Ep 01. Beef, Lamb and IRONMAN with Braden Currie and Hannah Berry

Transcript

CAM HARPER

Welcome to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name is Cam Harper and I am your host for Season 1 Beef, Lamb and IRONMAN, where we will be bringing you nutrition and good health from New Zealand's finest beef and lamb. Today we will be talking to the finest professional athletes, IRONMAN competitors, New Zealand champions and ANZCO Foods ambassadors, Braden Currie and Hannah Berry. And stay tuned for our sprint to the finish segment at the end of the podcast where we do a series of quickfire questions. So great to see you both. Hannah, welcome along. Braden as well, how are you guys?

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, good, thank you.

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, pleasure to be here, Cam, and be in the studio with you guys. I’m looking forward to the good chats.

CAM HARPER

Fantastic. And first of all, Hannah, I guess it's the old line of how are you, where are you, and how's things, what have you been up to recently?

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, I'm good, thank you. I'm currently in Queenstown. I'm down here, I'm actually presenting at a conference tomorrow, and just here, kind of supporting the Queenstown Marathon event. I raced last weekend in Melbourne, so I won't be lining up this weekend, because it's just a little bit too close to the last weekend's race. Get amongst the event, and yeah, enjoy the atmosphere. So yeah, that's where I'm at.

CAM HARPER

Fantastic and Braden yourself, how's things going with you?

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, things are probably a bit more relaxed in my world. Just coming really off a little bit of an offseason and slowly building back into some training. So yeah here in Wanaka. Came off Kona pretty flat and sick obviously.

So yeah, I decided to take some downtime anyway, rebuild and focus on the New Zealand summer. So yeah, just kicking back into things and just enjoying some time at home.

CAM HARPER

So we'll just go back to that Braden if we can. Kona, you know, you were in some serious form leading into that, but unfortunately the cold, the flu got you and you turned up on the day, man, which is admirable, but it just didn't pan out for you. You had the DNF on the bike. That must have been tough.

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, disappointing to say the least. You know, I definitely, I always look at it, I feel blessed to have the opportunities that I have in life and to race as a profession. But yeah, I was, I'd put a lot on the line for that one. As I normally do, I just spent what, six weeks in Maui, training in the heat, five weeks away from the family. Quite a few thousands and thousands of dollars on the line to try and get me to the start line in the best condition and be able to tolerate the heat that Kona tends to throw at you. And yeah, four days out, well actually a little bit more, five or six days out, started to get a bit of a sore throat. Then four days out, things really hit home. And yeah, I wasn't actually going to jump on the start line, but just about 20 minutes before bike rack enclosed, my daughter came up and she said, Dad, I didn't come all the way to Hawaii to not watch you race, so you better start. So, yeah, it was a quick hustle to grab the bike and shoot down the start line and see what I could do, and really, it was no surprise once I got on the bike that there was nothing there, and the core temperature was going through the roof, the heart rate was right up, and I knew running a marathon off the back of that was gonna probably put me in a pretty bad spot.

CAM HARPER

Yeah, and you know you made the right decision even though it hurts though.

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, big time. Yeah, you know me Cam, I like racing. I like being at the front of a race. I like being aggressive. I like being able to put my best performance out there and sure I probably could have suffered all the way to the finish, but I wouldn't have been in the race. And I would have been probably very, very ill afterwards. So yeah, looking back, it was the right decision, but still doesn't make it any easier to accept.

CAM HARPER

No, I could imagine. And Hannah, how about yourself? You mentioned you raced last weekend at Melbourne 70.3. I mean, that was a good outing. You'd be very happy with the build that you've got coming into that Kiwi summer.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't too bad. I mean, this year has been a bit of a building year for me. I actually started off the year injured and had a bit of time off and then I also got married. And so we kind of committed to this year being a building fitness year and with IRONMAN New Zealand a whole year later being sort of the key race that I was going to be aiming for.

CAM HARPER

That's awesome. And for you, Hannah, you know, Braden was saying he was in Hawaii in that big build. I mean, you've been to some pretty cool places overseas. You're in the US for a period of time. I mean, how do you determine that? Or was it your husband Nick deciding which golf courses looked best at the time?

HANNAH BERRY

I have to admit it, it is a bit of both. No, we wanted to do another stint over in the US and explore some of the, I guess, the well-known training grounds as well. So we went to Bend in Oregon and Boulder in Colorado were our main, I guess, points where we based ourselves while we were away. And it was great to sort of, I experienced altitude for the first time ever. And we were sort of looking to gain experience and I was just going to do what I can with the fitness that I was building across the year. We had a great time. We met some people overseas and got to some pretty amazing places and some really strong races over there in the US and did alright. Sort of my races improved across the time that I was there which is what we were expecting.

CAM HARPER

Absolutely. You mentioned before Hannah, it seems like a long time ago, but at the same time it's not that long. You and Nick got married, I mean that's fantastic in itself. Do you still get Hannah Wells a lot? Obviously Hannah Berry now, but do you still get that a lot?

HANNAH BERRY

Yes, yeah, I actually raced under Hannah Wells for a little while after, and just sort of have been moving over to Hannah Berry slowly as people get used to it.

CAM HARPER

Oh, the NutriGrain IRONMAN New Zealand in Taupo, I can promise you it'll be, won't be Wells, it'll be Berry all the time, I'll say that but I'll probably stuff it up, so forgive me.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, that's all right.

CAM HARPER

Forgive me, it'll be okay. And Braden, you talked about downtime, but looking at your social feeds and that kind of stuff, your downtime seems to be going and climbing every hill in central Otago with your family.

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, it's been a busy schedule, mate. I got back and had four days on the ground and then went to Stewart Island for a week. And then had a few more days at home and then went over the West Coast for a few days, fixing a hut and spending some time in the hills, and I've just finished packing the bag. As soon as this over, I'm off to do what's called the five passes. So, up through Glenorchy, over to Milford Sound, back around Fiery Col, and it's about a four or five day sort of fast packing hike. So, yeah, let's say it's not a huge amount of actual downtime, but just a little bit of differential in the exercise format.

CAM HARPER

Well, it's, yeah, nothing like active recovery Braden, that's probably the best way to put it, isn't it? And for you, Braden, once you sort of go, right, I need to pull the trigger and get fit for IRONMAN racing or any sort of endurance racing, how does that sort of work for you?

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a slow build. So it has kind of started. I started last week back on a program and that's with the focus towards Taupo and towards a 70.3 in Tasmania, middle February. So, sort of like an eight to, nine week process knowing that Christmas and New Year's in there as well.

CAM HARPER

You're listening to Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. My name's Cam Harper talking to NutriGrain IRONMAN New Zealand champions, Braden Curry and Hannah Wells.

I said it already Hannah Berry.

BRADEN CURRIE

Good job, Cam. You're on fire.

CAM HARPER

Here I am going, I'll make sure Hannah, and the first time. The first time. Anyway. That's alright. I'm going to write it down on my little sheet of paper and I'll never forget it again. Until next time. And so for you Hannah, Braden was saying he's got the 70.3 in Tasmania. What's next for you?

HANNAH BERRY

I'm going to do Taupo 70.3 in December. That's only a few weeks away now. And then I will do the Tauranga half in January. And then straight on to IRONMAN New Zealand from there. So a good little build in February for that one.

CAM HARPER

Just a quick thing before I get into some of these other questions I've got down here is many people may not realize, Hannah, that you're a full-on qualified doctor and scientist. I mean, what's that bring as a dynamic to IRONMAN training and to just your life in general?

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, yeah, so I did things a little bit different. I guess I went to university, got an engineering degree, and then went on and did a PhD before I started a sporting career. I was sort of late to the sport. I think, you know, for me, it just brings, in my early years, it brought a lot of balance in my life. And you learn a lot when you go through that amount of study, you know, just in terms of work ethic. Yeah, it's also just nice knowing that I have that behind me. Yeah, I don't know, I think, for me, probably mostly it was just work ethic. Yeah, just appreciating what I can do and also now appreciating that I can do this full time knowing that I have some qualifications behind me as well.

CAM HARPER

That's great. And for you, Braden, look, you know, not many of us have got a PhD in the qualifications that Hannah has, I definitely haven't. But you know, you're a real student of the sport and actually understanding what your body can do and what it's capable of and what you need it to do. I mean, you're a real student of that kind of thing.

BRADEN CURRIE

Probably far from it, Cam. Let's just say I definitely don't have a doctorate and I think it's amazing for Hannah. I think that's just- Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible to have that intellectual ability to be able to process data and numbers and probably the health and nutrition and physical side of the sport to be able to have that. You know, I purely, a lot of the time, race on feel and emotion and that's sort of what's got me to where I am now as an athlete and I think probably only in the last couple of years have I really, really focused in, I guess, on the data and the science side of it. And again, I would never claim to be a coach or probably never want to be, but I feel very lucky to have some good support behind me, yeah, science-wise, nutrition-wise, to make sure that I've kind of got all bases covered.

CAM HARPER

You're both ambassadors for ANZCO Foods. Hannah, first, you obviously like beef and lamb and what these guys offer as a company as well.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, absolutely. Big red meat eater. It's actually super important as endurance athletes to get a decent amount of iron. And I know myself, I need to make sure I am eating a good amount of red meat just to keep my iron stores up and stay healthy while we're training so hard. And yeah, obviously nutrition is a huge interest of mine. Naturally, just being an athlete, yeah, it's really cool to have the opportunity to work with ANZCO to kind of push the importance of good nutrition and getting your good iron and your zinc and everything else that you get with protein that you get with meat and ensuring that you're just doing everything you can nutritionally to lead the best life that you can, both as an athlete and just as a person in general. So it's really cool to have this opportunity to work with them, get to talk about nutrition and everything like that.

CAM HARPER

And for you Braden, with what ANZCO Foods offer for you as an ambassador, but it is exactly like Hannah's saying, it is so important just to be able to nail that nutrition part right and they offer a lot with ANZCO Foods.

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, they really do. I couldn't be happier to be able to assign a line with ANZCO Foods. I think it's, yeah, it's seen something that, for me, I grew up on a sheep and beef farm, so farming was in the blood. Yeah, I think for now, it's such a huge part of being a professional athlete is the nutrition side of it and iron, it's so easy to get behind with your iron stores when you're training as much as we do and obviously protein, the amount of exercise that we're putting out there for good health for everyone, but also as an athlete and then also for my kids, that opportunity to provide them with good nutritious iron and meat to get them day to day through a healthy lifestyle is awesome, yeah, thoroughly enjoying being associated with these guys.

BRADEN CURRIE

And what's that like just with yourself and your family, Braden, trying to make that all work? Are you quite lucky in that your kids kind of, you know, they'll eat what you and Sally eat as well? Or how do you make it work? And I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. I mean, kids need real food and they need to have a lot more of protein and they just need to get those energy levels right, you know? And that's something that I like about ANZCO Foods and what they provide. But what's that like in your family environment?

BRADEN CURRIE

I think we're really lucky. Sally is obviously, she's a naturopath and studied PE and did nutrition and stuff as well. So, has always been a very strong advocate for, I mean, whole foods, healthy lifestyle, healthy eating, healthy living. So our kids have had no choice and, but they've also never questioned it. It's just been part of their life to eat good foods. So yeah, we're very lucky. They'll eat anything. They eat exactly what we eat if there's a lamb rack on the barbecue, that's probably their favourite.

CAM HARPER

Yeah, I think it's everyone's favourite, isn't it? And Hannah, I was gonna say, you touched on it earlier, but fuelling the engine, you know, there's so many people get that part wrong and actually, you know, making sure you're getting proper food into you at all times, especially when you're training like you guys are.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the most important recovery tools and just tools in general as athletes, yeah, is to make sure that we're having or getting all the right nutrients and good nutrition in our lives. So, yeah, it's just incredibly important. I can't really stress it enough how much we need to pay attention to our nutrition as athletes and make sure that we're getting in all the good food, as Braden said, all the whole foods. And, yeah, this is obviously, I think, red meat is a huge component of that. And, yeah, just hugely beneficial to make sure that I'm getting my red meat in. Yeah I guess have this opportunity to talk about nutrition and yeah.

CAM HARPER

So if you look at that pre-race as you lead up to a race, Hannah, or post-race, and you talk about beef and lamb and through ANZCO Foods, what are the specifics of it? People will be listening because a lot of the stresses that people have is what do I eat leading up to a race or after a hard training session how do I recover? I mean it's a very broad question, I'm sorry, but what part does beef and lamb play in that for you?

HANNAH BERRY

I think after a hard training session definitely beneficial to have a good steak for dinner or something packed with protein and iron. And in race week I would say again just making sure you're eating what you usually eat and for me that is red meat a few times a week definitely and just a lot of good wholesome food. Don't really change up what I have in race week at all really but just making sure I'm eating enough and getting all the stores up and getting the body ready to push really hard on race day. You definitely don't want to deplete yourself in any sort of area. And yeah, so I think that's just super important is to keep on top of it. Even if you're tapering, make sure you're still eating a good amount of food and don't think, oh, I'm tapering, so I shouldn't need so much. You definitely still do. So I think just always keeping on top of good nutrition, getting your red meat in multiple times a week and always making sure you're finishing up your big sessions with a decent amount of protein.

CAM HARPER

And how about you, Braden, similar sort of philosophy?

BRADEN CURRIE

Yeah, pretty much 100%. I think people do get pretty wound up that race week. And I think a big thing that we've always worked on is, I guess, gut health, so stomach health, and being able to digest the foods. And when you train a lot, the stomach does get pretty upset. And you do tend to take on a lot of really high sugar, high carb kind of foods when you're out there training. So for me, yeah, it's really key to make sure that our food is relatively simple. Meat, vegetables, and keep it pretty clean and unprocessed. I think the more I can keep to a simple, clean eating diet, generally the healthier I am for an extended period of time. And race week, again, I don't really change a huge amount in my diet. I tend to look at carbs as in a way of getting them from whole foods, so not so much pasta, but more just from potatoes, kumara, vegetables, and just try and pick up kind of the volume or the uptake of carbs through those kind of vegetables rather than large amounts of large amounts of grains, really.

CAM HARPER

And you talked about lamb racks on the barbecue before, Braden. Is that up there with the favourite recipes? What's your favourite beef and lamb recipe?

BRADEN CURRIE

Oh, I mean, they're endless at the end of the day. But pistachio crusted lamb rack, you really can't go past that one on the barbecue. The Weber as well, so you can shut it down and just let it cook through a little bit and then take it off. Good 20 minutes, half an hour resting just lets it set up really well. A little secret, last night, this is probably because of ANZCO, I did a Vietnamese beef salad and I used a really beautiful piece of fillet, which is probably a bit extravagant for a Vietnamese beef salad, but it was sensational.

CAM HARPER

I like that you got your own take on it though, that's fantastic. It's really good. And how about you Hannah, what's your go-to, what's the fave when it comes to beef and lamb recipes?

I'm not going to say a lamb rack because Braden's already said that, but I'll say one recipe that I probably do quite often at home because it's quick and easy after a big day of training is like a Moroccan lamb wrap kind of thing. So lamb diced up with Moroccan spices and a bit of red onion and lemon juice and lemon zest and sort of mix all that through and then serve that up on wraps with salad and tzatziki and yeah, a few other things. It's just like a very simple and easy way to get a good meal in and yeah, it doesn't take long if you have a little bit time stretch So that's one that happens.

CAM HARPER

That's fantastic. So you'll see we've got this “The sprint finish” so we can end up with a sprint finish. I've got to say I don't wish this on you guys as athletes on the day, although I love a good sprint finish at the end of an IRONMAN, not me personally, I love commentating it though, you know, just to full on grit your teeth, go for it. But this is the ANZCO Foods version of a sprint finish. So I'm going to ask you guys a few questions and just the first thing that comes to your mind.

So I guess we'll go, each time I ask a question, Hannah, you can answer first and Braden, you can answer second. Unless you want Braden to go first, you decide. Do you want Braden to go first?

BRADEN CURRIE

Ladies first, ladies first. No, I'm a gentleman. I'm a gentleman.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, that's fine, I don't mind.

CAM HARPER

I love how you own it eh. It's fantastic.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, whatever, I'll take it on.

CAM HARPER

Yeah, I love it. So Hannah first, Braden second, we'll get through these, about half a dozen or so.

BRADEN CURRIE

She's gonna steal all my answers.

HANNAH BERRY

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

BRADEN CURRIE

I wanna go first.

CAM HARPER

No, it's too late. It's a bit like some version of family feud and we'll put you in a locked room for a bit, Braden. Anyway. Right, let's go. Let's go, okay.
Morning person or night person?

HANNAH BERRY:

Morning.

BRADEN CURRIE:

Morning.

CAM HARPER

What's your favourite hobby that's not sport?

HANNAH BERRY

Reading.

BRADEN CURRIE

They're endless. Can I say that?

CAM HARPER

No.

BRADEN CURRIE

That's not sport. Oh, I don't read. Like is tramping and hiking and stuff. Is diving, is that a sport?

CAM HARPER

Yeah, that's good enough. Yeah. I guess it's a sport. Let's call it a pastime.

BRADEN CURRIE

Okay, it wasn't very fast, let's go.

CAM HARPER

Swim, bike, run, which is better?

HANNAH BERRY

Run

BRADEN CURRIE

Run.

CAM HARPER

Your steaks - medium, medium rare? Which one, medium or medium rare? Or you like something else?

CAM HARPER

Medium rare

BRADEN CURRIE

Medium rare.

CAM HARPER

Nickname of your bike? Oh, I don't have one. I don't know why people do that.

BRADEN CURRIE

Mine's called Caroline, you know that song? Caroline, Caroline, she’s mighty fine.

CAM HARPER

Oh really? I thought you were more like Neil Diamond, sweet Caroline, but no.

BRADEN CURRIE

No, my new one and she's got curves. Yeah, she's a Caroline.

CAM HARPER

I love it, that's awesome. So Hannah, you're off to a barbecue. What meat do you take?

HANNAH BERRY

Oh, can I just be boring? I'd probably just take steak, because I like it.

BRADEN CURRIE

I don't know if that's very boring, but I'd definitely take a lamb rack if I had the option.

CAM HARPER

I'm getting a theme here, Braden, that you like your lamb racks.

BRADEN CURRIE

They're like little lollipops, eh? Kids just lap them up. They are, eh? Can't get enough.

CAM HARPER

They are awesome. That is really, really good, guys. So, look, we'll leave it there. Braden Curry, Hannah Berry, IRONMAN New Zealand champions. We're going to see you both at NutriGrain IRONMAN New Zealand in Taupo again. ANZCO Food Ambassadors, thank you very much for your time today.

HANNAH BERRY

Thank you very much for having us.

BRADEN CURRIE

Thanks Cam, pleasure.

CAM HARPER

We have made it to the finish line of our first podcast of Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods, Season 1 Beef, Lamb and IRONMAN. Thanks Hannah and Braden for joining us and thank you for tuning into Nutrition Mission with ANZCO Foods. If you enjoyed our podcast and want to find out more, head to anzcofoods.com/ironman for more insights and news. Make sure you tune in next time when we'll be talking to nutritionist Mikki Williden about the importance of nutrition for endurance events.