Kieran Read. Photo / Photosport.co.nz
In the year since he retired from rugby, Kieran Read has not lifted a weight or entered a gym.
Rather than grappling for a loose ball in a ruck, he wrestles with his three kids on the trampoline, and instead of a week peaking on the field, his happy place is mowing the lawn.
If it sounds like Read is living post-rugby life as a typical Kiwi dad, there's a reason for that.
The 36-year-old will tell you that's who he has long been - just one who won two World Cups then captained the All Blacks 52 times.
But with those feats disappearing further in the rear-view mirror, triumphs of which every other Kiwi dad can only dream, Read's new routine is much more familiar.
"It's based around my family," he says on the Between Two Beers podcast, midway through an ordinary Wednesday. "I got the kids ready for school and went for a run and then just did a little bit of work.
"I took my wife out for lunch, and then the kids get home from school and you're basically wrestling on the tramp and running around outside."
Running, after kids or otherwise, is one activity Read has continued since playing his final game for Japanese side Toyota Verblitz last May.
While he held antipathy towards both fitness and gym work during a 16-year professional career, Read still needed to funnel his athletic urges somewhere other than the backyard.
"I have not set foot in a gym, I have not picked up a weight or a dumbbell or anything since I retired," Read says. "You had to do it for so long - for your career and your body and to perform like you had to, you had to work hard in the gym.
"And it was OK, but I didn't enjoy it as much as some of the other parts of what you're doing as a rugby player. So I kind of stopped.
"I never thought I'd go running because I hated running, too. But I started running as being my buzz and to keep fit and more to just clear the mind, really."
Nothing will clear the mind, Read found late last year, like hitting the wall halfway through a 55-kilometre run.
The formidable loose forward has shed almost 15 kilograms from his playing weight of 110kg, putting him in the right shape to face some demons while running the iconic Old Ghost Road track.
"I definitely didn't run the whole way. There were some dark patches," Read says. "I'd run 20k before it - that was the furthest I'd run in one attempt. Then you turn up for this Old Ghost Road and it's pretty hilly and pretty tough and, man, she's a tough gig.
"Thirty K in, I was feeling all right, then suddenly hit the wall and went through about 10k of demons. It was tough but, after about seven or eight hours, I got to the end and it was fulfilling to get done. It scratched an itch."
The next chance to satiate those urges will be a 12-hour running-and-biking event in Kaikōura. But while he enjoys the adventure races and idyllic family life and blessedly pain-free mornings, Read is well aware how different post-rugby life can be.
When Carl Hayman played the last of his 46 tests in 2007, Read was a year away from starting his 128-test tenure, the third-most appearances in All Blacks history.
The pair's retirements have been divergent, too, and Read was as saddened as any rugby fan when Hayman late last year revealed his struggles with early-onset dementia.
The number of contact-sport athletes who can empathise with Hayman is alarmingly high, an uncomfortable reality only becoming clearer as awareness grows about the long-term effects of head knocks.
And Read, who suffered a prolonged battle with concussions in 2014, shortly after being named the best player in the world, is among them.
"You see the studies that are coming out and see Carl Hayman in the media and it's hard not to get a little bit worried about those things, knowing that you've been through this."
Read's own story has a happier ending, even if eight years on recalling that period engenders the opposite feeling.
The afternoon entertainment of the trampoline was then a source of pain, headaches the result of watching his kids bounce up and down. Scanning the road while driving a short distance was the same.
Before the problem was pinpointed as a balance issue, Read couldn't help but be troubled by what all those hits might have done to his health.
"It was one of the toughest times of my career - more leading up to when I figured out that it wasn't my brain," Read says. "I went and did these tests and I couldn't even stand on one foot, I was so out of whack.
"It was scary and you question a lot in that time - I know a lot of guys who have had serious concussions. For two months I was essentially feeling like shit because you do these tests and all these exercises and it makes you worse. It makes your fucking head ache.
"I was still playing - I probably shouldn't have, looking back - because I was like, it's not my brain, I can do it. I'd be in training and pop my head out of a maul and not know where I was."
With the assistance of doctors, psychiatric counselling and vestibular rehabilitation therapy, the issue eventually was resolved. One morning, Read woke up and felt normal again.
But he naturally has some concerns about what the future may hold, heartened by the fact he's not alone and keen to extend that comfort to others, no matter how upsetting the topic can be.
"I was very wary after that, but I was pretty lucky that I didn't have too many major head knocks," Read says. "I've done everything I could - I never went back after a concussion straight away, and I did all the protocols and was well looked after.
"The thing is, when you talk about it, it puts you back into that moment, that pretty dark space, because you are touching on that whole anxious time and living a life that's pretty tough to live.
"So that's the hardest bit, when you're transported back to those feelings. But I'm happy to talk about it and just make sure people do the right thing, which is listening to the experts and taking the time."
Any teammate who has played under Read will recognise his approach to what can seem a taboo subject in modern rugby.
Of course he's happy to talk about it; Read built his captaincy on connecting with his charges, building relationships, and talking about anything and everything that would make the team marginally better.
That chat started at a young age, but not on the rugby field.
"I captained cricket teams when I was growing up but I never had confidence in a rugby environment," he recalls. "I was always listening and learning and picking up stuff in the different teams I was involved in, but I was never one to voice any opinions or speak up.
"But you realise you pick up what it takes to have a relationship and understanding different cultures and what it means for these guys."
That was particularly true when Read - who until 18 considered himself a stronger cricket prospect - played rugby for Counties Manukau at age-group level.
Having grown up in "a special part of the world", Read progressed from Papakura's Rosehill College to the provincial team, where his experiences as one of the few Pākehā kids shaped the man he would become.
"It's a little bit tough for this white guy to turn up and try to play with them, especially when they start speaking Tongan or Fijian on the field," Read says. "I just had to try and keep up, but it was a lot of fun.
"It was pretty cool to experience that culture and get a grasp for it. Growing up in South Auckland, it shaped who I was going to be as a leader and how I interact with different people."
It will come as no surprise, then, that Read - once school drop-off duties are out of the way - is now spending his spare time forging a new career focused on leadership.
Whether it's captain of a first XV or chief executive of a business, Read believes many leaders are thrown in the deep end, and he has invaluable knowledge to keep them from sinking.
"You get hung out to dry a little bit when you get named captain," he says. "There's not too many tools to help you. So I'm hoping to launch that soon and really help that next generation of leader."
Ask him the most pivotal aspect of leadership and, again, it's all talk.
"Accountability is probably one of the hardest things to have as a leader," Read says.
"You're trying to have that hard conversation with your mate, saying, 'Hey, you're not pulling your weight here, we need you', which is really hard to do.
"It means being able to be a bit uncomfortable there. You work yourself up a bit before you do it but it's an important conversation to have.
"The way I led was that I hoped people would then hold me accountable, because there's a connection and they understand that I'm doing it to them because of a bigger picture. I think that's the important thing - if what you're saying is going to help the team and put the team first, then it has to be said."
It hardly needs to be said that sport still flows through Read's blood. Although he's avoided the gym, running is far from the only athletic pursuit in his household.
Read's five-year-old son Reuben has yet to venture much further than the trampoline, but daughters Elle and Eden play touch, netball, basketball and hockey.
"My wife's not too happy," Read laughs, "because when I'm away she's got to ship them around everywhere for training."
Elle, his eldest, has also taken to cricket, just in time to offer her dad some crucial practise in the backyard.
Read certainly looked well trained when he smashed 84 from 55 balls after opening the batting for Team Rugby in January's Black Clash. But that knock did feature some nervy moments.
Particularly, he remembers, when facing Shane Bond, who at 46 remains a few clicks faster than Read's 11-year-old daughter.
"If you love cricket, you love watching Shane Bond play," Read says. "Growing up, that was one of my heroes, and suddenly you get the opportunity to face him.
"I flew up with him from Christchurch, so we went for coffee and had a good yarn. I just thought I'd butter him up so when I did face him, maybe he wouldn't send it down too hard.
"Then, lo and behold: first ball, bouncer straight at the head. I was like, 'What's happening?'"
A year after leaving behind rugby and beginning the rest of his life, a content Read is more than satisfied with the answer to that question.
Listen to the full Between Two Beers podcast with Kieran Read below:
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