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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What separates a high-performing team from one that's just going through the motions? According to this week's guest, it usually comes down to three things most organisations never get right: clarity, identity, and the psychological safety to actually fail without consequence.

Rich Turner is a high-performance coach, sports scientist, and what he calls a Corporate Athlete. He's spent years taking the lessons of elite sport - the debrief cultures, the marginal gains mindset, the psychology of team identity - and applying them to the messy, complicated reality of corporate teams and leadership. The result is a coaching approach that's refreshingly honest: high performance isn't a moment, it's something you have to be able to sustain.

In this conversation, Rich, Rich and Andy get into what the best teams actually do differently, why your identity as an individual - and as a collective - can quietly cap your potential without you even realising it, and why the absence of feedback loops in most workplaces is quietly killing performance.

They also explore the self-determination theory, the loneliness of being a solopreneur, why autonomy and purpose matter more than most leaders think, and how the lessons from sport translate - and sometimes don't - into a corporate environment.

Oh, and Rich Turner has just made the England Over 35's hockey squad for the World Cup in Rotterdam. So there's that.

A wide-ranging, genuinely thought-provoking conversation that will resonate whether you lead a team of two or two hundred.

Use code CB10 for 10% off Authentic Brew.

Fair warning: this one goes places. If you've just discovered Clean Break Chats, we'd like to apologise in advance - and also assure you that we do occasionally talk about serious things. Eventually.

EP48 starts with Andy somehow surviving 110K in seven days on trails (his legs have not forgiven him), detours through Rich's manic solo parenting Thursday, a heartfelt rant about the alcohol industry's genius trick of making you feel stupid for doing the thing they engineered you to do - and somehow ends up at lactate threshold, heart rate reserve, and race-day pacing strategy. It's a journey.

In between: Andy's first supermarket alcohol aisle visit in seven months, the "productive life" reframe that reframes everything about turning 50, Jane - a 70-year-old in their coaching group quietly nonchalanting her way through 2hr 20min long runs - and a midlife health update from Rich that involves neither cancer nor a crisis, but does involve ointment.

There's also Andy's A&E dash with daughter Lily the night before flying to Spain, the father-son running bond with Johnny ahead of his first half marathon, and a teaser for a marathon experiment Rich refuses to explain yet.

It's honest, warm, funny, and yes - occasionally about haemorrhoids. But stick with it. The good stuff is in there too.

Use code CB10 for 10% off Authentic Brew - natural energy, mood-enhancing, and probably better for you than whatever Rich needs from the pharmacy right now.

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When Martyn Davies stopped drinking 8 years ago, he had one question that wouldn't leave him alone. What would a comedy club look like without alcohol?

The answer he got from the industry he'd spent 20 years in? Laughter. At him. Nobody's going to come to a comedy club without a drink. You need alcohol to laugh.

He did it anyway.

This week Rich and Andy sit down with Martyn - founder of Sober is Fun and the London Alcohol-Free Comedy Club - for one of the most honest, warm, and at times raw conversations we've had on the podcast. Martyn takes us right back to the beginning: the 90s rave scene, a party lifestyle that lit him up on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside, and a 27-year relationship with alcohol and substances that eventually took him to a very dark place. Behind closed doors, isolated, pushing away everyone who loved him - until his brother staged an intervention in their parents' front room with printed-off emails and their mum sat on the sofa.

That Saturday evening, Martyn said yes to getting help. It changed everything.

He talks about his month in rehab, what it really took to build a life in recovery, his recent ADHD diagnosis and how it re-framed so much of his story, and why giving back - to the rehab, to an addiction charity, and eventually through Sober is Fun - became the foundation everything else was built on.

And yes, we do get into running. Because of course we do.

If you've ever been told your idea is ridiculous, or you're in a place right now where you can't quite see the way out - this one's for you.

SOBER IS FUN WEBSITE - https://www.soberisfun.co.uk/

We've all heard of the comfort zone. But what if it doesn't actually exist? This week, Rich and Andy make a distinction that changes everything - it's not a comfort zone, it's a familiar zone. And familiar isn't the same as comfortable. It's just easier than facing what's underneath.

They explore how alcohol keeps people locked in cycles they know are hurting them - the Sunday bottle of wine, the Monday shame, the white - knuckling through Thursday - and why that loop can run for years without anyone around you even noticing. Then the conversation goes deeper. Andy opens up about his ADHD diagnosis and the uncomfortable truth that for neurodiverse people, alcohol isn't just a social habit - it's often self-medication. When your brain is running 40 tabs at once and never truly quiets down, a drink that silences the noise isn't a reward. It's a relief. And that's a very different thing.

They also get into dopamine, rejection sensitivity, the post-marathon crash, and why going alcohol-free takes far more courage than most people give it credit for.

If you've ever felt like you were outrunning something but couldn't quite name what - this episode is for you.

Most people know Georgie Bingham as the voice they heard on Saturday mornings on TalkSport. What most people didn't know was what was happening behind the mic.

In this episode, Rich and Andy sit down with broadcaster-turned-coach Georgie Bingham for one of the most honest, raw and genuinely moving conversations we've had on the pod.

Georgie opens up about 25 years of early alarms, no weekends, and a career she slowly fell out of love with. About drinking alone in a house that never really felt like home. About a moment where she realised she was pretty much suicidal - and didn't even clock how serious that was at the time. And about how sobriety didn't just change her habits - it gave her back herself.

We talk about:

• The "midlife funk" - and why it's not a crisis, it's a calling
• Why giving up alcohol is the bravest thing you'll ever do
• The toxic lad culture she navigated as the only female voice at TalkSport
• FOMO, loneliness, and what it means to finally stop being a sheep
• How coaching is helping people do in 5 months what took Georgie 5 years

This one hit differently. Whether you're sober-curious, deep in your own midlife moment, or just need to hear someone be brilliantly, unapologetically honest - this episode is for you.

Find Georgie: themidlifefunkcoach.com | @GeorgieBingham