S1E05 · Jarryd Palser #PulseCast

Hey guys, welcome to the Virtus Performance podcast episode number 5. Today I was lucky enough to sit down with frankly one of my favourite humans, one of the nicest humans in the world, Jared Pulsar. Pulsi's been through a fair bit, he's one of those guys who's made a significant lifestyle change for a long period of time and he's been able to maintain it and continue living a healthy lifestyle. So we spoke about his journey, about the things that helped him continue to lose weight and continue to strive for different things and reach different achievements. We

spoke about his journey through marathons and ironmans and his role as a teacher and education and how he can use everything he's been to to help all of his students at school. So yeah, it was a really enjoyable hour and a half and I'm really looking forward to everyone listening to it because I definitely learnt a lot and I'll definitely be getting a lot of people to listen to it. But yeah, enjoy, here's Pulsi. Hello welcome from the Virtus Performance podcast studio, today we are doing episode number 5 with the great man Jared Pulsar. Pulsi welcome, thank you Lachlan.

Now we've got a few things I want to talk about today but the main thing is creating a positive long term behavioural change. You have gone through a big change in your life, tell us a little bit more about it. Well where do we start, jeez, I've always been a rather large overweight kid ever since I can remember, even going through primary school, looking back on it, I could always tell that I was probably in the overweight category. Always loved my sport though and tried my best at everything that I did and playing team sports

as a young kid you probably got away with it and didn't realise your performance was hampered by your body shape or your body composition, it took me a long time to really realise that. And then you went through uni and living on a shoestring budget and food and it takes a bit of a second, eating second chance, like you don't really look after yourself with what you eat at uni and you're kind of eating a lot of rice and pasta and you're trying to live on a shoestring budget and those are all the cheapest things

and then got through uni, started teaching and kind of just, there was a couple of things that triggered it with a catalyst and it was through chats with friends and just like that, one of my housemates had a chat and just decided to start changing a few things and see where it would take me. How did your weight and your size affect your mindset when you were growing up? It probably fluctuated a lot throughout my teenage years, like I always thought, I always knew I was big and I was okay with that and until you

really get a bit older, through your early teenage years you tend not to worry about it as much, there's not much pressure on your peers or socially and stuff like that, as I said before I was still playing sport and still being in team sports you kind of get away with being part of the team and you obviously can rely on other people but I thought I always used to try and at least pull my weight and the two sports I mainly played were cricket which is, body composition is not super important in cricket and

then obviously football too, you can kind of still have an impact if you knew a little bit about the game and what to do and knew your limitations so it wasn't until really when you start to become more social and more independent that you realise that it has a bit of an effect on your lifestyle and you're always thinking oh what can I be doing better but it probably wasn't until I was 15, 16, 17, 18 when I really started to think about it and it really started to weigh me down, weigh me down is

probably an interesting term, good ways for you to really start to think about it, probably really didn't really start affecting me until probably my mid 20s when I was at uni and really started to get really anxious about it and really awkward and one thing was I always thought when I went out in a social setting I always tried to think am I the biggest person in the room kind of thing when if there was someone that I perceived that was bigger which is an awful thing to think about I thought oh that's okay I'm not the biggest guy here or something like that.

Did that affect you going out in social settings and putting yourselves in those situations or? I always, I didn't have an issue going out, I was always social, I always had friends and it wasn't like I stayed at home or anything like that, I always wanted to go out but as you get older you want to start to have relationships and stuff like that too and I always tried to put myself out there and I thought maybe we started to become a bit of a limiting factor. So when you started, when you decided that it

was time to make the change and you said there were a couple of catalyst conversations that got you there where did you get to, how big were you and how old were you? So it was probably, I probably got through uni at that stage and it was probably towards the back end of uni so doing a four year uni course I lived away from home for four years so I used to travel to and from uni up to Ballarat. Probably wasn't until the end of uni until I moved back home for a little bit and started teaching for my first year.

I never actually really weighed myself, there was really no point. I think maybe 135, 140 kilos at one point probably at my heaviest. I think one day I went and tried on a pair of jeans at the shop and I think I tried on a pair of like 42 waisted jeans or even a 44 waisted jeans and they all struggled to get on so it was very uncomfortable in that kind of setting and I thought yeah, there's something here that I potentially need to work on at some point. Tell me about, and it's something that you've spoken to me about a little bit, about that conversation you had with your housemate as one of the turning points.

Yeah so I had a couple of mates from uni that I've talked about in the past and they were always really supportive and stuff like that and I said yeah I really do need to make a change, I've really got to do something but it wasn't really until I moved out of home and lived with a couple of mates from high school and we were four pretty, three young guys in this house and we had a lot of fun in that house, a lot of our mates. It was a bit like a drop-in centre really,

everyone kind of come around and it wasn't until Luke Conway who I lived with just kind of sat me down one day, he was just out of the blue and said mate I really, really love you but you need to start, it was a conversation out of the blue, he said you've got to do something because otherwise you seem not happy with yourself and these kind of things but you're not doing anything to kind of change yourself so he kind of just said why don't you just come along to the gym with me and I

can show you what I do there and yeah it kind of all just kind of stemmed from that conversation and I think I'm a person that has, and it was discussed in your earlier podcast, someone with intrinsic motivation, like I've always thought that I always did stuff for me and didn't really need other people to push me along but it was just that initial push to get moving and get going because not having ever been into a gym as a 22 year old I did a little bit of uni but airy fairy kind of stuff,

didn't really know what to do and really a little bit self-conscious, you didn't want to be that awkward person that you see on all those failed videos doing the wrong thing and stuff like that as well. What was the first step at the gym? So was it just going and training? Yeah I think the first, the initial kind of thing that I did was I just started to, just followed him around for a couple of weeks and he was into his weights kind of thing and he still does his weights routinely, kind of did that

with him and thought that was okay and then I kind of realised that it's probably what I probably didn't need at that stage quite quickly and I think I was starting to do a little bit of swimming at the time in previous years to try and supplement what I thought for football training and those kind of things I thought I'll do a little bit of swimming but I really enjoyed swimming so I kind of continued down that path of just the swimming and then I really progressed to the cross trainer at the gym so the

one where you kind of, like the skiing one where you have your hands and stuff like that and I really enjoyed that and it was probably a good choice at the time because obviously there's no impact there with no weight-bearing and stuff like that and yeah less weight-bearing, you could get a really good workout doing those kind of things and stuff like that too so that was good and I could see and I made a few lifestyle choices from that initial conversation too and just not that I was a big soft drinker at the time

but I just said no more soft drink which I thought was an easier one to cut out with and I then tried to be a little bit more mindful of the food I was eating at the time and obviously being like a teenage male it's hard when you have friends in a social setting going out and stuff like that, healthy eating is probably not something that's looked highly, not looked highly upon, it just makes it difficult in those kind of settings where you're going out and stuff like that but I just tried to make some choices that were going to be what I perceive better for me without actually knowing if they really were or anything like that.

Yeah, but you felt like all of those little things started to occur? Yeah I could have started to notice and obviously once you start going to the gym you get into a bit of a rhythm and you can see your body starting to change a little bit like that and obviously being that big or that overweight, small changes can have a big effect to begin with and you can lose a lot of weight quite quickly and yeah it was all kind of self-taught and yeah kind of thing and just kept really just chugging along on

the cross trainer really that was my main thing, I still wasn't interested in, I think maybe continued to lift a little bit of weight and then then I decided I'd progress through to the running on the road and those kind of things too. What are the main things that helped you stay the course and keep your body moving towards a healthier lifestyle? Yeah I think I mentioned it before, it was just intrinsic motivation and I'd like to think the kind of personality type I have, I think I like to stick through something to see its

end of its course, you could almost look at it as a bit of a sucker for punishment, stubbornness like I didn't want to quit, I didn't want to give up and I was enjoying it too like I was really enjoying it and obviously when you like something you want to go back to the well more and more and more and yeah it was my stubbornness, I don't know I was seeing change and I was happier, I was a happier person too which was a big thing I could notice that I was making a change to not only myself physically but mentally as well.

Yeah awesome, what are the kind of things that, I guess what setbacks did you have while you were going through that process and what things stopped your progress or halted your progress or slowed it down throughout that process? I was pretty lucky like I didn't really get injured or anything like that going through the process, it probably wasn't really a lot of times where I was hampered by injury or setbacks or anything like that, kind of just kept ticking boxes along the way and I think the cross trainer thing was probably a big thing because

if I tried to do as much as I did early on I would have gotten myself into trouble, I would have believed, I would have been tough on my body pushing 140 kilos and those kind of things too and I was always weary, at footy I did hurt my knee and was diagnosed with like an ACL rupture but when I had MRIs a couple of times all the advice from the specialist and stuff like that come back was pretty inconclusive so I was always pretty mindful that laterally I wasn't that great too and those kind

of things so I still have to be careful on it today and stuff like that but you tend to know your limitations and stuff like that too and straight line running which I kind of took up was pretty good for it. From someone who has been able to move through that change and actually make a long term positive change, what advice would you have for everyone out there who struggled to implement those changes? I think it's hard, it's really, really hard to change and get into that kind of lifestyle. At first, that first initial thing

which worked well was that I didn't really have any goals, I found something that I enjoyed and I just kept wanting to do it like if you want to put yourself in a pressure situation and say you want to lose this weight before this day I think then it becomes really stressful when you start to stress yourself out and you've talked about this in the past on the podcast like once your stress hormones are up it's very detrimental to what you're trying to achieve and it's all well and good if everyone has a stressful life,

they're busy, work, study, family and stuff like that and sometimes it's okay to take a couple of backwards steps to go forward like if you need to take time away from the gym and take two weeks off, you've got to be patient, patience is a big thing I think in anything that we do you've just got to be patient and just chip, chip, chip away at what you're trying to achieve and if you don't have a goal but you can see yourself improving that's fine too, you don't have to work towards something. That's really cool

and that I guess delves, we delve a little bit deeper into the last week's podcast with Greg about setting goals but actually doing things you enjoy because if you actually spend time doing something you enjoy you're going to want to like I said go back to the well and keep doing it and keep tipping in and you might not have those really exciting goals down the track but you knock over that enjoyment day in and day out and that helps. Yeah, totally right like I was always a sports tragic as a kid like park me

in front of the TV, I can't normally sit still but if there's sports on the TV it could be anything, I'll watch it like and I was always interested in sports so having that, seeing the transfer between sport, exercise and those kind of things, you just enjoyed it and it was good and you see those personal gains that you're getting and you feel good about yourself and obviously endorphins and those kind of things and I think it really helps with my mental side of things as well like it's a real outlet for me and I think it became a real outlet and it still is to this day.

Awesome, moving from I guess the weight loss journey to your marathon, how did you make that decision to, what possessed you to want to run a marathon? So what kind of happened was progress from the cross trainer kind of just, there used to be like there's certain workouts you do on the cross trainer and like I was going to the gym and running for like 60, 70 minutes on the cross trainer and quite boring obviously but then like I decided, I think it would have been back in 2012, my sister Marley who was running a

little bit at the time too said hey why don't we sign up and do like this little fun run and stuff like that too so I thought yeah, why not, let's give it a go, like I've never done anything like this before, it seems to be like the natural progression for me to have a go at so I think it was the city to see which is basically from St Kilda down to Albert Park, 10, 14 K at the time all the way up in Elwood and I thought yeah, I'll give it a go and

so I did training for it so the training that I was doing for it I used to still do the cross trainer stuff and then on the sat day I used to go for what probably was a long run, I used to just do that kind of thing and I just wanted to make sure I covered the distance before I did it and I was able to do that and had a real positive experience on that day and I think 72 minutes I think was the time which was pretty good and at the time I

was starting to, I kind of gone away from going to my own gym and I was going to one of, another gym in Mornington, Hanley's and I stroke up a good relationship with one of the personal trainers there and they did a lot of running in their kind of programming and stuff like that and Di who was one of the trainers at the time said you've got like a really good endurance, like you're a good runner and like to have someone say that to you and you kind of think me, a good runner kind of

thing, like I've never run before in my life, like I've always kind of, even at footy training and stuff like that when you have to do the time trials and the pre-season, I used to hate it but once someone tells you you've got a talent for it, you're not not a talent but you're good at it, then you think well I've actually got something here to work with so from that kind of point in time and I met a guy called Paul Vosti through footy and he had this fantastic like community of runners called Icarus

that I kind of said hey we run and we do this kind of thing, why don't you come along kind of thing to do this this running and they had a real kind of community atmosphere and they ran every Sunday out of Frankston and they did long runs and it was a small group of runners but like-minded people just trying to get better at their running and that was a really positive experience. Marathon was kind of just progressed through, like did a lot more fun runs and that kind of thing and then at the end of 2012 I come up with this crazy idea that I wanted to run 2013 kilometres in 2013.

As you do. Yeah. That's excellent. Yeah, it was some, I don't know, I saw, I can't remember what triggered to me, I think we were talking about a lot of me on the New Year's Eve or something like that and we were talking about it and watching New Year's Resolution and I kind of said I might have a crack at running 2013 kilometres for the year and my mate at the time, Will, goes well I'm going to try and eat 2013 chicken wings which was an interesting contrast and I said yeah, I'll have a crack

and see how I go and the marathon was just a part of that kind of year and I was lucky enough to knock over two marathons that year in the space of about 14 weeks so I flew up to the Gold Coast and did one up there which is funnily enough happening today. There you go. Which is pretty crazy. In July in the school holidays which is always good and it's a fantastic event up there if you ever get a chance to run any time at that event they've got half marathon, 10k kids events and

stuff like that, fantastic, I think it's the best marathon in Australia and then was lucky enough to have a go at Melbourne probably 12, 13 weeks later and yeah and did some real specific training and stuff like that through the guy through Icarus so they had a bit of a running coach and able to give me a bit of a plan and was able to map out what I was trying to do. I had a little, I think I did a half marathon probably at some point as well in, must have been 2012 as well,

planned it out, executed the plan and was actually specific running training and I was doing like 50, 60, 70 k's a week at times and long runs on the weekend doing like 30k long runs on the Sunday at race pace and it was just over and yeah like reps and it was like a real specific, real proper training plan and was able to stick to that as much as I could and could you see your progressions and there's some tough sessions I remember like I used to go to Paul's house or Munch's house and we

used to do 1k reps at some ridiculous time in the morning around his street in Mount Eliza, I don't know if you know people who ever saw us but like tough sessions doing like 14, 1k splits on four minutes and it's, I wouldn't want to do that, no it's tough, it's tough and like to think to yourself too and looking back at it too is thinking geez running 17 k's in the morning before like going to work and stuff like that you just, sometimes I shake my head at it now just thinking crap how did

it, how do you do that, how does the body adapt to that, you got it done, you get it done, yeah you do, you get better and you just, as I said that stubbornness kicks in from me and want to stay true to the course and try and finish what you set out, I think you talk about, you speak about it and what like as well like staying true to your word I think is a big thing for me like if you say, if you set out to do something I'm the kind of person that wants to do it kind of thing.

Yeah awesome that's really cool. What was different between the first marathon and the second marathon? Not a lot had probably changed in that time, I probably learnt the first marathon, nutrition and hydration is a big thing, I remember I was, and pacing too, all those kind of things, haven't actually been able to nail a marathon as of yet, like I've either cramped or just blown up mentally where I haven't, and to finish strong at the line and that's one thing I still want to tick off the bucket list. Yeah so you'll do another one? At

some point in time too, I might have, I don't know, I'm thinking Melbourne but I may run my dash a little bit late this year but at some point I think I'll have another crack to try and break the elusive 3 hours 30 minutes barrier which is 5 minute case, which is something that I think I can achieve, my PB at the moment is 3, 33, 33, so yeah it's 5 threes which is pretty cool, maybe like to keep that as my PB but yeah just to go under that barrier and break 3.30 which is kind of like a big thing for the weekend warrior spell runner.

The weekend warrior, the running community. So I think you just learn a few things from time to time, at Gold Coast I probably went out too hard and I was probably flying, I was way ahead of schedule and I set myself to run with the 3.30 balloon which people who don't do a lot of running at these big events they have paces which is their job and they're employed to run at a certain pace to get people through at a certain time so I, in the scramble at the start you're always a lot of people

to try and work through but 2 k's in you try and get a bit of open track and you try and work out where you are and try and find where you want to stand so I was with the 3.30 balloon for a lot of time and felt good and then I thought I felt really good and just wanted to run and got ahead of the balloon and then I thought great I'm feeling really really good here and I was wearing a fuel belt at the time I was carrying a gel and those kind of

things and I probably wasn't hydrated enough just thinking back to it now and those kind of things and I got to about 32 k and I just started cramping because the weather's so different to what it is up there like just the heat got to me a little bit and started cramping in the calves and the last 6 k's was run walk and really faded towards the end. Gets to Melbourne so you do another block of training and you try and work on these things and try and get through and learn from the first one.

Ran with Paul again who was going to pace me that time but the first time around he was going for a faster time so the second time around he said alright I'll pace you and to this day he still reckons he's done me the right thing but I reckon he's probably, I still think that he's burnt me a few early and didn't leave a lot in the tank there but on that course you probably have to be a little bit ahead of schedule because the last 6 k's can be a bit tough because you come

around the shrine and have to run up the hill and even come back up St Kilda Road is a bit of a hill so you've got to leave a little bit in the tank or you've got to be a bit ahead of schedule. I got to about 30, it's that 32-34 k mark and if you read any marathon or just any runners report on the marathon it's always at that point where it just plays on your head and stuff like that and you've done the calves and you've done all the work but it just plays on your head.

I was physically fine it was just mentally that it shot me and to Paul's credit though he did get me to a point where I was able to, I walked and then I was still half a sniff to really get moving again to try and break 330 but kind of just fell off the wagon a little bit and then once I realised it was out of reach I kind of just made sure I wanted to beat my time from the Gold Coast and was able to do that by about 3.33 so I was able to

break that by about 4 minutes which is, doesn't seem a lot in terms of a marathon but I still have to stoke with PB any time you run a PB in the kind of endurance event. This is a massive win. It was a really good day like I got to run with one of my childhood heroes for a lot of the run, Robert Harvey. That was a really cool experience running along with him and people saying is that Halves and it's like yeah I'm running with Halves. And Pulsi. Yeah but he's next level. He beat me that day off no base and was able to smash out like a 320 marathon.

He's a crazy human. Like obviously AFL player. Elite endurance and stuff like that. Yeah crazy to think about. What came after the marathon? I thought marathons. I thought what can I do next? Just a marathon. What's next? Just a marathon. So I thought and what's next in the progression chain really when you think of marathons? You've got triathlon? Yeah. I thought oh yeah triathlon. I've always kind of thought that'd be cool. I remember growing up as a kid, Wild Water Sports always used to show this thing called Kona. I've had some people that I've known through my life kind of do these triathlon things and always kind of been at the back of my mind.

Lucky enough when I was running in Frankston I was able to go down there a couple of times and my relationship with the crew at Hanley, one of the trainers over there, did it two years in a row and one year I went along and supported him and got really behind it and went up to the finish line and seen him finish and I don't know there was just like this atmosphere and I remember us saying at the time like I'd come away from there and just wanted to do like 100 push-ups. It just instilled you with so much confidence and to see people coming down that chute.

I don't know. It makes me feel funny sitting here now. I've got like goosebumps coming up on the back of my neck. I don't know if anyone's ever been to. It's the best vibe. If you want to like try and learn anything about the human spirit I reckon go to a marathon event or go to an endurance event and go to the end and just see the joy that it brings to people and yeah I went there and I said crap this is awesome. How do you do this kind of thing? Like I said at the time I feel like doing like 100 push-ups and something like this is like 10/30 at night kind of thing.

It's like whoa what's this? So we get through 2013 on the back of like doing these kind of marathons and with Ironman kind of thing you have to sign up the year before so it would have been 2013 I would have signed up to do the 2014 Ironman in Melbourne. I think I can't even remember when it was. I think it's around April so I signed up a year from that in the midst of doing all that marathon running and stuff like that too. So signed up in April of 2013 and I thought that makes sense.

I'll have a crack at that kind of thing. For those that don't know how far is Ironman? Ironman Triathlon is the longest form of, well one of the longest forms of triathlons so it's a 3.8k swim, 180k bike and a marathon to finish so 42.2. Just plug into the end. Yeah just to finish off your day. Yeah so seeing that and thought oh yeah couldn't be that. Couldn't be that bad. Couldn't be that bad. People told me the guy who did it said I could do it so but I really didn't start riding my bike

till like October or something like that and I'd never done any riding before and I didn't even have a bike until that point in time and yeah we just concentrated on the running and stuff like that. It wasn't until I finished the second marathon that I got stuck into a bit of riding and stuff like that too. And you'd done some swimming in the past. Oh yeah a little bit but I was just swimming laps like endurance training or endurance events require more than just volume so I was just swimming for distance which is fraught

with danger in terms of looking back at it now being like having a bit more experience and doing a bit more edgy learning more about the things that people do and then yeah just yeah the way I approached it I scratch my head now thinking about how I was able to achieve what I did that day. Now the term you've used in the past is you winged it. Flat out winged it. Flat out winged it. No coach. As I said didn't get a bike till October. Was swimming what I thought was enough but everything else suggests that I wasn't riding nowhere near enough.

I was maybe doing enough running at the time but probably not the right time. One of three. One of three yeah. That's alright. Talk me through that day. How'd it pan out? How'd you go? Did you get it done? Like even like to I think my longest ride up to that point in time was like 115 k's and I was gassed at the end of that like I was cooked I was a broken man. I don't have as many riders in the Virtus family but riding is a unique beast in terms of what it can do to your body.

I've done one weekend of it 200 k's in two days and I'm not looking forward to starting to get back on a bike again. It's an interesting sport and a lot of people think why would you cycle and stuff like that too. It's something that really polarises people I guess if you're in the community you think yeah this is great kind of thing but I know there are nuisance on the traffic and stuff like that too at times but yeah people just don't really understand what those elite guys and stuff go through in terms of what they put their body through and the effects the cycling has on the body.

You're riding 3-4 hours it's hydration, nutrition all that is very very important. You'll see the guys if you're watching the Tour de France over the next couple of weeks they're always eating or drinking something to just get their calories up because it's a massive massive calorie burn. So much energy. So much energy. If I was having my time again you'd almost would say you're better off instead of doing the cross train you're probably better off sitting on an exercise bike than anything like that too. Or both. Just doing a combination of things. But yeah Ironman what a day.

Very long day at the time. I remember I was real nervous and really strange to sleep in your own bed the night before and then just rock up to Frankston. It's like this big thing and it's in your backyard kind of thing. You think crap this is good and the build up to an Ironman is a bit strange because you have to go and you check in at St Kilda and then you kind of have to drop your bike off the day before. Even things like I've got no knowledge of a bike and I remember

I didn't even know how to pump my tires up at one stage and stuff like this and I was rocking up on the day and I was lucky to have one mate that I knew that was doing as well he was a bit of a whiz and mighty. I said mate can you just please check my tires because I don't really know what I'm doing. I schooled to this day that you're meant to be able to change a tire. I wouldn't know what to do at least. I'd probably work it out but it would take me a bloody long time.

And I had all the equipment that were able me to do it and funny story on the day which I'll probably get to have a bit of a malfunction on the bike and yeah but to this day I'd probably work it out now but no where near as competent as it should be for the amount of riding I was doing. My always attitude was I've got my phone I couldn't always ring someone to come pick me up. But that doesn't happen on the race day. You can always outsource. Yeah you can always outsource and that actually did happen on the day which is somewhat strange because all the reading I did of the rules and stuff like that.

So you're not allowed to get any outside assistance but I'm very thankful that the guy on the motorbike come past and change my tire for me. But I'll get to that. Swim's always I don't know if anyone's seen an endurance swim event. Physical. It's very intense. They say in triathlon you gotta learn to swim with fists because on the mass start ones it can be a bit messy and stuff like that. I was under the presumption that I was just gonna go to the back and I'm just gonna cruise. I'm not even there to try and win so there's no point in me clogging up everyone else's space.

So I had a friend at the time and we just said yeah we'll just stick at the back and just let them all go off. So at this stage in Frankston so it would have been 2014 it was still a mass start. So that means everyone in the field gun goes off bang in the water. And the course at Frankston that day was you go you're starting if I'm looking out of the water to the pier you start on the left hand side of the pier and you're out to the end of the pier and around it was a massive L shape and you come back in kind of thing.

Quite a good course and I just remember bang and you're in the water. The first probably 500 meters was a bit tough to try and find some open water and I thought and we found some open water which is very thankful and you just kind of get into a bit of a rhythm and just keep telling yourself like you just keep going keep going keep going and all that training that I did probably wasn't enough at the stage but I got through and my time actually wasn't that bad looking back at it now and I'd

always done a little bit of swimming as a kid like nothing serious or anything I like I did a bit of like surf life saving going through school. I was an okay swimmer I was a competent swimmer put it that way but just able to just work my way through it like technique was probably awful but just got through. Stopped a couple of times and you always kind of have a little bit you get a little bit disorientated and stuff like that too in the water and got out and it was great saw all my family and friends and got out of transition and headed off on the bike.

I thought okay here we go. How's the body feeling at that point? Ah yeah you're not too bad because it's as I said no a little bit tired and I was kind of under the think like if I can use my arms predominantly in the swim you're not going to really need them for the rest of the day kind of. Solid tactics. So yeah anywhere it relates to saltwater you're more buoyant yeah so got a bit more extra kind of leverage there in terms of the water like you've got a bit of an advantage there

so felt really really good and then jumped on the bike and everyone else is wearing all these fancy suits and I'm in like transition just putting on a pair of bike shorts and a bike jersey kind of thing and I just had my pockets loaded up with all my nutrition yeah I thought oh yeah I'll just chuck some things in the back of my shirt I'll be right and jumped on the bike and that year it's up and down the Eastlink a couple of times so yeah uh you ride out of Frankston on the yeah

past Seaford Road and jump onto the Eastlink and you're riding up and down the Eastlink twice so you ride all the way through the tunnel through the tunnel at the other end of the Eastlink spin around and come back and you have to do that twice um the wind heading out towards Eastlink was great you got a bit of a tail and it was good and it's it's not as flat as you think you are as in the car so it's a bit undulating which is a little bit um interesting because in a car that

seems to be flat the whole time you don't notice so great on the way out come back wind was starting to pick up so you get through and stuff like that too so got through spun around and like geez are you thinking crap when's this going to end lap two like I thought all right I've just got to save myself something in the tank and I remember coming back on the first lap I thought hey I could just ride home here and no one will even know like you get so interested you learn a lot

about yourself on the day kind of thing going through and you see all your family and friends I remember I thought I started crying and I was like what's going on you turn around in Frankston at the main roundabout there and you come back and everyone's cheering for you you think fuck I've got to go do this again kind of thing so you're out and I thought all right I've got the wind to my advantage here so I knocked down a couple of gears on the on the bike and just thought I'd try and conserve

a bit of energy yeah um and um uh got to the other end and then coming back because the wind got even up again and you're pushing into a massive kind of kind of tail braze head brazing you're thinking crap when when is this gonna end gonna end and then for some reason I came good yeah I'm like I was just making up my nutrition along again I had protein bars I don't even know what else I was having I probably wasn't drinking enough water yeah you grab stuff on course and you think oh yeah

that'll do that'll do take a bit of that flat coke whatever you could get your hands on kind of thing yep and then I was starting to make some ground pack up I think what's going on here like this is my like I'm probably 30 k's past like my max ride and I started feeling really really good and I was like crap it's coming really really good and I got all the way back to almost Frankston and I remember I was coming near Seaford Road turn off on the freeway there yeah I crossed over like

the middle part of the road and bang I get a puncture no I'm like oh I'm seven k's out from from transition 173 k's yeah 173 k's down and I get a puncture I'm like oh I was like oh no what do I do so hop off my bike and I'm like people are asking if you're right I said yeah yeah I'm good and good and then I didn't realize I was starting panicking I actually don't know what I'm doing here yeah and a thing like crap what do I have to do like what do

I do then when they go okay and what the riders kept going past you right I said oh I don't know what I'm doing and you're like what do you mean okay I seriously don't know what I'm doing at this point this guy jumped off his bike and he goes I'll give you a hand I'm like thank you so much like I know that all of a sudden this guy comes flying through on a motorbike like one of the course marshals yeah he goes don't worry about it let it go I'll do it yeah so

at this stage I'm off my bike and he goes all right I'll give you a hand I don't know I said oh thanks so much and I think the rule with is with iron man traveling you're not allowed to have any outside assistance so he was obviously inside so he's luckily come past at the time otherwise it could have been all these thoughts are swirling through my head do I have to like run my bike back to transition the last seven days yeah trying to work out what I'm trying to do and this guy on

the motorbike comes in and he saves the day and right gets the tire on and gets it fixed and we inflate it bang we're away and then all of a sudden bang again there's actually like a rock stuck in my tire so the second tube I put in just popped it popped again and I'm like oh no I don't have another tube I'm stuffed I'm gone I mean and then I remember to this day the guy goes go for a walk have a stretch just walk down the road yeah have something to eat have something

to drink I've got a spare tube I've got a spare tire I'll fix it flat yeah so all I can probably about half an hour on the side of the road but probably probably saved me in terms of it was a forced rest essentially so it's probably a good thing in the end to be able to have that rest so I got back on the bike and from that point time I was just angry frustrated frustrated and um and I was frustrated and I was like angry and I said oh I've got a puncture and

I remember I rolled into transition and people saying what's wrong and stuff like that yeah I said oh I've got a puncture and I was like yeah yeah cool and I've still got to run I've still got to run a marathon too and so get off and have a drink and get changed and I thought oh here we go run this is me I've been running did 2013 k's so ran off and I was running angry and I thought oh yeah I'll just keep going and I remember all my family and all my friends were

there and my sisters were going crazy yeah yeah you can do this and I was like I said I said to my sisters at the time it's two k's into 40 just try and pump the brakes here I've got a long time ago exactly I'm running into I'm running out of frankston at that point in time yeah and I remember I ran my first probably eight nine ten k's really really well and I ran them like in 51 minutes which they take it over to like five minute k's which is my marathon pace yeah I

think oh yeah I'm I'm home here like I'm easy day at the office and then all of a sudden I just fell in a massive massive hole like to be expected yeah like massive hole and just thought oh no tried running like I don't know what was happening like I was in a dark spot I was still dirty that I had a puncture and stuff like this and yeah the good thing about the course at frankston was that you're able to move freely with cars on the other side of the road so I had all

my family and friends around me and I remember I was having a conversation to die who was a trainer at the time at Hanley's he said like you just got to let it go like you got 30 k's to go enjoy yourself run run happy run with this moment who cares if you've got a puncture yeah he could live in the moment got to move forward I said yeah you're right and then kind of thing I was like trying to work out a strategy in my head that will get myself going and I was like

maybe do I run a k walk a k and I was run walking and I was trying to find a strategy that worked I remember I got to mordiale and then I ran 10 k's really well and then fell off the wagon and I was running walking no real pattern emerging and yeah I thought oh crap I need to go to the toilet and I'd be numb in an army if I need to go and there was a port of loo at mordiale and it was a bit of a fan center where people could watch

it so I took the opportunity to go to the toilet and to this day dad says the look on my face going into the toilet as to coming out of the toilet was amazing because I've just done a complete turn of events and I thought all right there was some food there I loaded up and then I just kind of come up with a strategy that I wanted to like walk 500 run 500 and from that point in time all the way up to St Kilda and Elwood I was able to hit that plan and

I was able to and I'd set my watch having the smart watch to beep at me every 500 meters yeah I was able to do it and awesome just got through that way and was able to come down that finishing shoot and it's it's an amazing experience just to have your name and just come down that finishing shoot and I remember at the end of it they were like oh did you hear that the famous words Jared Pulsar you are an iron man I said yeah it was really good but I didn't know at the

time of Mike Riley the voice of Iron Man who gets to find out all these events just to say this for eight hours everyone finishes kind of things to come down the shoot he's like they man they talked about your bio he said like Jared Pulsar once was 130 kilos now he's an iron man and it's like this yeah it's this feeling and like just coming down that shoot and like just have this rush of adrenaline and like I sprinted down that shoot like going into the mower and I gave a massive fist pump as

I come across the line and like finished it and I was just like oh whoa like this is crazy like I've done it I've set out this stupid goal and achieved it and I was able to finish in about 13 hours 33 minutes I think which is your number yeah that's 33 is the number yeah keeps coming up so yeah finished and like I said to myself during the day I'd prefer like how long you think it's going to take some people ask me I said realistically I've got no idea but if I said I

reckon I'll be somewhere between 12 and 14 hours and yeah 13 30 was a pretty good guess if you take away that 30 minute stop over with the bike it would have been 30 hours it would have been smack bang on 13 hours so it's a fantastic sport triathlon if you people out there and don't know what to do with their time or want to have a go at something new it's such a good sport and it's unfortunate that it's probably an older scene as an older style sport so there's a lot more participants that

are 35 40 fast than there is participants that are 18 to 30 kind of thing yeah it's probably a pretty good sport to get into like for those for the guys that play footy and netball and team sports and field-based sports that need something to get them moving after they they retire because of injuries or or they're not able to play that level anymore it's probably it's probably a pretty awesome sport to get involved in absolutely and I would it's just such a great community feel in that sport and the amount of different people that

come and have a go at it it's just fantastic you get a lot of support on the way people love them so yeah it's really really good sport so was one enough uh at the time I said yes but stupidly I thought I may as well try and do this properly the second time around and decided to get a coach and I thought oh I reckon I've got I've left some time out on the course there so I wanted to have another crack at it and um at that point in time I signed up for

Melbourne or Frankston again yep which would have happened in April of 2016 so I had a I think I had a year off and did some more running and prepared a little differently yeah I prepared it yeah a lot differently so what happened was I decided to do it properly and um yeah yeah so yeah going back to like the first story too the first actual triathlon I ever did was a half Ironman which is half distance of what we talked about before and that's big for a first that's big for a first time people

like tell my story to people and try to scratch my head and they just think what are you doing kind of thing so second time around I decided to join like a triathlon club and yeah get a coach and have a plan and did it that way the second time around um yeah I was able to learn a lot more through that process it was a lot more structured training doing reps and running off the bike and yeah swimming technique and understanding a little bit more about all of the different things yeah and like endurance

sports nutrition hydration massive part of it they say that it's the fourth leg of any kind of injury endurance leg and if you don't get that right then you're going to have a bad day and I'm still yet to get it right so it's an ongoing kind of experience and yeah you've got to make sure that whatever you're going to do on the day you've done previously and yeah all these kind of things so he had decided to have another crack again um as I said signed up for Frankston which would have been 2016 yeah

um they Ironman made a decision that due to the Grand Prix clashing with it that they canned it and there's a number of reasons or rumors floating around why that happened yeah apparently it wasn't selling as much and stuff like that so I was a pretty shattered man when I found out that was going to happen um because they are expensive to to do and time it shifts all your focus and stuff like that like it's crazy it sounds you sign up to these things and it costs you like a thousand bucks to do and

yeah I think oh crap have I burnt my money here a little bit or all this time and energy they've invested to it so Ironman gave you the opportunity to go do any other open Ironman in the world um did a bit of research and found out Cairns was in a similar time and yeah stuff like that there was one in Perth in Busselton in WA which I could have done but it's probably a little bit too early in terms of where my training was at the moment so I made a decision to push back

that time to have a crack up in Cairns and um yeah I just got through my training a little bit um it was at this point that my body probably started to let me down a little bit I was getting a bit injured in terms of uh running and stuff like that and people say that the biggest uh biggest part of triathlon training or Ironman training is just getting to the start line and unfortunately picked up a few niggles along the way particularly my achilles and stuff like that which yeah cost my run a little

bit and I wasn't increasing volume or yeah a number of things it's probably just accumulation of all the training I've done previously yeah and I wasn't a big person to do recovery properly and these kind of things too but my achilles got really really sore and probably wasn't allowed I probably didn't do it any long running over 20-25 k's for a long time of my training and relied on just doing some shorter stuff yeah which which was fine and you can do there's many ways to train for an Ironman people do it on numerous hours

of training people spend six seven hours a week other people can spend 20-21 hours a week so yeah there's no one method to what you're trying to do but yeah so I had a real good coach Mitch Kibbe who was uh coaching out of the CF racing stable which is now i4 coaching um he's a triathlete himself um followed a similar trajectory from what I have like kind of self-taught and got involved that way and he has his ITU kind of racing so he races all around the world awesome um and he was a really

good guy still keeping contact with him today and he was able to teach me a lot about triathlon and how to train and all the little things that you don't actually know about that you kind of pick up along the way like even as simple as like putting like elastic bands in your shoes in transition for these for races so that they're on your pedals and these kind of things so you don't have to run in your shoes and look like a goose he goes if I'm coaching you you're going to learn how to clip

in and out of your bike properly and stuff like that too so that was really good and I was really happy with where I was in terms of my training and swimming and unfortunately got a bit injured toward the back end there and probably my riding and those kind of things we're in a good spot I've done a lot more work and I was excited to go up there and got to the day of the event in Cairns and I was lucky enough to have a friend up there and was able to stay up there

with them before the race and kind of settled in a little bit which was good and got up there and woke up in the morning and uh the weather gods weren't that kind to me all right it was a bit of a wind real windy day and the swell was up and then the swims out of palm cove I don't know if people have been up up north there and generally just like a lake yeah just flat like all flat like your bath but this day the swell was up and really really tough swim and

the water was really really salty um got through the swim somehow in a similar time and jumped on the bike again and but it was a tough day on the bike in the rain and pretty windy pretty windy the wind you get up towards the back end so you ride from palm cove out to port douglas pretty much back to palm cove or palm beach whatever it's called back to port douglas in the cans and was able to get through and um everything can go to plan that day on the bike as well at one

point my seat got real wobbly so I had to jump off and fix that I got put in the penalty box for drafting um which is I guess I was too close to the rider in front of me so it's like a five minute stop start penalty yeah kind of just got through though and I cramped too coming up one of the hills so on the bike on the bike so my nutrition and hydration was out from the get-go probably riding too hard and just little things like that I was able to get back into

cans in a pretty good shape and then I remember coming out of the run and seeing my partner jess and a couple of girls from work that come up claire and shona and just try to start running and I just had nothing I was gassed I was like I was cooked the whole time and um I thought crap it's gonna be a long day I was like oh no not again kind of thing yeah I thought I just wanted to run be able to run I had a plan to run like five minute 30 pace

5 45s and try to run I think I've got 300 meters out of transition and just thought what am I doing what am I doing so I remember walking for a little bit um just to try and get moving I thought I might have to walk this whole thing but kind of come good again and just went back to the default of the old walk 500 run 500 and did that for 39 k's and that's the way and strange things enough like when I was the running side of things I I was hitting about seven

seven thirty k's so I was running like the 500 meters like under five minute pace yeah and then walking for essentially five five kind of minutes so it was something that works for me and I was able to work my way through the triathlon and um come across at the end of the day with another kind of like pb and um it was yeah I was real happy but I just all I wanted to do was beat my time didn't have the best day conditions weren't in my favor but um yeah even like the pros

suffered that day with the weather and stuff like that with the swim and the bike and really tough day at the office but to come away from a pb up there with those conditions was was oh well I was a happy man how was how's the feeling finishing the second one compared to the first one same same thing oh just as good yeah um it was disappointing because I wanted to test myself on the same course to see how much I could improve with similar conditions just yeah and the best part of that frankston or

that melbourne ironman was having my whole family and friends there this time around I was lucky enough to have jess um my partner and then three girls from work actually flew up and surprised me that's awesome that was yeah so I was so thankful having that support on course is is amazing and like I don't know how people do it without having that kind of people checking in on you and just pushing you along and having people there just seems to help you immensely yeah so two marathons two ironmans how much do you think those

events have taught you about yourself and what are the main lessons you've got out of those well that's a good question um I think I think a mantra from ironman is that anything is possible yeah I think that's a big thing if you really want something and want to work for it then I think I truly believe that anything is possible you can go out there and if it's exercise related or if it's personal life related if you want to work at it spend time and spend energy doing it then you could really achieve anything

that you want to do awesome I think that's the big one that I take out of that yeah I think people look for a quick fix or in anything that we do really they want we want an interesting world they want it now kind of thing but I think you've got to devote currency of energy and time and if you are willing to work and learn and be patient and do all these kind of things and tick the boxes along the way then the mantra from ironman is anything is possible and I'm a firm believer

in that and it doesn't actually be perfect as no your experiences are going to show that there's going to be setbacks and you'll be stuff that doesn't work like my my journey and my path through these events particularly the ironman side of things aren't probably traditional kind of ways of doing it um there's probably a lot more structured ways and a lot more linear ways that you can do it I've probably done it in reverse really I've kind of gone to that peak of the mountain first and went the hard way and suffered the hard

way but if as I said before the if you want something and you're willing to devote that time and energy and sacrifice a couple of things along the way then there's no doubt that you can achieve anything or anything is possible why do you think people fall short why do you think people don't I guess you said something that we've spoken about a lot is your ability to follow through things if you say you're going to do something you do it why do you think so many people say they're going to do something and then

fall off the wagon it's hard to really answer I think people it's just really hard for people sometimes life gets in the way and and and I think people look at it as it isn't in that block or whatever they go it might be six eight ten weeks if they miss and I'm guilty of this too I feel dirty when I miss a training session and or like even when I I got really hard on myself and these kind of things when I missed the training session I got dirty and because with training peaks it's

all about having like your box turned up green when you completed it's just standard and stuff like that I yeah I hated it when it was yellow or red when I missed a session and stuff like that because you're trying to follow through with what you're trying to do but yeah I think I think people fall off the wagon because they might miss one session or they might think they're not doing it right but I think you just it's just that you're going to have that consistency in your approach like some of all the efforts

yeah like yeah death by a thousand cuts or keep pounding the rock until like oh yeah you just can't walk away from something if you have a bad experience one time you got to learn and grow from it rather than just shutting up shop and letting it beat you kind of thing awesome it's really cool what happened after the Iman so you've done two then how did your training and mindset and lifestyle evolve and adapt from that something that I think what happened and to this day it's something that I'm going to have to work

on is I'm a little bit conscious about body image and stuff that kind of stuff and just if I'm not moving or not training I have the tendency to blow out and it's just it might be genetics it's metabolism I have an under-functioning thyroid where it stops me from well my metabolism pretty much shot so I've got to be really careful with what I eat and the way I feel about myself and the way I perceive myself even just in the clothes that I wear and the way I feel can have a bit of a

detrimental effect to my mental health and obviously you don't want it you want to try and remain in a positive mind frame or a mindset for a lot of the time so I noticed after the Iman I went away to Bali with Jess for a couple weeks and the great man TK Eldon I said I'm thinking about doing something when I get back to you like I heard you went going to this gym and seeing this stuff on online kind of thing I said is it any good and like he gave you a massive rap

and oh sorry Tommy TK Eldon gave you a massive rap so yeah head down you might be right in your kind of alley you'd love it kind of thing and messaged you and I always thought I'd come back and wanted to have a bit of a spell and if you broke it down like between like 2013 and 2016 that period was pretty intense looking back at it now like spent a number of hours training and like K's on the road and like bike and I just wanted to have a bit of a normal life and

just settle into something that I hadn't done a lot of them before which is I heard was he was very different to any other gym I'd been to and I just wanted to try and I wanted to tell myself I just wanted to keep moving and just come back to doing having some form of routine in terms of physical activity and exercise kind of thing yeah that's where I met you and how did that adapt your lifestyle or how did you adapt your lifestyle to that different type of training and that complete change to what

you were used to um probably not a lot really had changed because this is the time it's just time it's time and energy like if you want to want to do it then you do it like the the one for me is people that gets me is that I'm not a morning person I don't I don't no one's a morning person no one's until they get up until they get up yeah it really like you just you just get up like I struggle to get up but I've never really quite worked that out I understood

what how some people really struggle with that kind of process of you just like turn your feet sideways and you stand up kind of thing like there's not a lot stopping you sometimes that all that's all it takes yeah but people just that gravity like it's too hard and stuff like that it's too early but you can teach your body can adapt and these kind of things um a lot not a lot had to change in me and I think I said that in my initial interview like I'm definitely like I'm able to train like

I don't mind getting up early like training for an Ironman you have to kind of thing and sometimes you're doing two trainings a day and stuff and yeah I just started slowly and I'd never really done any patterning or anything like that before and just come in here and really just fell in love with the place like just the vibe that it created and it was a lot different to anything else that I'd ever done before yeah and I guess the thing that I felt as though the reason why you kept coming back was that

community and that vibe yeah absolutely and you had you'd been involved in a lot of different communities yeah and still up to that point and still involved in all those different circles why do you think that's so important to staying the course and being consistent and maintaining that if you've got people supporting you around you it's you're going to be more likely to achieve what you set out to do yeah if you're a bit of the lone wolf or a bit of the batman and tries to do everything on their own it may work but

if you've got people building you up supporting you helping you out along the way it's going to make your life a lot easier in anything that you do not just physical activity or exercise definitely anything that you do like personal life if you have a good close group doesn't have to be even a close group of friends if there's people around there supporting you you just like-minded people like-minded people you get in a good mindset you have some banter and these kind of things have a bit of fun along the way and in you make

friendships and everyone wants to help everyone wants to help and it just makes you feel good for helping other people other people help you kind of thing and just just in that the circle just keeps the kind of flow on and these kind of circle of win circle of win that's right as coach cam calls it now change the change the course of the conversation a little bit you're a teacher correct yes kuih rup kuih rup land of the asparagus yeah out there and iced coffee apparently i learned last week uh per capita kuih rup

has the highest consumption of flavored milk i've ever seen i think find the collection of hard rubbish it's driving out there every monday seems to be hard rubbish though play on if you need anything head to kuih rup on a monday i reckon how did you get into teaching and what made you want to be a teacher that's a really good question um as i said before sports buff sports tragic um always wanted to do something with sport um initially had my heart set on sports management at the time and oh just going through school

always thought i'd i'd do that um i knew i wanted to go from go to uni from from a young age um no one in my family had done that my uh dad's tradie and yeah a lot of his family had been tradies and those kind of things too so i thought whatever i wanted to do and i was able to always go okay at school i really enjoyed school i really love learning and applying myself at school so i thought i had the ability to do that and i thought oh yeah that seems like

a good place to go and yeah probably i thought yeah this is what i want to do i wasn't sure and the sports management popped into mine and i thought yeah that sounds cool like i knew i wasn't going to be good enough to become a sportsman at the time so i thought how can i be involved in that kind of industry and sports management was one thing that popped in my head and um got talked out of that um by a couple of different people just because there's wasn't a lot of job prospects out

there in terms of when you finished your course there was no really guaranteed work and like financial wise it wasn't like you had to work really really hard to get your foot in the door and you had no guarantee of actually making a lot of money but i didn't really do that much research into it and i kind of thought oh yeah that makes a lot of sense like yeah and then i thought maybe sports journalism and then i realized i wasn't that great at english at the time so that quickly got struck and off

the list and i remember having a meeting with the careers guy at school at the time mr hall and mrs hall who was my pe teacher at the time and they kind of took me aside and they said have you ever thought about about teaching or anything like that because you still got your sports side of things and yeah i said that until that point in time i hadn't and i thought actually i think it was around year 11 or something like that and i thought yeah this teaching like i've never thought about that before

and yeah as a kid at school you probably don't tend to think about wanting to be a teacher because you're there all the time kind of thing and i thought i could actually work i couldn't enjoy that pe teachers they seem to have be the likable ones at school and these kind of things and i thought it's a good mix of what i wanted to do in terms of sport and be involved in that kind of method and i was able to go through year 12 and get a good enough atar score and just missed

out on going to monash peninsula with the course just missed out going there and probably didn't pursue enough knowing what i know now about trying to get into that course through a couple of different avenues but got into a course up in ballarat which was a bachelor of education slash brackets physical education which was what i wanted to do and kind of gonna the first year was tough like living like in a like sharehouse with a couple of different strangers and yeah i'm not having my license and just trying to adapt to that whole uni

kind of independence and but i think it was really really good experience for me because it really made forced me to grow up and um i think really shaped me into the person i am and i was able to meet a lot of cool people at uni and yeah i think and i tell my students to this day is that you meet a lot of people at uni that have different life experiences to you and it's out of your echo chamber yeah yeah different one yeah into the next one i had mates at uni that

were from different parts of victoria had different life experiences some were a lot older than me and like i found it really really strange it was really hard to believe that i was actually one of the like there was only a small number of us that had come straight from like basically year 12 education you went straight in the year straight in the year after and yeah kind of did that and i was able to get a good core group of friends and you progress the uni and do the things there and you go out

and you have little um fits and spurts of um teaching and you get to the end of it and you get this eight week well i'm block at a school and uh i still really really enjoyed it and i thought yeah this is for me like i want to do this like this would be a cool job like it's good yeah it's good good job can't complain so um yeah um how'd you get to kiwi oh this is a strange story i don't know if you know this one um so uh generally it's a formal

process to apply for jobs in the education kind of realm where you go through this online platform and stuff like that but um i was working for a landscaper at the time and my sister who was doing a bit of athletics training yeah i was coached by a teacher at kiwi at the time jared burke now uh one day i got home from the landscaping thing and my sister annie kind of said jared's given me this number they're looking for a PE teacher at kiwi and i've been a bit slack with getting in like job

applications and applying to these kind of jobs i wasn't worried so i had people like ringing me on the phone saying hey you should come to this kind of thing yeah i thought i could always move if i had to kind of thing but and then got given this phone number and say hey call this guy i think there's a job so i call this call this person who's peter bottomly the assistant principal at the time and i said hey my name is jared poll so i was kind of like real nervous at the time

passed on this information to you by jared burke one of your teachers at the school i heard you might be in the process of looking for a PE teacher i was like he goes yeah yeah that's cool we've heard a little bit about you um so obviously jared your reputation procedure yeah jared's put in a good word for me i didn't know jared at the time so obviously he's told him something that uh sparked the interest of uh the assistant principal and he said oh do you want to come in for a meeting or an

interview and i kind of thought yeah i'll come in just maybe want to just show me around the school or something like that and i said oh i can't come in tomorrow and this is a complete lie because my suit was dirty okay clean my seat i said i've actually got another interview tomorrow and i just made up you guys are aware i said oh just the school in dandenong okay i could come in the next day so so i kind of go into like i didn't really know what to expect and generally there's a

formal panel and stuff like this at an interview on the phone uh bots who we who i now call him he's no longer at the school yeah said oh don't sign anything i think i've got a job for you here this is like he hasn't met me i've kind of said what's what's going on so kind of go in drive the career up didn't even know where career up was at the time he kind of think where the hell is this place it's actually not that far from the peninsula it's only about 30 30 minutes

45 minutes from wherever you are really um head out there and think cool and have this interview and all seems to go well and i knew one of the guys there and he kind of showed me around the school i thought oh this has gone really really well and kind of just got it wasn't really a formal interview i didn't know what actually was happening and he said oh just to chat and we ended up talking about saints because yeah i saw he had a lot of saints memorabilia on the wall thank you to fan

and try to engage in conversation in that and yeah he kind of asked me a few questions and i think just got a i don't know got a good feel about me and he kind of said oh i'm pretty confident that you could fit in here i've got to go talk to a couple other people but i'm pretty confident i have a job here and i'll let you know by friday kind of thing this was real late into term four so i left my run pretty late so i was stoked with that kind of thing

and then i remember i had my mobile phone with me in my pocket on that friday it was meant to call and i was still working with the landscaper at the time yep just trying to get some cash for the summer and stuff like that and no phone call no phone call no phone call and strangely my dad was working at the same job site at the moment that's how i kind of got the job and it got to lunch time and dad asked me have you heard anything like that and i was like no

staring at my phone all day just hoping for it to ring and then time run around i just remember um phone call he said oh congratulations i can offer you a job and i just like couldn't believe it outstanding i'm just around over the dad gave him a massive high five told the landscaper boys that's it from me guys so i don't have to do this i'm out of here like thank you very much and like kind of thing and nah and yeah was that went to kui and been there ever since really for i

think this is my seventh or eighth year in the job and yeah it's it's a cool school i've met a lot of lovely people there a lot of close friends there now and it's been really it's been really a big part of my life there now kind of thing like my whole kind of teaching career and it's really strange like i've seen my original group of year sevens that i thought i'm progressing go through a cycle and graduate year 12 and kind of all start again now that's a good feeling it was strange yeah it

was very strange i got a bit emotional and stuff like that too and you think oh like i've stayed the course here and i might have made a difference to one or two along the way which is all that you hope for i think yeah yeah i wouldn't be doing a very good job otherwise what is your role okay what what students do you teach so my official title is a bit of a mouthful i am learning community senior learning community assistant so uh the way our school is structured we're structured um vertical horizontally so

we go in year levels so we've got year seven community year eight community nine year ten and they combine the top end with eleven and twelve so i sit below a leading teacher who isn't in the in charge of the community makes a lot of decisions student management and i help her and do a lot of the student management side of things in terms of discipline in kids and mentoring kids that may not be going down the straight and narrow just just trying to help out the kids where i can and just doing things for

those senior senior kids as well as other people in the role too so yeah yeah that's it and obviously teach as well and sometimes you forget that that's your main role at schools is that you are a teacher first and that's your main job so i teach um qualify to teach both maths and physical education so this year i've got and it changes from year to year i've got uh year 11 general maths uh a vcal intermediate which is year 11 intermediate personal development which is kind of an interesting subject to teach because you get

a bit of scope about what you can do there and what you can actually teach your kids which is really cool um also take teach a year eight pe which i share with the great tk olden and he does the health side of things and uh vce vet sport and rec the unit three and fours so that's really cool take course as well so i've got to be a mixed bag people always think what an unusual combination in terms of maths and pe but i love maths kind of thing i was always good at maths

as a kid so that's you have that choice when you're going through uni you have to have a second method as a secondary teacher so i picked maths because i always thought i was okay and i thought getting into schools too that could be your foot in the door like you might have to teach math first so they're always schools screaming out for like maths and science kind of style teachers as well so yeah maths maths and pe one of my favorite quotes and this is one from one of our mentors last couple years and

someone i i've continued to follow and read about uh mark buckley if he ever listens he's one of his quotes was you can't give what you haven't gotten you can't share what you haven't experienced how important is your journey and all the all the obstacles you've overcome and all the things you've done in your new role as an educator your current role as an educator going all the way back to the start too i think being a pe teacher too i felt uh talking about health and nutrition as a pe teacher does i felt skeptical

in my own words and trying to teach these kids about thing when i was probably saying yeah it's healthy last level it's probably completely doing the opposite thing early doors so that that's probably was the driving factor and i think a key thing with education is if you can build that rapport and build that like kind of relationship with that kids yeah it's gonna pay pay you back as a teacher tenfold later on so just telling them about yourself allowing them to learn about you and seeing them as saying letting the kids try and work

out who you are as a person and stuff like that so i use well i have used in the past my journey along the way of developed classes based on my running data and just they want to just whatever you can grab them in by and yeah like it's been a big part of my journey and um as a teacher too i've tried to use all the things that i've learned along the way and even things here at vertice i'm trying to implement at school and stuff like that just so the kids see something new

and exciting and try and just get them hooked in if you can get them hooked in then your job's a lot easier so much easier like just that rapport if you can get your foot in the door with them and it may just be a conversation you have in the yard or you ask them how they went at footy or just simple things like that and just just opens up their world and they want to come to class they want to learn and it just makes your job to listen pay attention if you can and

it's hard it's a fine line because you don't want to be their friend either kind of thing so you've got to maintain that being that professional but it is it's a tough job it's a tough job but you learn skills along the way that they don't teach you at uni and some of the stuff that i look back on what i did at uni probably never used but it's all the little things that you learn and constant constant battle of just trying and trying to make things better kind of thing exactly every time you and

you get opportunities to do that which is wonderful but it's a strange job because essentially you come out of uni you get given the keys to the classroom and you're like you're in charge you're in charge yeah have have a great time and you get no feedback it's not like any of these kids yeah yeah like you get no feedback like there's no one else in the room like kind of looking at what you do yeah you kind of come through this cycle how do you know how do i know i'm doing a good job

here like and i speak to the graduate teachers coming into the system all the time and they say you don't base yourself on their marks or anything like that you can't make a judgment until that two two three years down the course until you've got some experience in the real world kind of thing where yeah it's just it's a really unique job and it's it's a tough job and i don't think it's for everyone and people seem to think and it's frustrating when we talk about oh you get so many holidays and you know and

it's a real i've just wanted to let it go now but as as when i was a bit of a younger guy i just try and use the always defend myself and stuff like that it's not worth the battle more it's there's more to it than nine to three fifteen which a lot of people still think it's crazy and you probably know too with kp and stuff like that too there's a lot more work here you've got three weeks to report all these all the extra things that you guys spend your time doing and you

know i guess we've been lucky enough at vertice to spend some time at schools and with schools and and to teach the kids and i had two days of frankston high during the week and i was cooked and and dealing with all these all those kids uh for that long like credit to you because it's it's not easy and it's it's hard when you've got you know 25 different personalities they're all all needing to learn in slightly different ways so yeah i think i was at a pd earlier last week and he said like that

you as a teacher you are making like a hundred thousand decisions a day about what you need to do and if you extrapolate that over the term like that's a lot of decisions you're making on like and it's just like you're just constantly having to make decisions about hey do i talk to that kid about his uniform or what's going on over there is that kid all right even just within the classroom you've got as you said 25 kids are they on track is that person struggling because they don't know or is it just because

they're having a bad day hey that kid's over there's already finished his work is this work too easy how am i going to extend them kind of thing so yeah it's a tough job as i said not for everyone but i i love it i love it um yeah i couldn't see myself really doing anything really else or i always think i've got something to offer within that kind of initiative or yeah in some capacity i think i think cool yeah i've got i've got a list of of jobs that seem or that would be

significantly harder than they seem or that people that i admire above all else teachers emergency personnel and personal trainers of course because it's a tough life dealing with a thousand different people all the time now nurses as well nurses yeah yeah i'll put them in the emergency person other nurses paramedics and policemen and yeah that kind of stuff i think nurses like i've got a few friends that are nurses and just to see what they go through and just seeing like just when you kind of get a glimpse into their world like just if anyone

gets sick in your community of people and you just think what a job and like how do they do it and they're probably i think they're the most underpaid kind of people i just don't know they put themselves through some rigorous hours and just dealing with everything like that'd be a crazy job like i don't know how they do it and not yeah and just as a little sidebar i don't put personal trainers in that category not even one little bit we have it so easy it's the easiest job in the world but anyway so

one of the things i wanted to talk to you about about today but i reckon we'll probably save it for a whole other podcast i want to talk to you about education and how the kids learn and how you you think things can be improved things like that so i might get you back with maybe with tk at some point to chat about that yeah but to finish up i have five questions for you yeah and just can have everything to do with what we've spoken about or it can be completely random what is success

to you i think if if we go on what we've been talking about um over this podcast i don't even know how long we've been talking for yeah that's gone quick um i think staying true to your course and um following through of what you set out to do i think that's success yeah to me that's what i achieved if you have a goal and you achieve it that's that's successful but i think it's okay not to achieve your goal too if you've just spent enough time and energy and given it your fair crap then

that's fine like if you've done all that you could to try and reach it and you fall short there's nothing wrong with being just just below your goal or something like that too and the goalpost moves sometimes sometimes you're set out to achieve one thing and and yeah you're right things are fluid so they might move to another thing and you knock that over and i think yeah too many people stop and start and kind of maybe don't quite get to where they want to get to as quickly as they want to get i think

in this industry too and i have these quotes that i've had on my desk for a long time throughout my whole journey and i think one that's and i try and tell people to all the time people kind of ask me for advice and ask how do you do what you do and i say i i don't really have any real secrets i just go out but one of the quotes i try and reel out to a lot of people is that um fitness is not about comparing yourself to others it's about comparing to what

you were previously yeah and i think i think that's i think in anything in life i think we're too much and i think it's up on the wall here at the moment i think comparison is the thief of joy yeah and i think that's particularly in today's society i think social media social media and all these kind of things if you want to play that comparing game it's you're going to struggle because you know badly yeah and and what people project on social media and these kind of things is just a snapshot or just the

window to what they're going through they might portray that everything's rosy and glorious but you don't know deep down what what they're actually going through and stuff like that exactly and i think unfortunately even if we were talking about education and hopefully get an opportunity soon like a lot of these kids probably project that they're having a good time and deep down and social media is a good tool but is also can be quite detrimental to a lot of things that we're trying to achieve as society we'll definitely make that yeah in a couple of

weeks yeah for sure sure if you could give teenage palsy one piece of advice what would it be oh jeez teenage uh i don't know it's a hard one um it'd probably be something like i probably wish i probably would have started this whole kind of health and fitness journey a lot younger than what i was probably hopefully didn't take me till i was 22 yeah because i think deep down i was unhappy but i always portrayed myself to be happy because as the big guy or the you're meant to be the quite jovial one

i think it's quite easy to make fun of your weight and kind of thing and think yeah yeah i'm just that fat guy or stuff like that that fat kid and stuff like that too so um yeah just um just maybe try and say maybe start to think about what you're trying to do and what you're trying to set out and stuff like that too just maybe all the information i know now or which i probably should have known when i was 15 or 16 yeah just having that knowledge base and knowing what i know

now and how to work these things out and having that appetite for exercise and just yeah that ability to change myself having that information and still me from that young age probably would have helped a lot i think awesome what's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone i'm pretty lucky because i've listened to the previous podcast and uh this i knew this question was going to come and i've been thinking about it all day um i i still i can't answer that i i think i don't think you can quantify just one nice thing

for people i like to think i do nice things for people all the time um i think i like to i kind of run the attitude of um what would i like in that situation if someone's going through like a tough circumstance or stuff like that even for me like i just try to open doors for people or even just help people with prams or children and these kind of things or yeah just just little things just to make job like even if you have to sacrifice a bit of your time or letting people go

in front of you in lines and these kind of things it doesn't phase me and yeah stuff like that and just things you do for friends that you'd expect back in the same situation like um yeah like it doesn't have to be anything big and these kind of things but just yeah just being there for people i think is just just being not like that's that's me like a like i'll be willing to help anyone kind of thing like i'd put myself i put my friends and my family and people that i really have invested

time for before me like i think that was probably a bit of a detriment to my life like i would try and look after other people before i looked after myself kind of thing which is a good quality to have but also probably was a bit of a factor to yeah what happened but yeah well you nailed the answer thank you good for me you're thinking about it all the way yeah i could really didn't know you can't quantify something nice nice to someone who's completely different they're not meant to be easy questions mate oh

i know that's a good question if you could give every human on earth one trait one personality trait what would it be empathy good very very um yeah if everyone had empathy and everyone kind of understood what people were going through and just like saw people for what they are and what they're going to everyone would be on the same page exactly welcome welcome on someone else's shoes yeah like you don't know how people are traveling and if yeah empathy is a big part of my job as a teacher and they're just mentoring kids and

talking to kids like if i'm empathetic or at all my job would be completely i'd be an awful teacher if i had no empathy i i shouldn't be a teacher if you have no empathy essentially but i think that's a big one spot on all right now a couple of favorites yes what's your favorite quote oh i have a couple that i like um uh that fitness one that i rolled out earlier in terms of like um it's got to be a different one mate yeah it's got to be different can't recheck it uh i

liked it i like it hold on uh i like uh losers always whine about their best winners go home and fuck the prom queen i've always been attracted to that i think that that's that's a good one that's that's from a sean connery quote used to be in a hardcore song that he said really like he's a kid growing up yeah um this is a number of things out there and uh another one from a band that i really like touche amore um from a song called tilled which is if actions speak louder than words

i'll be the most deafening noise you've heard good which is something that i kind of really like and yeah kind of thing that i like i don't uh yeah i think too i think i've got one on my twitter bio which says like um a superior man is uh modest in his talk but superior in his actions kind of thing so kind of all about action action making change making change yeah kind of thing there's a lot of quotes i could talk about quotes the whole time so me too let's not get started no let's

not get favorite movie oh i'm not a big movie person um i have a couple of go-tos uh i love it love the sporting movies like you can't go past like movies like remember the titans but i think the best movie that i've seen ever is batman dark knight rises good you can't go past that favorite sport oh you're only allowed to pick one one one one one favorite sport it's gonna be football i can't i can't i like anything i could watch anything just pick triathlon because then you hit three kind of yeah triathlon

because it's three sports i guess decathlon yeah decathlete nah probably it's either football or triathlon like i really love my footy but probably it's probably shifting towards like that whole multi-sport maybe triathlon running even awesome yeah because everyone's able to run this is true most people most people favorite recording artist uh and i'm using the term favorite intentionally currently or of all time just of all time i've been getting a lot of joy out of the past probably three to four years from the smith street band will wagner and stuff like that like although their

songs have resonated with me um he's gone through a bit of a journey through like mental health and the way he and seeing them recently i can understand why that band and his songs mean so much to so many people and he's able to have a positive effect on people and he's had a positive effect or their music about a positive effect on me so yeah that's probably the best answer i can give up now otherwise we'll be here for another 45 minutes discussing me i'm gonna know which music bands and stuff favorite resource to

improve yourself favorite resource i think i do a lot of reading um from a variety of sources um give me one oh geez uh just to commit let's just like people that you know like your first hand like that's my favorite answer you can go to a text or a website or a podcast but if you can get that information firsthand with a person you have a relationship previously it's going to be genuine and they're going to tell you stuff that is probably nine times out of ten that he's really going to help you definitely

definitely they're going to they're invested in your life in your interest so they want to see you get better so if you can talk to people that have more expertise in a field that you want to know more about talk to people okay you grow and learn as a person good answer elite answer i'm very happy with that favorite hobby uh hobby oh i did anything to do with sport physical activity uh you're just moving i guess also i love my couch just like oh yeah like um and my girlfriend just hates me for this

but there's nothing more than i like just like just time by myself watching the sport on tv on the couch are you gonna get much sleep over the next two weeks tour de france i'll try it's in an awkward time slot but i'll try and always start up and watch the first couple hours it's good this year they're gonna start the stage from the start to or enough to wait and fluff around watching gabrielle gatte go through france trying to cook some dish which i hate i hope they stop that this year but yeah that's

the most frustrating part is the sort of hate that guy last favorite favorite book and favorite book favorite book okay that you've ever read and the one learning point you got from it or teaching point oh there's someone that should read a lot more i don't actually read enough books and it's something that i do want to change um i want to be able to learn more things through reading because i think there's a lot of stories and a lot of lessons to be learned from books uh the big one for me is like um

that resonates with me the most i got asked this question in my pd at work the other day i think um and it's teen fiction which is kind of weird was um the perks of being a wallflower um i love that movie i love that movie and i love that book and i don't know just the whole journey that the main character kind of goes through i think really resonated with me and i was able to kind of take a lot out of it and as a person and stuff like that too and i was

probably reading it and understood it a lot more when i was going through that process of the health and fitness journey i think yeah i think it's a good book and yeah it's it's teen fiction essentially but i took a lot out of it and i love the movie and and all that it was about and yeah no it's great awesome now you're uh you're rolling into your 30th birthday that's a month away today which is scary there's something something you want to tell the wider community about all of your nicknames i do have a

lot of nicknames which is uh good i don't know um there's only really three people that call me jared in this whole world it's probably um the assistant principal at work um one of my friends calls me jared routinely and that's probably only two people really that's probably only two people that call me jared so i have a number of nicknames i thought as a joke the other night i've kind of come up with this thing similar to my mate will who turns 30 a similar time he goes uh call him willie and chief and

stuff like that he's just going to go with bill after he turns still just bill jolly because he's more formal so i kind of thought maybe that i have to do that too maybe after i turn 30 i'm just going to be called jared which is on my birth certificate it is my name you've heard it here first we're not allowed to call him mu or yes or j pulse or majook majook or whatever i've got heaps but it's generally upsetting no i don't know i don't know maybe it's 30th it's this thing probably trying

to hang on to my youth a little bit more maybe i'm trying to mature a bit but i don't know too many nicknames you can't count out too many that's true that's true well thank you keep doing what you're doing thank you the last thing you have one question to ask me now everyone keeps saying i want to ask you questions and i've cut it short but i'll give you one one question um put me on the spot here yeah that's intentional yeah it is intentional one thing i learned on my time on the radio

though dead air isn't great that's true can't win them all can't win it's right at the end so people could just stop it now yeah true probably already tuned up a long time ago genuinely a long time i'm okay with that yeah uh one question what do you get out of being a vertice and seeing people improve because i imagine being a coach it's related to education i guess what makes what drives you to come here because you're probably invested more than me because it's your business it's your livelihood um i'm not essentially i get

paid to do what i kind of do like the government pays for my duties but people what yeah what how do i frame this a little bit better what makes me want to do what i do every day yes and what do you get out of it as a person because obviously you could have gone in a number of different ways too and it's something that i kind of you always think what can else can i do and stuff like that and it's something that i probably this would be i'm still trying to hire you

yeah um that's a good question uh it's it's probably i find happiness from helping other people find their happiness and find and find things they enjoy like i love coming to work every day and and training people and seeing people enjoying the things that we give them and seeing them achieve you know whether it's achieved coming three times a week where they couldn't think they could or see them achieving things in their chosen sport whether it be football, netball, running whatever it is i guess yeah for me it's just and and you know altruism is

one of those things where we all do things because we get something out of it and i don't think that no one's that selfless that they do everything for other people and there's always going to be something that you get out of it but for me it's as simple as seeing people smile and seeing people happy and and seeing people enjoying the community that we've created is the reason why i do it and it's just yeah it's just enjoyment and it's it makes me happy seeing other people happy it's it's i guess it's selfish to

a point for that but yeah simple yeah and on that note thanks to Pulsi we yeah it's been good and look forward to having Pulsi and TK on in a couple of weeks to chat education yeah it'd be great looking forward to it Wallace out