We head to Font Romeu to learn more about life as part of HOKA’s elite training squad.
There’s something about this time of year, that quiet lull before the winter racing season, when the elite runners start to disappear into the middle of the mountains. Tis the season for high altitude camping. Last month I followed the trail to Font Romeu, a sleepy ski town tucked away in the French Pyrenees. For decades, it’s been a popular destination for long-distance runners chasing thinner air and a few extra red blood cells. This time I was joining the HOKA team for their third training camp.
At the center of it all was the energy of the brand’s team, Team Makou. Led by coach Andy Hobdell, the squad included Rory Leonard, Callum Elson, Scott Beattie, Ellis Cross, Ephraim Gidey, Sarah Astin and newcomer India Weir. Add in French 10km record holder Alessia Zarbo, a few more international HOKA athletes and Hobdell’s trademark banter and you have a potent enough mix to keep the sessions running at altitude.
When members of a group have been tagged as “watchable”, they have exceeded that tag. Leonard broke Mo Farah’s long-standing British 10km road record earlier this year. Ireland’s Gidey has qualified for the 10,000m at the World Championships in Tokyo. Cross won bronze in the British 10,000m and Weir, who only joined in May, took silver in the British 5,000m ahead of Innes FitzGerald.
The team gathered in Font Romeu for four weeks of hard training, building up their form ahead of the Valencia Half Marathon, where all but Elson and Weir would continue in Spain.
My goal in joining the Font Romeu team was clear. to pull back the curtain and see what’s really going on behind the perfectly polished Instagram posts and Strava uploads. What secret exercises, techniques, or little tweaks set this group apart from the rest? What I found instead was something more human. The secret, it turns out, isn’t hidden in a data file, it’s in the company.
Between morning threshold runs and afternoon treadmill sessions, the atmosphere felt less like a professional training camp and more like a family living at altitude. The humor of the team allowed everything. The girls organized tours of the nail salon, group coffee runs for their favorite “brookies,” a cross between a chocolate brownie and a cookie, to shared dinners that ended with everyone huddled around the TV watching the latest Team Makou YouTube upload.
The HOC used the camp as an opportunity to establish a closer relationship with the athletes. Between sessions, they joined calls with the brand’s product and innovation teams to have open, collaborative conversations about their shoes and the technology behind them. With HOKA co-founder Christophe Aubonet also spending time at the camp, the team had a rare opportunity to speak directly with one of the minds behind the brand to understand its philosophy, share their experiences and see how their feedback can help shape what’s next.
Font Romeu is a place where life moves at its own pace, and it’s so peaceful that even when I wandered into the local supermarket, I was surprised to find I was the only one there. It was almost eerie how the city still felt like it was hibernating, waiting for the winter rush until you headed to the hustle and bustle of the track.
During my stay, I followed the Makou team through every type of terrain that Font Romeu had to offer, from dusty trails around the lake to mountain roads that tested both lungs and legs to a path between the trees. As the athletes floated through one of their ‘easy’ 10km runs at an effortless pace, I found myself alongside Hobdell. I showed up, assuming I’d just watch from the side until he casually mentioned that we were going to “Jeffing”.
I had no idea what that meant. As it turns out, it’s a mix of running and walking, and at 1,800m above sea level, even walking feels like exercise. Once we picked up the pace, it became clear that each session of Font Romeu came with an extra layer of challenge.
As we jeffed, Hobdell filled me with stories from his other life as a criminal defense attorney; how he balances that with coaching I still don’t know, but between the tales I gained a deeper understanding of his coaching philosophy and how it shaped his group.
His coaching CV is extensive and includes guiding British middle distance athlete Andy Baddeley to the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, but mentoring a team is a new challenge. Team Makou has been together since the beginning of 2024, and Hobdell has been there since the beginning.
“I’ve coached athletes to five Olympics over the years,” he says. “But I’ve never coached a team. So for me, working with this group is an education. There’s been a lot of learning for me along the way, especially with managing men.
“What works for one does not necessarily work for another. It’s not one-size-fits-all, it’s about learning about their personality superpowers and their talents to get the most out of them. This is what I learned from all of this. knowing that they are still individuals, but working together they can be stronger. As a group, I’m amazed at how much more we can do together.
“A session that might seem like a big session working on its own suddenly feels better because we’re repeating it, taking turns and joking between repetitions. It has become something that doesn’t seem too long, too hard, or too difficult. It just becomes an event with your teammates.”
As I watched Hobdell coach, the dynamic between him and the athletes was clear: playful yet purposeful. He would leave during warmups, sitting quietly on the sidelines watching. He said he liked to give athletes space and use that time to gauge their mood, which he would later use to adjust his approach when it came time to practice.
Once the 5x2km threshold track session began, however, the switch would be flipped. Hobdell’s attention to detail sharpened. He’d be on top of everything—heartbeats, splits, form—always adjusting, always pushing. After a session, he would pull the athletes aside for a quick, quiet word. There are no big speeches, only the kind of individual attention that matters.
For Cross, who was nursing a back injury, these moments were crucial. For Weir, attending his first HOKA camp, Hobdell’s approach was more about easing him in gently, making sure he was finding his rhythm in the group.
It was clear his training wasn’t all about grand gestures. It was about knowing each athlete well enough to know when to step in, when to listen, and when to let them go.
“To be honest, I’m old school,” he says. “But forward thinking, so I’m alive to explore. I am alive to findings about certain types of learning, certain adaptations, and I will incorporate them. But it’s like anything else. If you have a method that works, all you have to do is try to improve that method.
“To me, it’s about the athlete enjoying their runs, enjoying the process of getting the most out of them. I guess if you were to talk to me, what my philosophy is, is to encourage the athlete to fulfill their talent and ability, but while enjoying the race.
“They put all their talent into a team, and then the team becomes its own superpower because they can talk to each other. They are able to train together. They get the job done together.
“If they have a bad day, it rubs off on the team. If they’re having a good day, they bring it to the team. Their enthusiasm comes in and gives us more power, more power.”
Elson is one of the more experienced members of the group and has had a front row seat to Team Makou’s evolution. Not only is he one of the athletes, but he has also helped the team’s growing online presence since day one. The 2023 World Road Championships mile silver medalist was there when the idea to document their journey first came up and played a key role in bringing it to life.
“When we first went to camp, everything seemed to work well together, both the atmosphere and helping each other with the different strengths and weaknesses we’ve picked up in training,” he says. “So we thought a good way we could use it was to create content online and bring people back.”
At the time, Elson was already familiar with online content. Having his own YouTube channel meant he had the tools and knowledge to make it happen. But when the videos went viral, he and the team realized it was more than just a fun side project.
“As it gained traction, people wanted more. I told the boys. “If we want to do it more, we need to make it proper, it needs a name, a logo and we need to talk to Chris Rainsford, our sports manager, to see how Hoka can help support us.”
“He decided to support it as a project and since then we are now thinking about how to continue it. We’ve made a lot of progress, we have exciting things like products and collaborations with different brands, things are going really well.”
Leonard, one of the team’s standout athletes and British 5000m bronze medallist, is a prime example of an athlete finding his breakthrough within the squad. As a young athlete, he showed great promise with a gold medal at the European Under-23 Championships in the 10,000m.
But now that he is moving up the ranks, his level and his expectations have risen, as evidenced by his British 10km record of 27:38 earlier this year.
“It took a long time to find the right place, the right coach and the right group,” he says. “I got it now with these guys. That’s great. Their personalities are who I always want to be. It’s a friendly bunch and Andy is great. He knows when to turn up the intensity and turn it down a little. He always says it’s okay to embarrass you, he’s good at it.”
Now, with the addition of Weir, Leonard sees the group expanding in new ways. The growth on the female side of Maku’s team is something she’s particularly excited about.
“It’s another layer of what we’re building here,” he says. “We’re growing and it’s exciting to see that side of the team develop. A lot of Andy’s core beliefs about running are getting stronger aerobically, and we all do, too.”
With the cross country season in full swing, many members of Team Makou will be in action in the coming months. Several of them, including Leonard, have made it clear that their main focus is on next month’s European Championship qualifiers in Portugal. Leonard finished top of the British senior men’s race last season in ninth place. Alongside Cross, who finished 25th, they helped secure team gold for Great Britain.
They will aim to repeat that success, while hoping that more Team Makou members will enjoy the podium experience and give the team that trains together plenty of reasons to celebrate together as well.
