How Lydia O_Donnell Is Helping Women Run The World With Her Running App Femmi

Before we begin today's episode, we'd like to warn you that this chat contains themes

surrounding eating disorders that some may find distressing.

If you would like to access free and confidential support, you can contact the Butterfly Foundation

on 1800 33 46 73 and we'll put a link to their website in our show notes.

As a teenager growing up in New Zealand, Lydia O'Donnell fell in love with running.

And on that running journey, she found great success, winning New Zealand's national titles

in the 10,000 metre and half marathon events.

But along the way, she found herself showing symptoms of disordered eating, as she faced

pressure to train in a way that was right for men and didn't take her unique female

physiology into account.

As a result, she lost her menstrual cycle and was hospitalised, almost losing her ability

to run completely.

Now Lydia is the co-founder.

And CEO of Femi, a women's running app designed to unite a community of women and teach us

how we can move our bodies in a way that makes us feel confident.

Welcome back to the Female Athlete Project.

My name's Sophie, the producer here at TFAP.

And this week, Chloe sits down with Lydia, who's also a Nike run coach, to discuss changing

the narrative around women's health and how Femi is creating a space to educate women

on how to run and move with confidence.

We hope you enjoy it.

Lydia.

Okay.

Donal, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.

Thank you for having me.

It's such an honour to be here.

I have been a huge fan ever since you started the Female Athlete Project.

I was just like, damn, this is so needed.

So it's honestly such an honour to finally be here.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

Because we have similar, we'll get to Femi, but we have similar kind of start times.

Were you guys 2020?

We were 2020, but I do think you were before Femi.

Okay.

I do think you were.

And I was like, really inspired by the work you were doing.

Thanks.

Because they're just...

Because there just weren't that many people in the space doing things solely for women.

And I think even back then, which isn't that long ago, but...

No, it's not, is it?

You know, even then it was like, almost not frowned upon, but you were kind of taking

a risk by doing something that was just for women.

Yeah, totally.

Whereas now I think we're living in this world where it's like, sorry, but there are spaces

just for us.

So I was very inspired by you.

And yeah, I think the work you're doing is so cool.

Thank you very much.

Let's take it back to you as a little kid before we get to what you're doing with Femi.

Can you describe yourself as a young person?

I...

Yes, I definitely can.

Because I look back on myself as a child and I laugh a little bit because I was just like

a really like energetic, chaotic kid that just did everything really.

I was like a real go-getter.

I'm the youngest of three.

So my two older sisters were not that much older than me, actually were quite close in

age.

So there was like a level of competition between us.

But being the youngest, I think you do get thrown in the deep end.

And you don't necessarily get guided the way that maybe the elders in your family did.

So I was just like, wanted to try everything.

I started ballet and dancing when I was like three and took dance quite seriously.

Like I grew up dreaming of being a ballerina.

Right.

Yeah.

Which is funny now because I'm so inflexible.

But I still love dance.

Not myself.

I love watching it.

But I was just a really determined, competitive kid.

And I remember carrying that like all through my youth.

And when I got to high school, I continued to play sport and like pull myself into that

competitiveness.

But my best friend when I was at school was also an incredible athlete.

I would say much better than me at sport.

And she was like, I think she made the New Zealand soccer team, like football team, the

New Zealand hockey team, and maybe the New Zealand cricket team as well.

Like she was just so good at ball sports.

Oh my gosh, that's insane.

And I just wasn't.

And so already I was.

I was like comparing myself to her, which now I look back on and I feel kind of sad

for that young kid.

But I also I'm just like, we were so competitive with each other.

We really had this like pretty beautiful friendship as young girls growing up and like we're quite

tomboyish and just wanted to like have a crack really.

Yeah.

Where did you first find a love for running?

I started athletics when I was like seven.

So quite young.

But I don't think I took it super seriously.

I definitely had a natural talent for distance running.

Which when we say distance running as a seven-year-old, you're running like, I don't know, maybe

800 meters.

I love that.

But I definitely liked the longer stuff.

And I found a pretty incredible coach when I was about 11 or 12.

And she happened to be a PE teacher at the high school that I was going to.

But I wasn't quite at high school at the point.

But my mom was a high school teacher.

So she worked with her and she was friends with her.

And her name is Rose.

She saw me competing when I was like 11 or 12.

And she really saw, I think she saw the drive in me and the real love for running at quite

a young age.

And so she took me under her wing.

And then when I got to high school, she coached me for five years and she was a Commonwealth

Games 800 meter champ.

And yeah, so she was an incredible runner herself.

And so she had that experience, but she also just really loved running and wanted to guide

young girls through the sport of running.

And it really helped.

And so I was so grateful to her.

I think she taught me so much.

And even what we believe in at Femi and what we talk about all the time around sustainability

and sport, like all of that was built into me at such a young age.

It was never about our PBs or how fast or what we were winning or definitely not about

our appearance or what we look like.

Like it was all like, let's go out and have fun and do what you can with it.

And wait till you're a little bit older.

She'd always say to me, like, be patient with your body.

It's going to take time.

Just wait till you're older.

Nobody remembers a young athlete.

Wow.

I like that.

Yeah.

And that stuff just stuck with me for so long and it really held me back while I was at

school.

And so looking at your friendship with your friend who played the three codes, you kind

of talked about feeling like you weren't good at the ball sports.

Was there a moment, like when did you kind of think like, oh, actually I'm good at running.

So that means.

I'm also a good athlete.

You know, like that comparison thing.

Yeah.

That's a good question.

I think with her, her name's Gemma.

So she ended up representing New Zealand, I think at three Olympic games for hockey.

She's amazing.

That's so cool.

So cool.

And I think the comparison was that it wasn't that I wasn't good at ball sports.

It was just that I wasn't as good as her.

God.

Yeah.

But what I could do better than her was cross country.

Okay.

And so I think she was like my best, best friend, you know?

Yeah.

When you're that close with somebody and you're comparing yourself naturally to that

person, you will start to see where your strengths are.

And I do feel sad that I didn't lean into ball sports more or team sports more, but I'm also

so grateful that I found running at such a young age and now she runs too, which is awesome.

She's got three young girls and she's out running and it's so cool to see kind of her

love of sport move into more of like the individual sport of running.

Yeah.

But yeah.

Ball sports was always a tough one for me because I was constantly comparing myself

to one of the best in the country.

Yeah.

That's, that's challenging.

What is it about running?

Because I think like as a young person, did you, did you battle the individual nature

of that, of that sport?

Like compared to if you were to play a team sport?

I think I am such a competitive, determined woman that I really lean into how individualism,

individual running is like, yes, there is so much about community and running.

And when you're competing at the top, it isn't just an individual sport.

You have a whole network of people around you, but the level that I was at for a lot

of the time was just, it all came down to myself and how hard I was willing to work.

What sacrifices I was willing to make.

I was in complete control of the training.

We're not necessarily in control of the outcome all the time, but for me, I was so in control

of what I could do each day.

Each day to become a better athlete that I really loved it.

And I still love that, to be honest, like I love that I can do the work and I can reap

the rewards of that work myself.

Yeah.

Probably also why I now coach myself because I am in complete control, but yeah, I really

like the sense of accomplishment when you know you've done it alone, but also when you

have a community around you who carry you, I believe you can go even further.

There's that funny saying, it's like, if you want to go fast, go alone.

And if you want to go far, go together, which I don't think necessarily is completely true

in running, because if you want to be fast, you also need a team, people around you.

But if you want to go fast and far, you need people around you to go together.

But yeah, I like, I watched the Lion King movie, Mufasa recently, and they sing the

song about going fast or going far.

Is that a song in the Lion King?

Yeah.

In the original one or just the new one?

The new one.

Oh, okay.

I was like, I did not know that was a Lion King.

Okay.

That makes sense.

I know.

There's this whole song about like, if you want to go fast, go alone.

Yeah.

If you want to go fast, go alone.

And if you want to go far, go together.

And I was like, analyzing the lyrics as I do.

And I'm like, it's not true.

If you want to go fast and far, you do need to go together, but you also need to do the

work alone.

Yes.

Okay.

I like that.

Yeah.

What is it that drives you?

That's a really, I guess that's like a question I ask myself all the time.

I really like to analyze my own psyche and understand like why I am the way I am.

I think for me, I want to be able to do what I want to do.

I want to be remembered as someone who's been part of the change and really like help to

create a better environment for the future generations and running is my voice to do

that.

And so it's not necessarily about being the best athlete I can be or running the fastest

times or making, you know, world's teams, like all of that stuff to me is important

and it's almost like a cherry on top.

But I think ultimately I just want to,

to build a voice and continue to build a community that helps to drive the change.

And yeah, there's nothing quite like feeling like you're having an impact on somebody else

and to be able to do that through the work I do now is such, so amazing that like, if

I can't race ever again, I'd still be somewhat satisfied.

Yeah.

Wow.

But I also still like racing.

Yeah.

I love that.

How did you go from being a seven-year-old running 800 meters or so to representing your

country?

Yeah.

That was a journey.

Definitely much of that was accredited to Rose, my coach at high school who held me

back.

I actually ended up going to the States when I left school on a scholarship to a university

in Texas.

And that experience was just like probably a whole podcast in itself.

It was really eye-opening.

Right.

I'd gone from this like really beautiful environment with this amazing school coach who really

like, I don't know, looked after me and put my mental health and physical health first

to this.

And I had this NCAA system, which was incredibly competitive.

Right.

You know, when it all costs mentality.

And I just wasn't built for that at the time.

I was 17.

I moved, you know, to the other side of the world and was thrust into this really competitive

environment.

And our coach was just had so much pressure put upon us in terms of racing.

And I just didn't have a good time.

So I ended up actually leaving after about five or six weeks or something.

Went back to New Zealand, quit running altogether and just like spiraled.

My mental health spiraled quite badly.

And I just really lost my sense of direction at that time.

And I think pretty common for teenagers to kind of take a path where they don't really

know where they're going.

But running was kind of the thing that brought me back.

After about 12 months of not really running, I was like, I remember how good I felt when

I was training as a 15-year-old at school.

Yeah.

Running brought happiness to my life, both from like a social element as well as mental

and physical health.

And I really wanted to find her again.

So I started running again when I was about 18 or so and went back to Rose.

She helped coach me back to kind of the level of fitness I was at.

And within about six months, I won my first national title.

And I was training harder than I was at school because I was kind of, I'd gone through puberty.

My body was ready to kind of push a little harder.

And I think at that point,

when I won that title, it wasn't anything crazy.

Like my time wasn't anything to talk about, but it was definitely a moment for me to be

like, okay, I think I can do this and commit myself if I, if I focus on the sport.

And so I did that.

And that year I qualified for the university world champs.

And that was kind of my first time representing New Zealand on the big stage.

And yeah, I guess throughout my twenties, there were a few different New Zealand teams

that I made.

And I think representing New Zealand.

And representing your country, such an honor.

But to me, again, I just love running.

Like I just love the pursuit of it.

And seeing what you're able to achieve is pretty incredible and traveling the world

to do that's pretty amazing.

It's definitely a privilege though.

Yeah.

I'm pretty lucky.

If you're happy to just reflect on that time over in the US, I think a lot of athletes

have experiences that can be really negative with a coach.

What do you think needs to be done to protect athletes better in those kinds of environments?

Yeah.

Well,

unfortunately, that was not the only time that I felt that and had been put in an environment

that was not really great for my mental and physical health.

And I kind of went, came back to New Zealand, took that time off, started training again.

After I won nationals, I got put into a team with another New Zealand coach.

And I spent about five years after that in these environments where coaches just unfortunately,

at that time, were unaware of what we, particularly myself as a woman athlete, needed to feel

good in myself and feel good in my body to be able to perform the best as possible.

And when I was at university in Texas, my running coach was, you know, she's getting

paid.

It's her job and her job is all about getting us to be the best and fastest runners.

So I can understand from her point of view, trying to push us.

Because she just wanted us to be the best.

But I remember going on a long run a day after we had an indoors race and she was crying

because we didn't run fast enough on the run.

And I think at that moment, I was like, wait, this is weird.

Like, this is surely this isn't normal.

There were other examples that I guess brought red flags to me, which was most of the girls

in the team pretty had pretty evident disordered eating behaviors.

And I'd been quite sheltered from that growing up in New Zealand.

And I definitely had my own insecurities in my body as a teenage girl, as unfortunately,

a lot of young girls do.

But I think that was really like an eye opener to what I didn't know or what I wasn't aware

of was thought to be good to be a good runner.

And so when I came back to New Zealand and was kind of picked up by these new coaches

in New Zealand, I had the same pressures.

Put upon me, unfortunately, I had multiple male coaches telling me that if I was in a

smaller body, if I was leaner, skinnier, I would be a better runner.

And it just really at the time, I thought that's what was I thought it was normal to

be spoken to like that, to be a good athlete.

And I was put in an environment where I had male coaches like physically like grabbing

my stomach, saying, if you lost that, you'd be faster.

And I.

Speak about it now as though it's completely normal and it's not like it traumatized me

for years.

And even now, like if I had if I had someone like you try and put the hand on my stomach,

I'm like, no, because it's just like brings back that kind of judgment or that fear of

judgment that was put upon me when I was like 20 years old.

So unfortunately, in the sport of running, it was seen to be if you were smaller or skinnier

or leaner, that you would be lighter.

And then if you're lighter.

You can run faster.

But the narrative was just so wrong.

And the way that we were educated on our bodies was just so minimal that we didn't know.

I had no idea what was going on for me at the time.

So I went through about five years of pretty severe body image issues that went into

disordered eating behaviors, having no idea what was going on.

I was cutting carbohydrates out of my diet completely and just doing now I look back

insane things to try and make my body.

But into these standards of what my coaches had put upon me yet, I wasn't just I wasn't

focusing on my performance.

I was focusing on my appearance.

And that's where I think it's really gone wrong for us as women athletes.

It's all about how we look and not actually in the numbers in terms of how we're performing.

And especially when that message had almost been drilled into you by people that you trusted

and thought were kind of the source of knowledge, saying that if you did look differently, that

you would perform better.

It makes sense.

In your mind, that was almost the story you were telling yourself, right?

Definitely.

I had so much trust in my coaches and the people around me and in the sport as well.

And so when you turn up to a training session and you hear your coach commenting on other

girls saying, oh, she looks fit or she's lean, she looks fit.

You know, I'm saying these words in quotation marks.

It's not true. But we would hear that all the time.

And then constantly you'd be like, OK, well, if she looks like that, I need to look like

that. What am I going to do to look like that?

I'm just going to go and stop eating.

And try and train harder in order to fit into that standard, even though there is nothing

in that standard that actually means you're running well.

Yeah.

We now know that running well as an athlete, as a runner, is all about consistent training.

And to get consistent training, you need to be looking after yourself.

And I just definitely was not doing that.

Did that have big impacts on you physically?

Yes, definitely.

Like I completely ignored the kind of physical impacts.

It was not something I was thinking about for years.

I think my body was giving me signs for so many years to say I wasn't feeling myself

correctly and I wasn't giving my body what it needed in terms of rest and recovery.

But it took about five years until I hit the wall.

Really? When I was about 25, I lost my period and that was kind of, I guess, the first big

sign of something's going wrong.

And after that, my health started to just spiral.

There were heaps of signs that my skin was all breaking out.

My hair was all falling out.

I remember I had this like twitching eye that twitched for like six months.

But because I was so committed to my sport and driven to be the best I could be, I just

ignored all of those signs and I just kept pushing forwards.

And then I just, I ended up actually in hospital with appendicitis.

And I think for me, that was like the real, something's going on here.

Something's not right.

I couldn't run.

I couldn't even really get out of bed.

And I had to just stop everything to let my body heal.

And I now know I was in a state of relative energy deficiency syndrome in sport.

Red S for short, but I had no idea about Red S at the time.

We'd heard of the female athlete triad, which is what was kind of known in that realm back

10 years ago, which talks about menstrual cycle dysfunction, bone health issues, and

eating disorders or anorexia.

But I didn't physically look.

And well, I didn't look underweight and my body was holding, holding on to everything

it possibly could because I was in such a state of low energy availability, but no one

from the outside would look on and be like, well, she's underweight and she needs something

needs to doing about it.

Right.

So because of that, it actually ended up being really harmful for me because no one was stepping

in because of the way I looked.

So I ended up in hospital, had to take three months off and ended up quitting my full

time job just to like come back and heal and let my body recover.

And yeah, it took about 18 months to kind of get back and get better.

And that's when I just like learned so much about my body that just completely changed

the game for me.

Yeah.

How did you work towards that journey of healing that relationship, I guess, between your mind

and your body?

I think when I got sick and had to stop running, it forced me to start picketing.

Picking away the pieces of like what you're doing, the way you're training clearly isn't

working.

My performance had plateaued.

I think I was running around 34 to 35 minute 10K for probably like two or three years.

I hadn't got any faster, which by the way, I know that's a fast time.

But hang on, sorry, I didn't actually do the maths.

That's very fast.

It's like, it's a quick time.

And I'm like really proud that I was running those times in my 20s, but without seeing

performance progression over three years.

Like so much more training, something clearly wasn't clicking and working.

And then my health crumbled and that was like, okay, something needs to change.

So I was forced into a place of like analyzing everything I'd done to date, picking it apart

and really figuring out what was going wrong and kind of stars aligned at the time I was

given the book Roar, which is about R-O-A-R by Dr. Stacey Sims.

Okay.

And I read that book when I kind of...

And I had this downtime and I was like, what the heck?

Like there's so much I don't know about my body.

This is completely insane.

I was not a professional athlete, but you could maybe call me a semi-professional athlete

at the time.

And running was part of my career and my job.

And no one had taught me about my body, which is the most important tool as a runner.

And I was like frustrated that I didn't know this.

I was 26, 27.

And I'm like learning about my menstruation.

For the first time in my life, which yeah, at the time I thought my period was my menstrual

cycle.

Like I grew up thinking, oh, I'm like on my menstrual cycle, which was on my period.

But actually our menstrual cycle is a continuous cycle that is always happening and changing

internally.

But yeah, I just had such a lack of education around what was going on inside my body.

And I remember learning about the impact of estrogen and progesterone and being like,

like no wonder one week.

I feel really good.

And then another week I don't feel as good, or I remember going into a race once it was

national champs and my coach had said to me, like, don't even worry about it.

You've got it in the bag.

You're going to win by so far, like just go out and have a good run.

And I ended up getting second and not running anywhere near the time that I thought I could

do.

And I remember walking away from that race being like, what am I doing?

Like, why am I even trying?

Like, this is terrible.

I should have won that race by heaps and I didn't.

And my body's failing.

Me and I'm not getting any better, constantly questioning myself and losing confidence in

myself.

And when I read raw, I was like, that was just my hormones working for me.

You know, like it, that was just something that is actually really beneficial to my health

and my God, but I lost so much confidence because I just had no understanding of what was

going on.

Yeah.

And I think that was like the biggest light bulb moment for me is just the confidence

pace in terms of learning about yourself.

And what.

That can bring to race day and how, um, you can build that confidence over time by actually

acknowledging the changes that are going on internally.

So it was a journey, but I was frustrated and know it, but also excited about the potential

that I knew I had that I hadn't unleashed yet because I hadn't understood what I needed.

And so once you kind of got that knowledge on board, how did that change your relationship

then with running?

Yeah.

Definitely.

I did, I think for the first couple of years, once I started to really adapt my training

to my cycle and actually start eating the price surprise, which made me feel really

good and I actually had fuel to like train, I felt really good.

And I was starting to perform way better.

I was able to start backing up training.

I remember going from when I had redis, I was probably running like one 40 to one 50

K a week, but struggling to get through it.

And then I started this like new training.

I started to see a new approach of adapting to the cycle and fueling really specifically

to training and seeing food as fuel and as energy to get me through training versus seeing

food as the devil or like it was going to make me slower if I ate because it was going

to make me bigger.

So my whole mindset shifted.

And then I started to see my performance gains.

I got up to like one 70 K weeks, which is massive, like a lot of running.

Yeah.

And I, I was backing up sessions.

And I started to just chip away at my time.

So I broke my five K 10 K half marathon and marathon PB in the space of about 18 months.

Whoa.

Yeah.

And I think that for me was like a real, just like green light in terms of you're doing

the right thing.

And on top of all of that, on top of all the training and PBs and whatnot, I had a healthy

cycle.

I was eating well.

And I felt so much.

Much better in my body because I, I stopped focusing on my appearance.

I stopped saying, I need to get to this weight in order to achieve these goals.

I was then saying, I just need to eat this much to do this much training so I can then

get to these goals.

And that whole mindset shift was just huge for me.

So yeah, it was been a journey, but it's exciting to think like what else I could potentially

achieve and what other women can achieve now that we know what we know about female physiology.

Hmm.

So I'm going to take the opportunity now to meet you and work with some of your team on

an event that we did with Nike, um, Femi and Tifa on international women's day.

Um, and I absolutely love the work that you do, but also the community that you've built

around that.

But can you explain for people who don't know what is Femi and why did you start Femi as

a co-founder?

Yeah.

Um, I'm so lucky.

I started Femi with my best friend, Esther, who unfortunately, but fortunately went through

a very similar journey.

To me, she was an incredible runner.

When she was a teenager, she had very similar coaches with similar mindsets around weight

at when she was like 13, 14, 15.

And she unfortunately fell into anorexia at that time.

And she actually won world cross country champs as a teenager, which is huge.

So it was really seen as going to be the next big thing for New Zealand distance running.

And.

And because of those issues and the eating disorders and, and not feeling yourself correctly,

she also fell into redress.

She had stress fracture after stress fracture.

She had bronchitis and all these health issues and ended up stopping running at like 17,

16, 17 and, and took about five or six years away.

So when we became friends, we kind of bonded over similar journeys.

And then we also both found ourselves not only being athletes,

but we also found ourselves running.

And I started working in the fitness industry from quite a young age.

And I started coaching when I was about 21.

I got offered a role at a high school in New Zealand to work with the young girls

and coach the track and field team.

And because I had such an amazing experience as a teenage girl with my incredible coach,

I really wanted to give back to the sport through the way that she coached me.

And so I worked with diocesan school for girls in Auckland for five years.

And throughout that journey,

I also just had some experience with the fitness industry.

And I had so many runners online messaging me for coaching programs and advice.

And I didn't really think about it too much at the time,

but I,

it was really like the first steps in terms of building an online running

community.

And I think over about four or five years,

I wrote about 4,000 running programs.

That's a lot of running programs.

Everyone like all over the world.

I really had no idea what I was doing.

I definitely had no idea about tech.

And I was just like writing these programs,

personalizing them for everybody.

I would email every single person would have back and forth,

like make sure it's as personal as I can possibly give for each individual athlete.

Um, and it was a really like incredible experience in terms of learning how to work with all

ability athletes alongside the work I was doing with Nike.

So I, I started as the Nike run coach in New Zealand in 2014 or 15,

I believe.

And so I kind of got to work with them.

I also experienced running outside of my own like little bubble of being a high performing athlete and got to see

what running could do for everybody.

Like the impact that running can have on an everyday person who just wants to feel good and achieve their goals

alongside working full-time jobs or raising kids and all of that.

Like I was really inspired by what everyone else could do.

Um, so I was kind of online coaching,

working as Nike run coach,

and then working with high school girls.

And.

Um, when I went through my own journey,

my own health journey and learning about myself as an athlete and learning how important it is to understand your physiology as a female by about 2019,

I just felt this huge responsibility to take everything I'd gone through and all of the challenges I went through and all of these

learnings that I'd gone through and actually start educating women correctly and guiding women appropriately based on their hormones.

And in 2020,

obviously we all went through lockdown and COVID and Esther,

who was working as a personal trainer at the time,

lost your job.

And I had kind of built my online business to a point where I couldn't expand it by myself any longer.

Like I really kind of hit the ceiling in terms of what I could do.

And I really wanted to grow it into something that was not just about me and not just about me as a coach.

I've really wanted to build something bigger.

And so Esther and I came together.

And at the time we knew there was a need for a space specifically for women.

Esther and I have always been quite hardcore feminists in the sporting industry.

I feel like we've always been the ones who have like stood up when things haven't felt quite right or fair for women.

We've definitely called out the media in New Zealand if they haven't given.

Yes, actually, you told me that story the other day.

Can you share that?

Yes. So we ran this race back in New Zealand.

I want to say maybe it was 2018.

Definitely before.

Femi's time. And it was the biggest 5,000 meter race in New Zealand.

So it's like quite a lot of media, quite a lot of coverage.

People get really excited about the race.

And I fortunately won that race, which I was really proud of and excited by.

The next day, the results came out and there was a news article and it was really like minute by minute play of how the men's race went down.

Who was leading? Who was in front?

Who was overtaking? You could have read the entire race.

And they didn't even say one thing about the women's race, not even one mention, not even one mention.

And I had people messaging me on Instagram saying, like, where are the women's results?

I haven't been able to find them.

Like, who came first?

And I was just so shocked that in this day and age that that can even happen.

And so Esther and I like called that out and we were pretty loud about it and really wanted to make a point that this is not OK.

Just because.

Because men are physiologically built to run faster does not mean they're more impressive or that they, you know, should have more attention.

And so we called that out and change was made.

They rewrote the article.

And then I believe now every piece of media that comes out from Athletics New Zealand has to be equal and they have to make sure that there's equal prize money.

That's always somewhat been the case.

It has changed.

I think that that definitely been something that's come out over the last 10 years.

Which is good.

And also like imagery and just making sure there's like equality in our sport.

So, so important, particularly when we see so many young girls dropping out of athletics.

Like when that happens, you're like, well, no wonder girls aren't wanting to continue the sport if we're not getting the level of support and attention that the boys are.

So that was a massive one for us.

So Esther and I have always kind of been like, I love it really like whistleblowers, like we need to get women the support that they need.

And so by 2020, we're like, how are we going to do this?

And let's start building something together.

We had another friend, Paige, who was with us in Melbourne, one of my training partners who also had lost her job.

So we brought her in as a coach as well.

And Femi really started as one-to-one coaching.

So really off the back of my old running programming business, we started one-to-one coaching.

And it was all about adapting the training to the woman's menstrual cycle.

If she has a natural cycle.

And if she doesn't, how can we give her the best and most sustainable programming possible for where she's at on her running journey?

And yeah, we pretty quickly saw the need for what we were delivering.

We also saw this huge gap in the market in terms of sporting technology for women.

We were using like five different platforms to give her coaching guidance, track her menstrual cycle.

We did that all manually.

We were giving her like tips around her cycle and how she can.

Be the best her on whatever day she's on in her cycle.

We were like trying to chat with her through what, like it was a real mishmash and like, yeah, it was just a bit chaotic.

And we tried to find like a sporting platform we could use that would do it all.

And there just wasn't one.

And we saw kind of this rise of other sporting tech and like social media sports tech growing.

And we were like, wow, it's so masculine.

It's so built for competitiveness and comparison.

And it doesn't really inspire a lot of women.

So we need to fill that gap and build something that's just for her.

Makes her feel good.

It's about her personal journey and she can share it if she wants to.

But it's also just around sustainable training periodized to her cycle.

So from there, we started building tech really.

And alongside that, building the community, which has been a huge journey.

What on earth is it like building tech?

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

It's been it's been like huge learning curve.

I feel like I've gone through like 10 degrees in the last like three or four years.

It's hard.

I think tech is something that is constantly changing.

And I kind of came from this world of Nike.

So I spent five years in the brand team at Nike alongside being the coach.

And we put so much effort and work into launching a shoe.

And obviously, there's so much tech and innovation.

That goes into that beautiful shoe.

But once the shoe is on the shelf, it's not changing.

Like that is the shoe that we're selling.

And so you build a huge campaign around that shoe and you do all the glitz and glam and the shoe sells out and happy days.

Whereas in technology, you're never finished.

The job of building a tech or a product, a digital product is just like a constantly evolving beast, which definitely has pros and cons as well.

It makes me just feel.

A little bit tired thinking about that.

Yeah, we had honestly, we had no idea what we're getting ourselves in for.

We were like, yeah, we'll just build this app and it'll be fun.

And now we've been building.

So we started ideating in 2021, started building in 2022.

We launched in 2023, the week of my wedding, which was just also chaotic.

Oh, that's good timing.

Perfect timing.

And then 20.

Yeah.

So we've been launched now for about a year and a half.

And we've been building for maybe about two weeks.

Two and a half.

So it's still very early days and we still have so much to do.

We have such a long roadmap, what we call in the product world.

We have this huge roadmap of things that we want to build for women.

But I'm really proud of what we've been able to do.

Like our team is small right now.

We only have one engineer and just myself and Esther.

And we have a huge wide team, which is incredible because it's our community.

But it is.

It's a grind.

But I've been learning a lot.

A lot.

Yeah.

What has it been like being a woman running a startup?

It's been, yeah, hard.

I think a lot of people are kind of unaware of the startup space and what goes.

I definitely had no idea about the startup world and raising capital and investment and

how the economy goes round in that kind of world.

I just was so ignorant to all of it.

And then 2022, we got accepted into a startup program called Startmate, which is one of

the biggest startup programs, accelerator programs in Australia and New Zealand.

At the time we applied, I was kind of like, we're just building a running app.

Like, I don't know if people are really going to care about this as in the startup world

and investors.

And in our cohort, 500 companies applied and they only selected 12.

Whoa.

And so for us to be selected in that cohort was a huge confidence boost in what we were

doing.

Yeah.

We were so lucky and I don't want to say lucky.

I think we earned that.

I use the word luck, I think probably as a woman saying that we're lucky all the time.

But actually, I think we definitely deserve to be there.

And I definitely look back on the journey we went on to where we are now.

And I'm so proud of the work that we've been able to do.

But that was a huge confidence boost to say we were on the right path.

And that was our first injection of capital.

And so coming out of Startmate, you kind of...

You know, it's like the startup world gets all this idea that you are going to raise

all this money and build this huge business and it's going to take over the world and

that's all going to happen in 12 months.

Like, that's kind of the yarn you get spun.

And it's unfortunately not that common.

Like, yes, sometimes that does happen.

But for us, we have been on this journey now for a few years and we're still learning and

we're still building.

And we are still...

Well, we spent pretty much all of 2024 trying to raise capital.

But when you are in an investment world where majority of the investment managers working

at these VCs, which are the venture capitalists, are men and you're building a company for

women and you're two women founders, it's incredibly hard to get them to understand

the product, actually get them to even understand the problem when we're sitting there saying,

you know, women have grown up in a world where we have been spoken to as exercise, as a tool,

to lose weight or change the way you look.

And it's been built around men and there's no consideration of female hormones.

You try and tell these problems to men and they're kind of like, oh, yeah, that kind

of sounds about right.

On to the next one.

Or you might be lucky to get a pat on the back to say you're doing some really good

work.

And so we spent, I don't even know, we would have pitched to over 100 investors last year.

And fortunately, we found some real amazing...

Mostly women.

We have a few male investors, but mostly women who get the problem, understand the mission

we're on and are really excited about the tech that we're building.

And they are just the biggest supporters for us.

But yeah, as a woman founder, whether you're building a product for a woman or not, I know

that I think it's less than 2% of venture capital money goes into female founders.

So majority of the funds from investors are going into male founders and most of them

are going into...

Founders that the investors can relate to.

So not only are they men, they're like the Elon Musks of the world or, you know, like

the Jeff Bezos's who are like, oh, you're the next Jeff Bezos.

I can see that in you because you're a dude who carries a lot of confidence.

We get told to be louder.

We get told to be more confident.

You know, we get told to put on these personas to impress people or impress investors.

And like, why can't we just be ourselves?

You know, I'm like, why can't I just be me, be Lydia?

And do the hard work that we're doing and still get the support that all the guys are

getting.

It is a battle.

But right now we're just so in the thick of like building a product that I know is going

to change the world.

I'm like, I don't even care.

I love that.

What has been some of the feedback you've got from people in your community who've been

using the app?

Yeah, amazing.

Like that is one thing I feel so grateful for.

I feel so lucky to hear from our community all the time.

Like I get to be...

In amongst the women, I go to the Femi Run community.

So we have now, I think 20, maybe over 20 physical run communities across the world.

And women are meeting every Friday.

They go for a run, they get coffee.

And it's so much more than just the pursuit of running.

It's really like a connection point and a really like safe environment for women to

meet and converse and talk about things that maybe they don't talk about anywhere else.

We have one woman come up to us in Auckland.

Who said she came to Femi because she has been having issues with her menstrual cycle

and she didn't really know where else to go to get support.

And everyone at Femi is obviously going to wrap their arms around her.

And although they and myself, I'm not a medical professional.

We have medical professionals on the team who educate us.

Just being able to have that conversation is life changing.

Like to feel that you have a space to go to, to talk about these things is so incredible.

So we're so lucky to be able to feel that and hear that all the time.

I don't know if Esther and I would still be on this mission without it because it's been so hard.

I hate playing that poor female founder card.

I really don't like it.

But I also want to be honest, like it has been a real mission to get here.

Yeah.

But it's all thanks to the community from like getting behind us and believing in what we're

doing too.

So, yeah, we've had women like say with Femi's changed their lives and, you know, being able

to see them break.

They're PB's and get to finish lines.

Like I spent the weekend at the Nike after dark tour in Sydney and I was on the mic for

like four hours at the finish line.

And I don't know if you've ever been to a finish line of a race, but it's the most incredible.

It's on my bucket list.

I need to do it.

It's like being at the airport when you see people come together, seeing women across

the finish line, like holding hands with their hands up in the air, massive smile on their

face, just so proud of themselves.

And.

That to me is like why I do all the work that I do is it's seeing the confidence these women

gain because they have done something really hard and they're so proud of themselves.

And Femi is a running amp.

And from the outside, that's what it looks like.

But ultimately, we're trying to build confidence in women because we have just been brought

up in a world to drain our confidence ever since we were born.

And it's really cool to see women like taking it back and taking ownership and being like,

I trust myself.

I believe myself.

I can do this.

That's really cool.

Yeah, that's really powerful.

What has it been like to be part of the run club culture that's just absolutely taken

off over the last few years?

It's wild.

It's crazy.

I still have to like sit back and look at it sometimes.

Like this is insane because when I was running high school and even in my 20s, my early 20s,

running was so naff.

Like it was really like nerdy and like no one thought running was cool.

Yeah.

Some people would be like, oh, that's cool.

You ran a half marathon, you know, like move on.

And now it's like people's entire identity is about running and running races.

And it's been wild.

I think Nike Run Club started in 2011, I believe.

And Auckland in New Zealand was one of the first cities to have a physical Nike Run Club.

So we started getting people together from all walks of life.

Every Wednesday, they'd meet down in Britomar in the city.

And we'd go for, I think it was like a 5K or a 10K.

And it was just incredible to see the diversity of people coming.

We'd have like, sometimes young kids would turn up and then sometimes they would be like

70 year olds who have been just running all their lives and just love it.

And shifting from that to what it is now has just been incredible to watch, I think,

and to be part of as well.

I started coaching in 2014 or 15.

But I'd been part of Nike Run Club since 2011.

And in about 2018, we stopped doing the physical or weekly Run Clubs.

So we pulled back, as in Nike pulled back from doing the physical meetups and kind of handed

the keys over to the participants who were turning up weekly and said to them, you know,

go and start your own Run Club and we'll be here to support you.

And from there until now, what has it been like seven years?

It's gone.

It's gone from maybe one or two Run Clubs in a city to now, in Sydney, there's probably

like a thousand Run Clubs.

And there is a Run Club or a Run Community for everybody.

There is a space for everyone.

I think what we hear all the time is women saying, I want to start my own Run Club or

community, but I just feel like there's already so many and there isn't really space for me.

And I just want people to know there's always space.

And whether you have two people showing up or 200 people showing up,

building somewhere where people can connect is so incredibly special.

And I just don't think we understand the impact of that long term.

And so what we've actually built in the Femi app now is the ability for people to start their own

Run Communities and we call it Host Your Home Run or Own Your Home Run.

You can apply to have a run in your local area and Femi will promote it for you.

We cover all the waivers and all the T's and C's so you're completely covered and people can find you in the Femi app.

And come along and run and it's been really cool that we had someone from the U.S.

and I think it was in Alabama recently applied to host a run.

And it's really amazing to see kind of this giving people the ability and opportunity to build something of their own is really cool.

So especially for women it's really needed.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I touched earlier on the International Women's Day event.

It was really, really cool.

I got all my family to come along, my partner Riley and our little boy Fred.

And it was quite funny because they were Fred.

His naps were all over the place.

And so they were running a little bit late.

And so we, a majority of people did the run that day, but we did the walk and we were waiting for Riley and Fred to arrive in the pram.

And it was so lovely because the other girls from Femi who are walking with us at every traffic light would stop and wait for us to make sure that we caught up.

And I think they talked about that being a really big part of the community of it.

It's that it's not about that competition and running as fast as you possibly can.

It's about doing it together and the relationships that you build out of that.

Definitely.

That is it.

It is about like building a safe space where anybody can show up no matter what pace you're running at.

And Femi Fridays, it is not a race.

You're not going there to like ultimately build your fitness or, you know, get faster or crush your goals.

It's there to connect with each other.

And there are spaces to do that.

And I know there are run clubs that exist that are around competition and running as fast as you can.

And all of that is great.

And I think it's needed.

But Femi is definitely there for just to support women.

I feel like we just don't have enough safe spaces that are ours to own.

And we want to go.

We want women to turn up and feel like they're heard and seen and acknowledged no matter who they are, what their running journey has been, what pace they're running.

So I'm glad that you felt that because that's definitely the Femi ethos.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, that's very cool.

A question that I ask everyone on the show is what is your favorite failure?

So I.

I feel like failures are just an opportunity to learn.

I feel like particularly building, building technology.

Yeah.

There's a term in building tech called fail fast.

OK.

And the faster you can fail, the quicker you can learn and then build something better.

And so for me, I try to take that and apply that to all areas of my life.

Now, I think I grew up in a world where.

I was so afraid of failing.

I felt a lot of pressure as a young kid.

I felt a lot of pressure to be perfect and be the best me and particularly as a ballerina, it's all about, you know, ticking all these boxes and I definitely carry that in my life now still about like perfectionism and I think a lot of women do like I feel like we all feel this pressure to be seen as like being perfect in society, which is probably a whole nother conversation.

But for me, I'm trying to embrace failure a bit more.

But I think when I look back on my life failing.

I think it was falling ill and like going through that challenge of not understanding my body because it really forced me into a place where I had to learn and that learning completely changed my life.

So that was for sure my proudest failure, which is quite weird because it was.

Yeah, it was really challenging body image issues.

And yeah, I feel like I came out the other side of that with this kind of tool to be able to help others.

Yeah, it's really powerful.

Thank you so much for your time today and for sharing really openly your story and for your vulnerability and sharing that.

I'm really thankful.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for listening.

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