for success. The elite's is. So who's actually the most impressive?

The episode closes with Rich's theme for the Clean Break Collective this autumn: show up and stand tall. Good days, bad days, hot, cold, tired, energised, confident, doubting. Just show up.

Big shout out to Kath running the Great North Run this weekend.