Rich and Andy are back together, and this one goes deep. What starts as Andy pulling on a medium t-shirt for the first time in years turns into a genuinely honest conversation about gratitude - not the toxic positivity version you see on social media, but what Viktor Frankl called tragic optimism: the ability to find meaning in life despite inevitable suffering, loss, and pain.

They talk about why gratitude isn't a destination you arrive at, but a daily practice you have to train. Andy shares what it's like running to his mum's funeral playlist - crying through the woods, feeling grief and joy at the same time, and what it means to actually be able to process things now. Rich talks about using gratitude to close the gap between trigger and response, and how it maps directly onto the alcohol-free journey.

There's also a proper celebration of the Clean Break community - Six runners across Manchester, Nice Half Marathon and the London Marathon, including Syori who went from not being able to run 5K to finishing her first marathon in nine months, and Jane, who at 70 called her half marathon in Nice "just an easy run, but a bit longer." And with Sebastian Sawy going sub-two in London, the conversation turns to what's still possible as we get older, and how far both Rich and Andy feel from their own ceilings.

Mark Long has been losing his sight since he was 12 years old. For most of that time, he pretended everything was fine - hiding his condition, masking it with alcohol, and performing a version of himself he thought the world needed to see. It took a car crash, a divorce, and a gym full of tears listening to a podcast about suicide to finally make him stop.

Now registered blind, 16 months alcohol-free, and training for a 25K SAS selection route through the Brecon Beacons, Mark is a qualified positive psychology life coach who's building a life he actually recognises. He talks to Rich and Andy about using drink to cover up his vision loss in social situations, the moment he realised his relationship with alcohol was quietly destroying his marriage, what it feels like to run when you can barely see, and why he refuses to be defined by his blindness.

He's also running the Fan Dance on 2nd May to raise money for Guide Dogs UK - the charity that gave him Mary, his black lab and, by the sound of it, his best mate. Links to donate in the show notes.

Sponsored by Authentic Brew. Use code CB10 at authenticbrew.com for 10% off.

Tpo Sponsor Mark use this link - https://www.justgiving.com/page/pounds-for-puppy-penny?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL&utm_campaign=020

Fifty episodes. And if you were hoping that by now Rich and Andy had everything figured out - the admin, the pack training, the carb loading, the ability to stay on topic - we're sorry to disappoint.

EP50 finds Andy six weeks out from a 230km, five-day jungle ultra, feeling physically great, mentally in comfortable denial, and still yet to put his 11-kilo pack on his back for a single training run. We've been here before. So has his back. It didn't end well.

Meanwhile, it's marathon season - Manchester, London, Nice, Bristol. Leeds and Edinburgh - and the episode opens up into a genuinely useful and often hilarious deep dive into race week panic. Specifically, the kind that comes from reading too much online and concluding you need to eat 800 grams of carbs a day to survive a marathon. You don't. Please stop.

Rich and Andy talk through what actually matters in race week - and more importantly, what doesn't - and why the best time to trial your gel strategy, your Imodium timing, and your pre-race coffee ritual is definitely not the Thursday before Manchester. They also get into process goals versus destination goals, the compound effect of consistency, and why Rory McIlroy winning the Masters by doing absolutely nothing clever is basically the perfect metaphor for marathon running.

And then there's Toby. Who got a chest infection a week before the Paris Marathon, went anyway, broke his PB, and probably grew more from that race than any he's run before.

Fifty episodes in, and the honest truth is this: the figuring out never really stops. You just get better at showing up anyway.

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