Max Brown: Olympic Canoeist on taking part in this year's Queenstown Marathon

Runners in Queenstown are hitting the road this weekend, preparing for the pinnacle running event – the Queenstown Marathon.  

This year is set to be the biggest rendition of the event to date, with more than 13,000 registered participants across five distances, and nearly 4,000 runners competing in the full-length marathon.  

One of those competitors is Olympic canoeist Max Brown, who is running as part of a fundraiser for Miracle Feet – he caught up with D'Arcy to preview the event. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the All Sport Breakfast podcast with Darcy
Waldgrave from News Talk SEDB Queenstown.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Today. The Queenstown Marathon is on huge event. Actually he
gets underweight at a round about oh twenty past eight,
so we're not that far away from the gun sounding.
I caught up yesterday with Olympic canoeist Max Brown. He's
running as part of a fundraiser for Miracle Feet and
it's an organization that treats club foot in newborn children.

(00:35):
So every dollar donated for this fundraiser, one gram will
be added or removed from the weighted vest that himself
Mark Daniel are going to be wearing. Crazy thing to do,
and I think they've both got injuries as well. He
joins us now or he joins us yesterday, but we've
got him on now. As far as you're concerned, Max
Max Max Max Magma height Max. You're a roller? What

(00:56):
are you doing running a marathon? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I don't really know myself,
but basically we are running the Queen's Our Marathon. Marcus
Daniel and I to Olympians fundraising for club foot disease.
What is club foot disease. It's a birth defect where
kids are born with it and their feet are twisted
out of position, which means they can't really bear weight,

(01:22):
they can't run, they can't jump, very limited, and kids
born with every three minutes. And so Marcus and I
figured we've had some pretty amazing privilege to go the
Olympic Games and be athletes that there's no way we
could have done that if we were born with this disease.
So we are running the Queensoewd Marathon with weighted vests.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
How big, how heavy? What kind of weight to be
talking here? Like a pound of butter or are you
actually going hard out?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
No, Well, we have actual weighted vests with sand in them.
And how it works as every dollar someone donates, they
can choose to put a gram of weight on the
Olympians or they can choose to take it off. So
it's kind of are you naughty or are you nice?
At the end of the day, you're nice regardless because
you're donating money to charity. I'm enabling kids to walk

(02:15):
and move freely for the rest of their lives. But yeah,
so we said up to twenty kilos, We figured that
would probably be the point at which we would break
you're heavier than twenty kilos. But there's been a bit
of a caveat about seven seven weeks ago, I started
agetting some pretty severe pain in my shins, had a

(02:36):
scan and I've got stress in my tibia, so small
little fractures, you could say. And so I haven't run
in seven weeks and I'm running the marathon. I mean,
Marcus has got a tear in his meniscus. So we're
both absolutely bugging and battling. But it turns out people
are very nice and we've had about ten grand donated

(03:01):
in the form of weight, so ten kilos, but then
we've had twenty twelve thousand dollars removed, so a minus
two kilos at the moment.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Okay, well we're going to change that around, don't we.
How do people? How do people get behind you?

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Max?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Where do they go?

Speaker 3 (03:17):
So those few ways? Just google Miracle Feet Marathon and
you'll see a raise lea site there which is basically
a fundraising site. Or you can go on to my
instagram Max Brown in z and the link in my
bio will take you to the site, and same on
Marcus daniels Instagram. And yeah, you can choose to add

(03:38):
weight or remove weight, feel free to add it on.
I mean, we signed ourselves up for this and we
said we're going to do it. So yeah, if you
want to chuck on some weight and see us suffer
tomorrow morning at eight twenty am, they would be brilliant.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
What is your relationship with marathon running? I mean, I
mean sitting on your backside. You've represented New Zealand at
two Olympic Games K two and K four I believe,
so you're not really a runner, are you? What do
you know? How did this work?

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah? I spent the last fifteen years of my career
sitting down for a living in a kayak. It wasn't
it wasn't easy training. To be fair, We'd do about
one hundred and fifty kilometers per week in the kayak.
So I'm fit. That will not be my problem fitness.
It's more leg strength. At the start of this fundraising
campaign we said Max is built like a dorito, so

(04:29):
strong up top, lots of size there and then quite
skinny in the middle at the bottom. Turns out my
legs are built like a dorito as well, and they're
they're breaking quite easily.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Which have you done a marathon before? No?

Speaker 3 (04:41):
No, no, I mean a paddle, you know, a paddle
sort of that distance. But to be fair, at the
start of the year I ran up to thirty k
so we've done some distance. But the main thing I'm
nervous about is I haven't run in seven weeks, which
is not not the preparation you really want for a marathon.
But it was quite funny. Is a really kind guy

(05:03):
in Total, which is where now I live. I found
out he runs a business called Kiwi Immersion Pool, which
is basically an infinity pool that's got a treadmill in it.
And so I've been one of like one of those
broken retired dogs in the pool learning to walk again.
And I've just been in there running a few times

(05:23):
a week to get some sort of fitness.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
In can I ask what an Olympic canoe a slash
kayaker is doing with a wrecked tibia. I mean, come on, mate,
of all the places.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
To break what a well, yeah, basically, I guess I
haven't got much leg strengths from sitting down so much.
They're not used to load. And so as I started
running three four times a week, I think that stress
sort of increased more and more. After Paris Olympics, I
wanted a bit of a break from kayaking for the

(05:55):
first time, and so since then I started running because
I figured it's actually quite nice because we have to
do is ty shoes and then you I'm getting to
the river, taking the boat off your roof, etc. So
it was quite nice to just have the freedom to
go run for thirty minutes and feel like you've done
some hard work. But yeah, it hasn't gone too well

(06:16):
on the old legs.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
For more from the All Sport Breakfast with Darcy Watergrave,
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