Editor’s note: Running gives you time to think. Audiobooks give you something worth thinking about. That’s why Tempo is partnering with Audible to bring three of Australia’s finest distance runners to grassroots run crews in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. At each event, the athletes will lead a morning run, share what fuels their routines, on and off the road, and talk about the audiobooks they’ve been listening to on Audible. We’ve sat down with all three to find out more. You can read the full interviews in an exclusive zine, available at each of the morning events.

Genevieve Gregson has a theory about music and running. “With songs, I find I’m counting them – a song’s three or four minutes long, so I’m going, ‘Okay, I’m only eight minutes into the run,’ ” the four-time Olympian says. “Whereas with an audiobook, you lose yourself out there and the time passes really fast.” It’s a sharp observation, and it gets to the heart of something runners instinctively understand. The best training runs are the ones where you forget you’re running. Where the legs feel easy and the kilometres tick over without effort. Running with an audiobook does more than merely fill that time. It makes it immersive and stimulating, turning those hours into something that feeds the mind as well as the body.

That idea sits at the core of Run the Ritual, a collaboration between Audible and Tempo that brings three of Australia’s best distance runners to grassroots run crews across the East Coast. Andy Buchanan, the Australian men’s marathon record holder, will lead a morning session with the Coogee Run Club in Sydney on Thursday 26 February. Jess Stenson, who broke the women’s marathon record in Valencia in December, joins All Ours on the Tan in Melbourne on Saturday 14 March. And Gen rounds out the series with SoSo’s Run Club in Brisbane on Wednesday 18 March. At each event, these fantastic athletes will run with the crews before sitting down for a post-session chat about their routines and the audiobooks that fuel them. Having caught up with each of them, we can say they’re not only incredible runners but also some of the nicest Aussies out there, so these are sure to be great sessions.

Attendees will also get the chance to pick up an exclusive zine featuring in-depth interviews with all three runners. Because the best mornings start with something that moves you, physically and mentally.

Andy Buchanan

Not so long ago, Andy Buchanan was a Bendigo schoolteacher and running shop co-founder logging 150–160km a week in virtual anonymity. Then came 2024 and everything changed. He won the Gold Coast Half Marathon, received a late call-up to the Paris Olympics, won the Melbourne Half Marathon and then, in December, ran 2:06:22 in Valencia to smash the Australian marathon record by almost two minutes. He went, as he puts it, from zero to a hundred almost overnight.

The 34-year-old is not teaching this year (running is now his full-time job) and he’s in the midst of a careful comeback from an injury that denied him a return to Valencia in December 2025. Without the anchor of a school day, he’s trying to build the kind of morning structure that will sustain him. “I love routine, absolutely love it,” he says. His ideal morning would involve stretching, meditation and “listening to an audiobook during that to give me something to think about”, before heading out for a run. “That’s the dream. I’ll be honest – it doesn’t always go that way, but I’m working on it!”

Audible has become part of that evolving routine. Andy listens in the sauna during recovery, on the train to Melbourne, while cooking dinner or simply pottering around the house. “I see it as a bit of a pathway,” he explains. “You’re not glued to a TV series, but you’ve got this audiobook in your ears and it’s kind of like a companion.”

He’s been drawn to Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory on Audible. “The key theme I’ve taken away is that it’s not what happens to you that matters most – it’s how you react.” For someone finding themselves under the microscope of public attention for the first time, with every Strava upload now under scrutiny, the message landed at the right time. “Listening to this audiobook has been a really good reminder to do what you think is best for you and let other people decide what they think. You can’t control that.”

Andy’s also deep into Naomi Alderman’s Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, about AI and information overload. “I love these big, deep-thinking audiobooks,” he says. “It makes you realise the world is really complex and we’re just a very small part of it, which is a nice little reminder from time to time.” And his pick for GOAT sports biography? Open by Andre Agassi. It’s brutally honest, and the Audible title is narrated by Agassi himself. “So many sports books are all sunshine and rainbows,” Andy says, whereas Agassi gives a warts-and-all rundown of his tennis career and personal life. Andy says he particularly values the author-narrated format across his listening, which is not something he can get from the printed page. “Hearing their voices adds an extra level of connectedness.”

Jess Stenson

If Buchanan is building a new routine, Stenson’s has been locked in for years. Hers are rituals refined by necessity. The 38-year-old lays out her clothes and headphones the night before so she can move through the dark house quietly, grab a piece of toast and be out the door within 10 minutes. It’s the kind of economy that comes from managing two young children. The three-time Olympian and Commonwealth Games champion welcomed son Billy in 2019 and daughter Ellie in 2023, returning from both breaks to set personal bests, including her record-breaking run in Valencia last December.

Motherhood, far from slowing her down, has only improved Jess’s times. And it has sharpened her appreciation for what the sport gives her. “I love what running continues to teach me about myself, and the way it makes me feel: strong, healthy, fit, empowered,” she says.

The controlled chaos of parenthood has also changed how Jess takes in the world beyond running: with two young kids and early bedtimes, curling up with a book isn’t an option, so Audible audiobooks have become her way of learning on the move.

When she sets herself up the night before, one element she deliberately leaves open is what to listen to. Each morning, after everything else is done, Jess spends a minute choosing an audiobook she feels like listening to. It’s the one spontaneous part of an otherwise entirely intentional routine.

Jess first embraced Audible during Covid, when lockdowns stripped away her training partners. “At first I got hooked on podcasts, but after I burnt through most of the titles I was interested in I got more into audiobooks.” Now, she listens during solo morning jogs, gym sessions, cross training on the elliptical and even in the sauna during heat-adaptation blocks. “Being a mum who goes to bed early, I don’t find time to read unless I’m travelling to a race,” she says. “Audiobooks are my way of getting that material in.”

Jess’s recent pick has been The Seven Rules of Trust by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, which initially caught her eye for a personal reason: someone edited her Wikipedia bio years ago to include humorous claims about a wrestling background in country South Australia. As Wales explains, the Wikipedia editing process has become a lot more trustworthy over the years, and that theme of trust is at the core of the audiobook. It’s something that resonated personally for Jess: “It got me thinking about trusting my coach and the team I work with, and how that’s played a role in my progress. I love listening to audiobooks that might seem unrelated to running but where you can always apply some of the learnings.”

That cross-disciplinary curiosity runs through her whole Audible library. She’s been listening to The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest, about finding inner peace and letting go of self-sabotage. And The Clever Guts Diet by Dr Michael Mosley, recommended by her dad during a family health scare several years ago, made such an impression on her nutrition that she returns to it again and again. “Bettering yourself as a person and learning how to get the most out of your brain helps you physically as well,” Jess believes.

Genevieve Gregson

Gen’s career has been defined by comebacks. Australia’s greatest steeplechaser and the holder of the national 3000m record at 9:14.28, she represented her country at four Olympic Games before a ruptured Achilles in the Tokyo final forced a dramatic reinvention. She moved to Brisbane, underwent bilateral Achilles surgery and pivoted to the marathon after having son Archer with fellow Olympian Ryan Gregson in 2022. Now 36, she debuted in the 42km with a time of 2:28:33 at Gold Coast in 2023, the second-fastest debut by an Australian woman. Six months later, she ran her PB of 2:23:08 in Valencia, the third-fastest marathon ever from an Australian woman, earning selection for Paris 2024.

Then came Freddy, her second son, in July last year. By December, just five months postpartum, she was back racing a 2:28:51 marathon in Valencia’s elite field. But it’s the upcoming Nagoya Marathon, a women’s-only event taking place on International Women’s Day in less than three weeks’ time, she’s most excited about. “Since Freddy’s birth, this is the first race where I actually feel like I’m in great shape,” Gen says. “Valencia was just a goal to get me out the door every day, whereas I’ve really been nailing this Nagoya prep and I’m in a really good place.”

Gen doesn't use music with her running, as she explains with her counting-songs theory, so she listens to Audible a lot during and around her training: on the 25–30 minute drives to the Queensland Academy of Sport gym and the track, on her many solo runs through suburban Brisbane, and anywhere else she can escape the kids’ song playlists that dominate the family car.

Her recent Audible pick was Reset Your Health by Jamie Oliver, a six-part Audible Original where he talks to experts about science-backed lifestyle changes. Despite growing up on a farm with a health-conscious pharmacist father, Gen found the audiobook’s focus on gut health genuinely eye-opening. “As an elite marathon runner, it’s the 1% cent things that matter, and I think these are little things I was probably skipping over,” she says. The title’s become required household listening: “I’m now making my husband listen to it.”

Away from nutrition, Gen’s tastes run darker. She’s obsessed with Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole audiobooks, calling the crime fiction series “Nordic noir at its best”. It’s not all solving murders though. She recently loved Des Linden’s memoir Choosing to Run, recommended to her by fellow Australian distance runner Eloise Wellings. Linden narrates it herself, taking the listener through her ups and downs in the US college system (something Gen has personal experience of) before her unexpected win at the 2018 Boston Marathon.

The Common Thread

What connects these three athletes, beyond their obvious shared talent, is the way audiobooks have found a place not in one tidy corner of their routines but are woven deeply through both training itself and the in-between moments. Andy listens in the sauna and on the train. Jess listens on the elliptical and during heat acclimatisation. Gen listens on the drive to the gym and on solo runs.

Two of the three are mothers who’d never otherwise have time to take in this kind of mind-enriching content. Jess goes to bed early and doesn’t have the time for a novel. Gen’s household is awake before five. Amid these hectic schedules, audiobooks are the only practical way to absorb the kind of ideas that feed the mental side of a sport often reduced to its physical demands.

And if that’s true for elite athletes running 150 kilometres a week, it’s true for the rest of us, too. The average runner spends plenty of time alone: on the morning jog before work, on the long run at the weekend, on the commute home still buzzing from a strength-training session. Audible enriches these hours and minutes. It gives you fuel for your mind, something intellectually nourishing to chat about with friends over coffee afterwards.

Which, not coincidentally, is exactly what’s happening at our three Run the Ritual events. We hope you can make it!

Made possible by Audible, Andy Buchanan will be running and in conversation with the Coogee Run Club in Sydney on Thursday 26 February. The Jess Stenson x All Ours event takes place in Melbourne on Saturday 14 March. Genevieve Gregson meets up with SoSo’s Run Club in Brisbane on Wednesday 18 March. Sign up via Eventbrite.

Fuel your mornings with Audible by downloading the app to start listening today.