Sydney Marathon finish line ◆ Raising money for mental health
The running sock that should've always existed.
I'm Casey, and this is the story behind TRS :)
About three years ago I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, and started running. Not in that order, and not because I had a plan.
I'd moved from the UK to Australia because I wanted to. I was curious about a different way of life, what it felt like to start over somewhere completely new, on the other side of the world. I had family friends in Adelaide who took me in at the start, and I'm grateful for that. But to extend my visa I had to complete regional farm work, so I ended up on a chicken farm in rural South Australia. Two hours from the nearest city. Fifteen hour days, six days a week, with nobody around for miles. You do what you have to do.
A few months in, my grandmother passed away. She was one of the closest people in my life. She'd been fine when I left. Then she got sick, and then she was gone, and I was on the other side of the world and couldn't do anything about it.
Running started as something to do with the restlessness. Fresh air. Movement. A reason to get up. I'd go out and feel terrible, lungs burning, legs heavy, and come back feeling a little less so. That was enough to keep going.
The fitter I got, the less I wanted to undo it. Every drink would cost me a Sunday morning. And Sunday mornings on the coast became the thing I looked forward to most. The ocean. The air. Just moving. Nowhere to be and nothing to think about except keeping going.
I've been doing it every Sunday for over two years now. I don't smoke. I barely drink. I didn't plan it that way. Running just made everything else seem less worth it.
If you're just getting started, or you want to run further without it feeling like a grind, I've put together some things I've learnt from years on the road. You can read them here.
"I'd go out and feel terrible. I'd come back feeling a little less so. That was enough to keep going."
Central Coast Half Marathon, November 2025 ◆ 1:36
When I started entering races, I found something I hadn't expected.
Running is one of the loneliest sports from the outside. You're just a person, moving. But get to a start line at 6am and something shifts. Hundreds of people, all there for the same reason, none of them there to impress anyone. The nod you get from a stranger mid-race. The silence when everyone's suffering and everyone knows it. The finish line, where it genuinely doesn't matter if you ran 5k or 42k. You did something hard. Everyone there knows what that costs.
In November 2025 I ran the Central Coast Half Marathon and got a 1:36. My first half, a year earlier, was 1:54. I crossed that finish line and thought this is the best thing I've ever done for myself.
The running sock thing started at the Sydney Marathon expo.
I'd been running in cotton socks. Most people do at first. They work until they don't. The sweat soaks in, the weight builds up, and your feet start paying for it. Didn't matter if I was doing 5k or a long training run, it was the same problem every time. I knew there had to be something better, but every time I looked online the options were either ugly, overpriced, or buried inside a brand that clearly cared more about the logo than the sock.
At the expo I almost walked past a small table selling a limited run of city marathon socks. Blue and white, Sydney Harbour Bridge on the side. I picked them up because they were in my favourite colours and I thought they'd make decent memorabilia. But I felt the fabric and something was different. I bought them, ran in them, and that was the moment I understood what a running sock is actually supposed to feel like.
The table wasn't a brand. It was just someone selling a limited run for the event. No website, no restock, no nothing. And I remember thinking nobody actually owns this space. No brand has made the running sock their whole focus.
About a year later I decided to try.
"Nobody actually owns this space. No brand has made the running sock their whole focus."
I had no background in manufacturing. No business experience. What I had was a clear sense of what was missing and exactly what makes a good running sock, after years of running in everything on the market and knowing what none of them got right. That felt like enough to start.
TRS took about a year to get right. The moisture control fabric, the cushioning on the toes and heels, the midfoot band, the mesh ventilation zones. Every detail designed from scratch, tested properly. Six months, over a thousand kilometres. The cushioning held. The compression held. The fit stayed exactly where it should, from the first kilometre to the last.
The blue diamond sits at the base of the stripe. It's a nod to that pair at the Sydney expo that started all of this.
"The blue diamond is a nod to that pair at the Sydney expo that started all of this."
TRS means more than a product to me.
Running changed my life in ways I didn't see coming. It got me out of some genuinely dark periods. It gave me structure when I had none, and clarity when I needed it most. I've watched people I care about get stuck in really bad places, and I know from my own experience that getting outside and moving, even just walking, even just a kilometre, can shift something. It won't fix everything. But it helps.
As TRS grows, supporting causes that get people moving and support mental health is something I'm working toward. That part will take time to do properly. But it's the direction.
The more immediate thing is my parents. My dad has spent decades doing physical work that has taken a real toll on his body. My mum has grafted her whole life too. The first thing I want to do when TRS is big enough is give them both some ease. The freedom to slow down. To not have to grind anymore. That's what I'm doing this for.
That's the why behind all of this. Not a mission statement. Just what I'm working towards.
Me and my mum. This is my why 💙
If any of this resonates — the sock is here.
Shop The Core RangeFounder, TRS