Marathon eve. Andy’s nerves have finally kicked in. Rich is reading Murakami. And Spencer Matthews has just told the world that a marathon is easy.

That’s where this one starts. Rich and Andy take the comment apart - the context he tried to give it, why it still doesn’t hold up, and what it does to the single mum running three times a week who hears “easy” and wonders why it’s so hard for her. Rich gives it a name: the modern-day influencer ivory tower. Say something polarising, let the algorithm do the rest, and if people take it the wrong way, that’s a them problem.

Then it’s into the real stuff. Andy is running York with Johnny tomorrow - Johnny’s first marathon, Andy’s 15th. They’ve done the gold, silver, bronze conversation like any coaching client: sub 3:40, sub 3:45, sub 4. Going out at 5:15s, seeing what’s in the tank at 30K. Johnny’s head is all over the place - his entire Instagram feed is marathons, gels, contradictions, and a thousand things his dad’s already told him.

Andy lays out what 14 marathons have taught him: the race starts at 30K. Everything before that is about staying calm, not weaving, not accelerating, not spending mental energy on whether you’ve got it today. Get to 30K relaxed and then it’s less than an hour in the office. And the thing nobody tells you - when the pain hits at 33K, it’s a disaster (or isit!!); when it hits at 38K, you can push through. Same pain. Different distance to go. That’s not your body. That’s your brain deciding what’s possible.

Rich brings in Murakami: pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. He walks through what he learned at Valencia - shorten the stride, drive the arms, increase the cadence, coach yourself out loud if you have to - versus Paris, where he admits he mentally checked out.

And then Andy turns it on Rich. No watch, no phone, no data, no plan for four months - and now 6,500 runners, a 3:15 pacer, and a course with 160m of elevation. Rich admits it: he’s never felt more relaxed before a marathon. Because for the first time, he’s got an excuse to fail.

Plus: Gary’s first ultra, 57 miles Glasgow to Edinburgh, just under 13 hours. Stacey executing Chelmsford Half. Jane at Blickling this weekend. And the Yorkshire pudding wrap debate that Andy is refusing to lose.

Nine days to York. Andy’s taking nine pills a day - Heights vitamins, magnesium, D3, lion’s mane for his focus, turmeric for his joints - and isn’t entirely sure he hasn’t just been sold to by a podcast ad. Which opens the door to a much bigger conversation about influence, avoidance, and the things we reach for without noticing.

Andy admits he’ll sit in his car for 20 minutes scrolling before a run he actually wants to do. Rich picks up his phone to Google a recipe and loses half an hour to a Runner’s World article. Andy picks his up to get a two-factor authentication code and surfaces 45 minutes later with no idea what he was doing. They both clock it: this is the same mechanism as drinking. Escapism. Avoidance. The thing that closes the tabs in your head.

Then Rich brings in a neuroscience of addiction webinar he attended this week. What makes something an addiction? Three things: compulsion, reduced control, and a negative state when you stop. Andy hears all three and maps them straight onto his ADHD. They walk through the six systems addictive substances act on - dopamine, GABA, glutamate, endogenous opioids, acetylcholine, endocannabinoids - and why blackout drinking isn’t your brain losing memories, it’s your brain never laying them down in the first place. Andy asks the obvious question nobody seems to be asking: what does that do over 30 years?

They get into Professor David Nutt - fired as the UK government’s chief drugs advisor for saying alcohol caused more social harm than any other drug - and his finding that if alcohol came up for approval today, it wouldn’t get past the first round of testing. Alcohol misuse costs England £27.5 billion a year. The tax collected from it is £12.5 billion. The maths doesn’t work, and nobody wants to talk about it.

And then Rich spots something. An influencer on Instagram, two years alcohol-free, now talking about how “it was never about the alcohol, it was about the moment” - and how his relationship with drinking is “different now.” Scroll down: #PernodRicard. One of the biggest alcohol producers on the planet, paying people to sell moderation without ever naming a brand. Grow the pie, not the slice.

Andy’s response is the title of this episode. The moment is always there. Only the liquid in the glass changes.

Also: Rich on finally liking himself again. Andy on eight years alcohol-free and why the gift keeps giving. And RunDot has Andy’s predicted marathon time eight minutes inside his PB.

October's theme in the Clean Break Collective is 'the stories we tell ourselves'. And this week's episode turns into a live example of exactly what that means.

It starts with Rich asking Andy a simple question about the stories that hold him back. What follows is Andy going back to the beginning - a remedial class at 12, dyslexia that was played down as "very minor" while he was having to learn how to write again, failed A-levels, and a decade of job-hopping in his 20s because every time something got hard, the voice said: if you stay here too long, someone's going to find out you're not good enough. So he walked out before they could.

Rich asks what feeling that story is protecting him from. There's a long silence on the podcast. Then Andy gets there.

They dig into how the fear of failure quietly becomes a fear of success - how Andy comes back from running 230K through the Amazon and finds himself saying "anyone could do that," because somewhere underneath, he's still not sure he's allowed to have it. And how Rich recognises the same thing in himself.

Rich brings in the work of psychologist Tara Brach - the trance of unworthiness, that persistent background belief that you're fundamentally not enough, shaped by the things people said to you and the failures you never forgave yourself for, until it stops feeling like a belief and starts feeling like the truth. He walks through her RAIN practice - recognise, allow, investigate, nurture - and the idea of radical acceptance: not lowering your standards, just seeing clearly where you are without the layer of judgment on top.

And then Andy lands the line that gives this episode its title. For years, he thought he was broken. He kept looking for the fix. The moment things changed was when he accepted there was no fix, because there was nothing broken. He was neurodiverse in a neurotypical world. He just needed tools, not repairs.

They also get into why alcohol works so well as the volume control for all of this - not enough at work, have a drink; anxious at the party, have a drink - and why taking a break from it means you can finally look at the thing you've been turning the volume down on.

Then Andy flips it. Two weeks to York, no watch, no data. What's the story Rich is telling himself? The answer is more honest than you'd expect - and his gut says 3:10 to 3:15.

Also: Andy has three marathons in five months, has accidentally entered a 100K walk along the Jurassic Coast, and there's a gaggle heading to Knebworth 10K on November 1st if you want to join them.