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The following is a conversation with Zach Bitter, ultra marathon runner and coach who held multiple world records in the 100 mile run and other ultra endurance events.
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He s currently training for a run across America, which for now is planned for September this year.
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Like many of the things Zach has done in the past, this is a big, fascinating challenge.
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Quick mention of our sponsors, Ladder, Valcampo, Noom, and BetterHelp.
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Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that Zach has been advising and coaching me on my own running journey.
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I want to mention that Zach sent me some running shoes from Ultra, which I think is a company that sponsors him.
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When I put those shoes on, I feel like Zach is watching me, and I get that extra motivation to make him proud.
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And by that, I mean I wanna put a lot of miles on those shoes.
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Running is something that has always been difficult for me, but I love it because it is difficult.
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The hardest part is I m left alone with my thoughts for one or two hours.
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Some thoughts are dark, like thinking about mortality, my own and that of others.
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Some are self-critical, like personal weaknesses or dreams not realized.
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Some are simply human feelings of loneliness, personal and existential.
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And yet, there are the moments during a run when all that fades and I m left empty of negative thoughts and full of appreciation for the beauty of experience, of nature, life, the whole thing.
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This is why I return to running.
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Not to get in shape, but to face myself and to run through it.
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That s why I m inspired by people like Zach and by David Goggins and others like them who seek to find the limits of their body and mind.
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As usual, I ll do a few minutes of ads now, no ads in the middle, I think those get in the way of the conversation.
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I give you timestamps, so if you skip, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description.
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I hope you don t skip, because I do try to make these interesting.
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But anyway, if you buy the stuff from the sponsors, I hope you ll find value in it, just as I have.
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This show is sponsored by Ladder.
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I often meditate on my mortality, often talk about it.
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I think this is both honest and clarifying for who I am and what I wanna do in life.
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If you have others in your life you love and you do the same, you should consider getting life insurance.
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How s that for a Stoic-inspired pitch for life insurance?
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Pay a little every month in case something happens to you and the ones you love will be protected.
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I ve been actually reading excerpts from the ancient Stoics.
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I like the crisp, minimalist rawness of the way they think about life.
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Everybody tries to understand what is the meaning of this whole thing.
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And they do so kind of with a different style, with different ideas, but it all comes back to the same place.
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We all die.
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Which is why you should go to ladderlife.com slash lex to see if you re instantly approved.
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That s ladder spelled L-A-D-D-E-R life.com slash lex.
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Once again, for the seats in the back, that s ladderlife.com slash lax.
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This show is also sponsored by Valcampo Farms, whose mission is to deliver meat you can feel good about, meat that is good for you, good for the animals, and good for the planet.
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Belcampo animals graze on open pastures and seasonal grasses, resulting in meat that is higher in nutrients and healthy fats.
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Belcampo has been the best meat I ve ever eaten at home.
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I ve been basically eating Belcampo ground beef.
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Like one pack is one pound, so I eat two of those a day, and that s been incredible.
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It tastes incredible.
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As I talk about with Anya Fernald in a previous podcast,
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It represents humane treatment of animals.
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I mean, it was an incredible experience for me to visit the farm, to talk to Anya, to see the animals graze in the open pasture, but also to see the whole process, to see the slaughterhouse, to see the butchering.
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the cooking, sitting under the stars, looking at the fire, just thinking about the whole cycle of life.
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You should definitely check out that episode as we talk about cooking, as we talk about regenerative farming, as we talk about the ethical treatment of animals.
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Anyway, you can order Belcampo Sustainability Raised Meats to be delivered straight to your door using code LEX at belcampo.com slash LEX for 20% off for first-time customers.
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That s code LEX at belcampo.com slash LEX.
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This episode is brought to you by Noom, N-O-O-M, which is a behavior and habit changing system that helps you get fit and lose weight.
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Go to trynoom.com slash Lex to take a short survey about yourself and it ll generate a custom program for you.
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This includes helping you find why you want to do it.
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That s a very important question.
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It will help you find the small goals along the way and it ll guide you 10 minutes a day to better habits.
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I think forming long-term habits is everything.
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I ve been forming the habit of running and exercising every day recently, sort of getting back on the ball.
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It s such a pain when you have to decide every single day whether you re going to run or not.
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If you form a habit, no matter what, every single day you run, for me that means at least five minutes of running.
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I never literally run for five minutes, but that s enough.
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If I just come out there and I run like a half a mile, that s enough.
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So go to trynoom.com and fill out the quick survey.
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That s all you have to do.
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Also, try not to have an existential crisis while filling it out, which is what I had.
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Some of the questions are kind of big picture questions.
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Just answer them directly.
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Go to trynoom.com.
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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P Help.
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They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed professional therapist in under 48 hours.
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Obviously, I m a huge fan of podcasts, so I m also a big fan of talk therapy.
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I think
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Talking, sort of communication between two human beings, or perhaps between a human and AI system, is a really good way to dive deep inside the mind and explore the dark parts, the dreams, the whole thing, the mess of the human condition, from childhood to today, to your expectations of the future, to your contemplation of your mortality, the whole thing.
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I think talking is one of the ways
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to bring it to the surface, and to understand yourself.
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So I m definitely a fan of tools like BetterHelp, which make the whole thing easy, private, affordable, available worldwide.
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Check them out at betterhelp.com slash lex.
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That s betterhelp.com slash lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Zach Bitter.
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Where does your mind go when you re running an ultra marathon?
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Are there a lot of positive thoughts, negative thoughts, demons, inspirational things, maybe no thoughts at all?
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Yeah, that s the really interesting part of the sport, I think, because you can essentially what it is when we re looking at like the hundred mile distance or anything that s like all day long is you re going to have the full range of the full spectrum of emotions of mental processes, both kind of positive, negative and in between.
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So it almost feels like you ve lived multiple, multiple lives or full life, maybe it was a way to say it in that one time period.
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So it s like a
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It s almost like a simulation of what you may experience in a long period of time in a very condensed period of time.
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And I think that s just a weird mental process to reflect upon.
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And that s what kind of draws people back to it.
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But I mean, it s a battle too, because if you re looking at it from a performance standpoint versus an experience, you obviously want to minimize the negative mindset stuff.
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You want to try to keep those emotions and those thought processes at a low.
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And I think when you can keep yourself from letting those thoughts creep in,
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you end up having better races and it can spiral in either direction.
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I noticed there s this scenario that occurs where in the beginning, a negative thing creeps in your mind, it s super easy just to slap it down and say, get out of here.
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I ve did the training, I m fit, I m feeling fresh still, everything s going well at this point in time.
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You get a little further along in the race and you re starting to feel a bit of the fatigue.
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I mean, a little bit of self-doubt creeps in.
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You start asking yourself, well, you know, maybe I should have done one more long run, or did I not quite taper long enough?
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And those things can kind of spiral into a negative way.
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And if you let it keep going, it keeps going all the way to, like, why am I here?
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Why am I doing this?
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This is stupid.
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All the way to, like, there s another one of these two weeks from now.
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I m going to drop out of this one and sign up for that one instead.
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And then you just find yourself in the exact same situation.
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So you kind of have to.
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go through the process.
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I think it s why I think the there s kind of a, I wouldn t say it s a rule of thumb necessarily, but something I think is fairly valuable is if you do a hundred mile or the first time, make sure you get it done.
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Even if it means like, you know, death marching is what they ll call it in the alternate community, the end of the race, just to say like you got that full experience, you experienced the highs, the lows, the full thing, the starting, the crossing, the finish line, that release of emotion when you re done and all that stuff.
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So that when you go back to do it again, you have like a template to build off of and you know, or you just have some data to pull from about how your mind is going to work as well as your body so that you can start practicing, well, what do I have to do to kind of keep my mind from spiraling in a negative direction?
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Or how do I catch some positive momentum and kind of keep sending it that way?
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And things like that.
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And that just, I think,
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You just add to that over a career of running them or a series of running them and it sharpens.
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It s kind of like any sport with that where you always have this balance between the youthfulness that you may have early in your career versus the wise intelligence that you have maybe near the end of your career.
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So in terms of wisdom, is there mechanisms by which you kind of observe the negative thoughts and let them go?
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So you have people like the David Gogginses who kind of, he seems to almost like separate his mind into, there s the weak David that he hates, and then there s the strong one.
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I mean, there s like a very contentious relationship there.
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So he basically says, like, I refuse to be that person.
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And he s almost like angry at that person.
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It s almost like sometimes literally yelling at that person, the weak version of themselves.
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And then there s another more sort of Sam Harris-y approach, which is like, just observe the thought and let it go.
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Maybe...
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knowing that this too shall pass, like no matter what, this moment will not last forever and kind of sort of accepting the natural flow of things and taking one step at a time and allowing whatever the negativity, whatever the pain you re experiencing, just to pass, even if it means a death march.
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Which one is more effective for you?
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Which one would you say generally speaking to the population is more effective?
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, it s a really good question.
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It s probably unique to the individual.
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I wouldn t argue that, you know, David is finding success with his approach.
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Some may argue it s an extreme version.
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You know, Sam has obviously thought about these things and really probably, you know, I see those guys as kind of
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two ends of the spectrum in just the way that they come across in general, where David s really at you, kind of high energy, and Sam s kind of this calming, soft presence, and he s just going to slowly, methodically lay it all out there.
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And I think there s value in both of those.
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I think most people are probably going to get a benefit from
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pulling some from each.
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I mean, there s times where I need a kick in the ass and then it s like, have the strong Zach, tell the weak Zach to get moving.
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But there s also times where it s just like a subtle voice entering my head about, I don t know if I feel quite right now.
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Should I maybe pull back on the pace?
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And I think that little subtle voice is best approached with a subtle positive voice where it s more like, okay, well, let s think this through here for a second.
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You re 40 miles into a 100-mile race.
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You spent four months preparing for it.
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You know from the workouts you did that you re ready for this.
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There really isn t any real reason for you to slow down or to fall off your goal or your pace or reassess what you re doing.
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Let s just give this another mile or two, and then we can reassess if we need to in order to figure out if I m doing the right things or not.
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And I think like in that situation, you definitely probably want to lean more towards the Sam Harris approach with that because there s really no reason to, it s almost like the same thing you see with like just training and even nutrition to a degree where like some folks, they just want to be like, kind of like drilled.
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They want to be like yelled at and said like, get going, get doing this.
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And that helps and that motivates and that helps them stay accountable.
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Other people need some softer love with it where it s like,
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you know, this isn t necessarily your fault.
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You were put in this environment that kind of created an atmosphere of lethargy and maybe poor nutritional choices and things like that.
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But it s correctable.
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So we need to step away from that.
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And we need to kind of start heading in the direction that we know is going to bear fruit down the road.
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And that person may respond better to that.
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So I think both those guys have great value with their approaches.
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They re just probably polar ends of the spectrum.
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I think most people are probably gonna benefit, like anything, right?
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You get the polarizing ones, and those are gonna work great for the polarizing people, but then most people are gonna fit somewhere in the middle, so they re probably gonna be able to kind of pull from both of those if they re able to sit down and kind of like assess which one s gonna work better in which situation.
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So the quitting thing that you mentioned, like the final stage, which actually I get to much quicker than you seem to, which is like why am I doing this?
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I get there with basically anything I do.
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It s like, this is probably the stupidest thing I ve ever done is the feeling I get often.
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And then immediately you have these excuses that are like, there s all these other better things you should be doing.
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Or the other alternative of that, like you said, I m not prepared enough for this moment.
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I ll be much more prepared in two weeks for the next event.
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So like, why?
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Let s try this again.
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Let s start over.
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Let s start over in two weeks.
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how do you deal with that quit?
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Like, so maybe do you still go through that process and by way of advice for people that are more sort of amateurish like me, how to deal with that quitting voice?
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I think a lot of times when the quitting voice comes in, what it does is it comes in with the added disadvantage, I guess, in this situation of being a narrow scoped view where you re looking at what it s doing to you in the moment or how you re feeling in the moment versus how are you feeling about the whole process.
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So one thing that I started doing in 2019, and I think I don t think it s necessarily
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I think this was a big reason why I had one of my best racing seasons in 2019 that I d had to that date.
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It was part of it was I started, I think, putting a little more emphasis on the big picture versus putting emphasis on like, this is one opportunity or one day of work.
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And this is one emotional kind of flare up.
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But how does that actually relate to my general broader picture?
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So when I decide to do a race or an event or something like that, it s often four or six months out ahead of time.
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You re planning to do a series of workouts and a flow of things where you re going through the process of getting fit, getting ready, preparing for the specifics of the day and all that stuff.
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And then you get to the race itself or the event itself.
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And it s very easy to look at that and think, that s an isolation.
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Like, I m going to run 12 hours today, or I m going to run 100 miles today, or whatever it ends up being.
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And it s a lot easier to quit when you think to yourself, I m 40 miles into a 100-mile race.
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That s just a 40-mile run, which sounds kind of silly, I think, to most people.
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But in perspective, when we re talking about the ultra-marathon running community,
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It s a lot easier just to say like, well, I ll scrap this 40 miles and try again.
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It s a lot harder to say, I m going to scrap the entire last four months, the entire reason why I was doing it, the countless hours I spent in there.
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So I think I just try to reposition it of like, I m in a bad place right now maybe in my head, or I m hitting a low point here.
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But I m 99% of the way towards the goal I set out four months ago when I add in all the work I did leading up to that.
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So I think it s important to ask yourself why, because, I mean, there are times when you re doing something and you ask yourself why, and you don t have a good reason.
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And then maybe it is advantageous to step back and really reflect on that and decide, is this something I actually want to invest time and energy into?
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Because, you know, someone like yourself who is very much into a variety of different things, it can be easy probably to
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overextend and get, I mean, I m a very curious person.
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So there s like 100 things I would love to do if I wasn t doing what I m doing.
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And I know I d enjoy all of them.
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So it at a certain point, though, you have to say, okay, which one is gonna be the most meaningful for me?
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And if the answer keeps coming back to saying, I guess this is still the most meaningful to me out of that 100 things that I could otherwise be doing.
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then I know that I m in it for the right reason.
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Then I just need to identify some of those things.
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Like, well, why did this one take the top spot out of the hundred things that I could have picked from?
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And keeping like a list of those in your head so that when you get to that point where you start saying, why am I doing this?
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Why am I here?
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You just have those kind of ready loaded
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in your head to say, well, I already took inventory on that before I started this.
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And I knew this voice was gonna come at some point, whether it s early, middle or late.
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And then you just remind yourself kind of what you were thinking when you had a little more of a level head.
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Well, there s something about the thing you mentioned when you mentioned the death march.
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It seems extremely valuable to just never quitting.
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Like in the moment, if you decide to do something,
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like never quitting, even if you do go through the process and realize that it s not the wisest thing to be doing within the full context of your life.
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Like once you decide to do it, it seems like never quitting prevents you from sort of having that escape clause from other things in your life.
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So I ve quit on a few things in my life and I think I still, I deeply regret that because it opened that door.
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It s almost like a muscle.
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I don t know.
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So I think I m, I don t know, maybe everyone is, but I think I m kind of a quitter.
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You know what I mean?
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Like I m really good at coming up with reasons to quit.
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My mind is really good at that.
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And it feels like I have to come up with, like really work hard to make sure that there s no quit, that I never allow myself to quit no matter how stupid the thing I m doing is.
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I don t know if any of that makes sense, but it just, maybe to rephrase this whole thing, do you think it s good to live life by the ethos of never quit?
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Yeah, that s a really interesting thing.
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And I think it actually resonates with a lot of ultramarathon runners because there seems to be a trend when you have someone who s been in the sport for a long time where there s a point where they start the sport, right?
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And they re like super excited about everything.
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Everything s new.
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It s very easy not to quit because you re like, oh, this is the first time I ve ever run a 50Ks, the first time I ve ever run a 50 miles, the first time I ve ever run 100Ks, the first time I ve ever run 100 miles, and so on and so forth.
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And when you re doing that for the first time, I think there s a heightened motivation to not quit because you don t want your first attempt to be a failure.
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And then you get a little further along, and you start reflecting on the landscape and all the opportunities that are out there, and you find yourself quitting on an event.
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And there does seem to be a trend where once you do that once, now all of a sudden, like you described perfectly, that quit
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pops up in your head maybe a little sooner the next time, or maybe a little bit before.
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And I ve certainly had these experiences in my career as well.
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And what happens, I think, if you stick with it, again, I think it is important to assess whether you really want to be doing what you re doing.
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But if you start recognizing that about yourself in a certain activity where it s like, I think I might be pulling the plug early on some of this stuff, I think you just need to kind of get into a position where
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You just at that point, you need to make a decision.
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Do I want to keep doing this?
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If the answer is yes, you hold yourself accountable to not quitting.
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And eventually what will happen is you ll find yourself in a position where I ll use ultra marathons, for example, where you re just clicking on all cylinders for that day.
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And you still get those scenarios where doubt creeps in your mind.
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You have these low points.
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But for whatever reason, when those low points come,
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you re able to push through them better than you would have in the past.
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And then you push through maybe two or three more than you did after you had quit the time before, then it s accountability time, right?
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Because then you have to look back at that and say, well, why did this time was I able to be mentally more strong and kind of push through those extra opportunities to quit when I wasn t before?
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And it can be easy to look back and say and live kind of like retroactively in a sense where
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You re like regretting, well, why did I drop out of those races?
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Why did I do this wrong there and that?
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I just think that s where you have to catch yourself and say, no, those things happened to me in order to put me in a position where I decided, well, this time I m not going to quit no matter what, minus my leg falling off.
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I m not going to quit.
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Then you put yourself in a position to have that day where you push through more times than you ever have before and you just redefine what you re capable of.
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Then once I think you do that, you start looking at those earlier lessons as lessons.
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Were they failures on paper at the time?
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Probably.
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But can you pull things from them to learn as to like, well, where is your actual threshold?
1
SPEAKER_01
Where is the limit actually for you?
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Then kind of start redefining that stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
So I think like the never quit mentality can be good in certain situations but I don t think it s necessarily like a holistic thing where you need to be in something where it s never quit, always do more because then you end up in a situation where you find this like margin of diminishing returns especially when it comes to training and workouts and things like that where
1
SPEAKER_01
There are times where, often there are times where you wanna actually quit a little bit before you would have to, because the stress that was required to elicit a growth response has already occurred, and just to do more is just gonna require more recovery time to get back and do it again.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, this is the tricky trade-off.
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SPEAKER_00
Living by the never-quit mentality, you re not going to achieve optimal performance.
1
SPEAKER_01
In your head, you might.
1
SPEAKER_00
It seems like when you look at the full arc of human history,
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SPEAKER_00
the people who do great things are more leaning towards the never quit.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, I feel like at any one moment, you re more in danger of quitting than you are of being suboptimal.
1
SPEAKER_00
So like, in terms of advice, it just feels like never quitting is always the right advice, unless you deeply know the person.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe this is like wrestling mentality,
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I ve seen too many, and because I m annoyed with the current culture telling me to relax and have a work-life balance and all those kinds of things, which all have a deep, deep truth to them, but the reality is there s not enough people
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that walk up to me and slap me and say, get your shit together.
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Don t quit, work harder.
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SPEAKER_00
I think we need to hear that more.
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SPEAKER_00
And I can remember that from the wrestling rooms, that when you re pushed that way, when you re forced to the very limit and you don t quit, that makes better humans.
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I think people need to get that in their life.
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I think they need to have situations where that becomes kind of the reality for them so they can see that avenue, experience that avenue, where I think it s maybe to the extreme as if it becomes like your entire life philosophy where like every little thing you do is never quit.
1
SPEAKER_00
But life is short, Zach.
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SPEAKER_00
Like why, I mean, this is the problem I have.
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SPEAKER_00
This is probably the programming thing too, is over-optimization is dangerous.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like every once in a while, I mean, you re, you do this kind of stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
You re not, for example, with a hundred mile run, you re, I mean, you could just be doing that for the rest of your life and do like the most optimal hundred mile run ever.
1
SPEAKER_00
but you keep taking on like new challenges and there s a lot more chaos in that and There it feels like the muscle of never quit will be much more important than the optimality of your training Yeah, so there s probably a couple sides to me with that kind of a thing where for one I think when we talked about the why so like I think the why is
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SPEAKER_01
can kind of shift a bit, and it probably will if you do something long enough, or evolve maybe is a better way to put it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And for me, one of my big drives and one of my big passions within ultra running is to, first of all, find an event that I really, really love to train for and participate in.
1
SPEAKER_01
So for me, I feel like I ve kind of identified that to a degree, and that s kind of runnable 100 milers.
1
SPEAKER_01
So once I found that, it became more of a driver for me to see like, well, how fast can I run 100 miles in a very controlled environment?
1
SPEAKER_01
So let s eliminate weather, let s eliminate elevation, let s eliminate having to wait extra long to get crew or support and that sort of thing.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s how you find yourself on a 400 meter track running 100 miles.
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But for me, the important part of that is that I can control the environment enough where if I come back year after year,
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I can retest myself and have a decent ability to kind of say I improved or I regressed or I stayed stagnant.
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And I think that s a big driver for me.
1
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But one thing I ve recognized within that is if you just keep doing that, like if I could probably pick three flat, runnable 100-milers a year and optimally prepare, race, recover, and repeat without burning myself out.
1
SPEAKER_01
But one thing I think I learned also in 2019 was that sometimes you kind of need to step away from some of these really, really kind of important markers in your performance or in whatever you re trying to do and take a step away from it and try to do something a little different.
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SPEAKER_01
in order to kind of hit the reset button on just like what I would call just like your mental energy to be able to continue to do it at a high level.
1
SPEAKER_00
So- Almost like happiness.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, and here s the example.
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Like, I mean, I love running in trails too.
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SPEAKER_01
Most people would consider me a flat road track runner, runnable ultra runner, but I like to do trail runs too.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in, at the end of 2018, I recognized that I had been kind of pushing
1
SPEAKER_01
the gas pedal on trying to run fast hundred milers for quite a while without really a break in that where it was like, okay, I did one.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now I m going to, you know, take a brief off season, but then I m going to ultimately build up and peak for another one.
1
SPEAKER_01
I might introduce some fun trail races in the context, but they re going to be B races.
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SPEAKER_01
They re going to be training races, time on feet type of stuff that are going to kind of mimic like a long run essentially.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the main focus, always in the back of my mind was getting on the track and seeing how much faster I can run 100 miles.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that energy that it takes to continually think about it, I think the motivation to keep that stope high enough to really meet your full potential fades if you don t step away from it for a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I took essentially half a year away from runnable stuff and just decided I m gonna prepare for the San Diego 100 mile.
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SPEAKER_01
which is like a much more elevation, technical trail type of an event.
1
SPEAKER_00
Is that trail run or no?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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It s a Trail 100 miler, actually just outside of San Diego.
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It goes over part of the Pacific Crest Trail and stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
It s very different than running on a runnable surface.
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SPEAKER_01
To give you some context, I ran just under 17 hours for that race, whereas on a flat surface, I can run 11 hours and 19 minutes.
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Just the environment alone
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added an extra five plus hours to the day.
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It s just a different experience, different skill set.
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What it did is it allowed me to step away from focusing on splits on a track, running flat stuff, preparing for things specifically for a flat environment and start training for something that s more climbing and descending, more technical running skill sets and things like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the cool part about it was, first of all, when you step away from something and enter something a lot different, I mean, it s still running.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s still a huge advantage I had from the running I d done in the past that was going to put me in a good position to be successful.
1
SPEAKER_01
But there was a much higher or a much bigger range of potential improvement for me.
1
SPEAKER_01
So through the four plus months I spent preparing for that race, I noticed, oh wow, I m getting faster on this climb, or I m getting better at descending this technical trail.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was one of the most fun races I ve run, actually, so it was kind of a cool experience.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ended up taking the lead at 93 miles.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you were racing, racing, like you were trying to get first, so still a race.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
So what was the enjoyable aspect of it?
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SPEAKER_01
I don t think I recognized it so much while I was doing it, actually.
1
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It surfaced afterwards.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, the enjoyment of the race itself is like when you find yourself in a position where you re sitting in basically second place all day long and then you take the lead at 90 – I think it was like 91 or 92 miles.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like, yeah, that s kind of a cool way to race.
1
SPEAKER_01
But afterwards, I recognized a few things just about kind of pacing and how to maybe
1
SPEAKER_01
pace the first half of 100 miler versus the second half.
1
SPEAKER_01
I also recognized shortly thereafter, once I finished recovering and decided my next event was going to be a flat runnable race, that, wow, I really was way more excited to do the workouts that I needed to do to get ready to run a fast, flat 100 miler.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I don t think that would have been the case had I just tried to do another flat, fast 100 miler
1
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earlier or during that year and end up in a situation where like I maybe had like normalized a suboptimal like outlook on like something that I just done so many times already.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I recognize that it was just every workout I did, I was like, I did this workout a year ago, and it was not nearly this much fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
The interesting thing about these track hundreds too is you find yourself doing your peaking phase where you re running your long runs, which for me are usually around 30 miles or so, and I ll do them on back-to-back days.
1
SPEAKER_01
I try to replicate the environment I m going to race on, so I find myself on a 400-meter track.
1
SPEAKER_01
When I started doing that again, I just felt like I was super motivated to go out there Saturday and Sunday and do those back-to-back long runs and see the progress.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then head out again the next week and do it again.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I had some of my more enjoyable long runs, which are going to be the most specific to race day environment that I had in quite some time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that was really beneficial and kind of putting me in the right spot to be able to push through barriers on race day and put me in a position where quitting was going to be much less of a likelihood.
1
SPEAKER_01
given the enjoyment I had in the months leading into the race itself.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Even the thought of quitting.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you mentioned the track.
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SPEAKER_00
You ve also ran a hundred miles on the treadmill and the trail hundred mile broadly.
1
SPEAKER_00
If we zoom out, what does it take to run a hundred miles for most of the world?
1
SPEAKER_00
That seems like a crazy distance to run.
1
SPEAKER_00
So maybe it s interesting to ask, not only is just setting the world record, but
1
SPEAKER_00
purely running.
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SPEAKER_00
What does it take to run that far?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, I think people probably overestimate what it takes in terms of just getting it done.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think this is consistent in just running in general.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think the marathon was always a big one with that where people thought like, well, you have to do this training or you just literally won t physically be able to complete a marathon.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we got into an era of kind of like,
1
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running as more of an enjoyment thing versus a performance thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you d have people running, granted, much slower.
1
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I think if you look at the Boston Marathon, average finishing times, it goes from like, or maybe it wasn t the Boston Marathon, it might have just been marathons in general, went from like three hours to five hours or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, people, I think, got past the fact that
1
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you can only do it if you re optimally prepared to, well, I can do it and maybe not meet my full potential if I m gonna like not do much training, which I wouldn t necessarily advise.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I mean, I ve talked to people who basically run a hundred miles sometimes almost off the couch.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, to me, what that says is just the human body s incredible and what it can tolerate above and beyond what it s been exposed to if it has to, or if it feels like it has to.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s the basic sort of getting from point A from the start to the finish.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s the human body and the human mind is capable of doing it without much preparation.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then you start to increase the goal of performance and you try to get actually a good, like the most out of your body that you can.
1
SPEAKER_00
How does that start to change then?
1
SPEAKER_00
Going from fun to performance.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think, uh, once you start putting marks or goals on outside of just finishing, that s where it starts getting interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cause now you can maybe go in with multiple goals where like, if one falls off due to something that you didn t expect, then you have another one to target, but you can always build those up and try to think like, well, I want to run faster than last time, or I want to break a course record or an age group record or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that, that I think is just going to be a little bit of a different mindset.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cause now you re looking at every little thing from,
1
SPEAKER_01
What do I need to do to prepare as well as what do I need to do to be efficient on the day itself?
1
SPEAKER_01
So like transitioning aid stations and things like that, or do I want a pacer or not?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or does this race allow someone to like hand me a bottle at a certain spot or do I have to be in specific areas to get that type of stuff?
1
SPEAKER_01
And what it ends up doing is it ends up bringing a lot more variables to the table.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think it s interesting because there s always going to be more variables on the day than you are able to account for.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, at a certain degree, you have to kind of find yourself in a position where I m going to make sure I take care of the big ones or the ones that are like obviously I need to be ready for like my fueling strategy, my hydration strategy, my pacing strategy.
1
SPEAKER_01
what workouts are gonna put me in a position to physiologically have this process go as well as possible?
1
SPEAKER_01
How am I gonna hold myself accountable in aid station transition so I m not having a ton of non-moving time versus moving time and things like that?
1
SPEAKER_00
So there s these big variables that you re aware of and you re trying to optimize over the space of variables.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you get to start to play with that when you re looking for performance.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like moving from checkers to chess, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
You have like, or maybe even like connect four chess or something like that, where it goes from just kind of like, well, one foot in front of the other.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when I get to the next aid station, I ll just eat whatever looks good, drink whatever, you know, quenches my thirst and then move on to the next one to like, well, which one of these food products is actually going to make me move a little faster to the next aid station?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or, you know, which one of these pacing strategies is going to get me to the finish line faster than the other one and that sort of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
It gets more complicated, more interesting, and, in my opinion, anyway.
1
SPEAKER_01
Also, I mean, but there s a breaking point with that, too, because, like I said, there s an endless number of variables you could account for.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as the distance gets longer, that list gets longer, too.
1
SPEAKER_01
you find yourself in this position where you have to at some point say, okay, I ve accounted for everything I can reasonably account for.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now I need to be in a mental space where when something happens that I wasn t able to account for, I m able to respond to it with the right decision and keep going and not dwell on it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because that s another thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you re running slow enough when you re doing 100 miles where if you make a mistake, you can sit there and just fixate on that mistake and say, why did I do that?
1
SPEAKER_01
That cost me 10 minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah.
1
SPEAKER_01
When in reality, what you need to do
2
SPEAKER_00
that happened, everyone else out here is gonna have a situation like that at some point, mine happened now, I need to figure out how I can move forward at the fastest sustainable pace and not think about what happened back there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where I think it gets really interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
What would you say it takes to set a world record in the 100 miler?
2
SPEAKER_00
First of all, I think you probably have to focus on that specific event.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s the interesting about ultra running where it maybe deviates a bit from just other endurance sports is there s such a wide range.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we talked about a little bit when I talked with the San Diego 100 versus kind of the flat runnable stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
So can you maybe paint a picture of what are, there s a huge range of different kinds of ultra marathon events.
2
SPEAKER_01
What are like,
2
SPEAKER_01
the big ones in your mind.
2
SPEAKER_01
So marathon, we know the distance for a marathon, there s the 50k, what are different kind of there s 100 mile that in your mind, like kind of these islands where, where people gather off?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s a few that really stand out.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would say the three biggest ultra marathons right now, even from a historic
2
SPEAKER_00
maybe not necessarily a historical standpoint, but in modern day ultra running is going to be the Western States 100.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the biggest, most competitive 100 miler.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s on the trail side of things in the United States.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then there s Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, which is probably the most competitive 100 miler on the planet right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
In previous years, it s been debatable as whether Western States or Ultra Trail Mont Blanc is more competitive.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think in the most recent few years, you re just seeing a lot more like
2
SPEAKER_00
of the bulk of international talent on the trail side of the sport heading over that way.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you have the road running side of things where the Comrades Marathon, which is technically 56 miles, but they call it the Comrades Marathon, is gonna generally be the most competitive ultra marathon.
2
SPEAKER_00
The weird thing is the distance thing, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because most people when they think of endurance sports, they re thinking about precise distances, like five kilometers, 10 kilometers.
2
SPEAKER_00
and all that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you get into the ultra running world and it s like, sometimes it s the event.
2
SPEAKER_01
So like the Western- The course itself is much more important than the distance.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the Western States 100 is actually 100.2 miles, which isn t that big of a deviation when you think about it, especially when you figure like tangents are going to probably account for more than 0.2 miles on a 100 mile race.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, you know, that s listed as a 100 miler, but it s actually I think like 104, 105 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
So,
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s more, there s different cultures too.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, the United States is definitely more motivated, I think, to try to get as close to the exact distance.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re going to hear maybe a little more grumbling if someone says, I signed up for this 100-miler and it turned out to be 103 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
Versus, like, over in Europe, they don t really care too much about the distance.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re more interested in, like, a specific route or a loop.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is consistency important in terms of the exact length of the route, so you can compare performances from previous years?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or are they a little bit more flexible, like they redefine the trail from year to year?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it s definitely hard to compare.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s events that take, for example, I would say the best ultra marathoner in the world today on the men s side is Jim Walmsley.
2
SPEAKER_00
The reason I think Jim Walmsley is the best is because he is the most versatile and not only the most versatile, but he s
2
SPEAKER_00
arguably the best at almost everything up to 100 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a race called the Angela s Crest 100 miler.
2
SPEAKER_00
The trail has drastically changed from when they originally had that event.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a different time of year, so it s much warmer on that course.
2
SPEAKER_00
Jim s not the kind of guy who would sit back and say, I can t chase that record.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think Angela Crest, when he looks at the segments and the pacing for that one, he s
2
SPEAKER_00
that one is maybe not even the same event anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you have that.
2
SPEAKER_00
You have some that are a little more controlled and a little more kind of like preserved, I guess you would say, but I think it gets really rare on the trail side.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Comrades is going to be very comparable from one year to the next because that s a road race.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where you get, you maybe get like the split in the sport from people who really want that kind of like, I want to compare myself to someone who ran this course in 1970.
2
SPEAKER_00
versus like someone who just says, I want to be competitive today.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, maybe the weather is going to be 30 degrees different from one year to the next on this course.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if I beat everyone on this day, then I m the champion of that big name race, like ultra trail Mont Blanc or Western States 100.
2
SPEAKER_00
And my legacy will be cemented because I won that big race.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t matter when or how the course was or what the time even was to some degree.
2
SPEAKER_01
when you were optimizing for trying to set the world record in the 100 miler, were you doing like analysis of maybe, like what were the variables you were looking at?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it more in the realm of the actual race day, the track, what it looks like versus like the variables of the training leading up to the race?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it evolved a bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think as I learned more about just what is required to kind of really do that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s some variables you can control for.
2
SPEAKER_00
I try to control for as many as I can.
2
SPEAKER_00
The big one that kind of stands out that you can t necessarily control for is it s pretty rare where you get an event where they re just doing 100 miles on a track.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s usually like an event of like a series of different events where there might be like some people out there doing 50k, some people out there doing 24, some day, like the event I did, there s six day folks out there.
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SPEAKER_00
They re trying to see how far they can get in six days.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you have like this much wider range of pacing just due to like the distance.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, track protocol is always like you pass on the outside.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you re running one of the faster paces of the day, which when you go on up to six days, you re going to and you re doing 100 miles, you re probably going to be running faster than most people out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Then, you know, you just end up running more because you end up running in lane two around the turns, sometimes lane three around the turn.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s down to those little details that have a big impact.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had to build that into my pacing strategy.
2
SPEAKER_00
I also have to build into the pacing strategy relative non-moving time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I did a race just recently.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was the US Track and Field 100 Mile Road Championships and I did not stop once other than I guess I technically stopped in the aid station for a few seconds to grab bottles and
2
SPEAKER_00
get myself wet because it was like 94 degrees that day.
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t stop at all during that race from what I would say is a long period of time where we re getting up to a minute.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s pretty rare, even on the track.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I ran 11 hours and 19 minutes
2
SPEAKER_00
I think I stopped three times for maybe a total of like, I believe, I have to look back for sure, but I think it was like three to four minutes or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you gotta figure that into your pacing strategy, especially if you re chasing a specific time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because if I m pacing for, at the time the world record was 11.28, so if I m pacing for say 11.27.30 or something like that, and I don t account for that three minutes of stoppage, then I might run the exact pace I had planned on, but then I m a minute off of the world record.
2
SPEAKER_01
1128, we re talking about 11 hours, we re talking about 100 miles.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you mention what the world record was?
2
SPEAKER_01
What kind of world record you set?
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell your own story here of what you were able to accomplish?
2
SPEAKER_00
That world record that I broke actually just recently got rebroke by a guy over in Lithuania, Alex Sorkin.
2
SPEAKER_00
Phenomenal race.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he s won the 24 hour world championships.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s won the Spartathlon, which is another big historic ultra marathon race.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s 153 miles, so it s getting a little more lengthy than some of the stuff that I ve traditionally done.
2
SPEAKER_00
He ran 11.14, I believe it was 56 or 57.
2
SPEAKER_00
So his pace was 6.45 per mile.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mine was 6.47 and a half.
2
SPEAKER_00
in terms of just like the pacing strategy.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s just really cool because for me, the motivation with chasing the world record was, it was multifaceted.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think there was, as I kind of moved through, because I mean, it took me almost six years from the day I decided I wanted to chase that time to the day I actually did it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And through that
2
SPEAKER_00
five to six years, I think I merged from just like my number one goal was to try to break the world record to my number one goal is how fast can I run this thing?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then ultimately, what needs to be done for a human to break 11 hours and 100 miles because I think that s going to be
2
SPEAKER_00
I think that s going to happen soon.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it s going to happen in the next few years.
2
SPEAKER_01
What pace would that be?
2
SPEAKER_00
Sub 11 would be, I think it s like 635 right about per mile.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re moving quick, but not so quick that you re
2
SPEAKER_00
you re void of being able to think about everything as it s happening.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what s the pace in terms of, if you look for each of the one mile segments for the hundred miles, is it pretty steady six, like in order to break 11 hours, would it be pretty steady 635?
2
SPEAKER_01
Does it go up and down?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you speed up at the very end?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what s the pacing?
2
SPEAKER_01
If you were to, maybe how much variability is there in the pacing for an optimal performance here?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so if you re talking about someone, let s say that there s someone, well, let s just take me for example, let s say that we could just like, we had this infinite knowledge.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we knew for a fact, a perfect performance for me would produce a 1059.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I m not going a second faster.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I need to do everything right in order to run a 1059.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would definitely want to either have a slight negative or a slight positive split.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when – and I think there s a range in there where like being a little bit faster the first half and the second half isn t going to necessarily change your outcome or being a little bit slower the first half
2
SPEAKER_00
and a little bit faster the second half isn t gonna drastically change your outcome.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s what you re referring to the split is you re looking at the first 50 miles and the second 50 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can break it down as tiny as you want.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like I think when you take out the outlier laps where I stopped to use the bathroom, which would have been that like three to four minute non-moving time that I talked about before, my splits were really tight.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had a couple that were, it was weird because that track that I did that on was actually like 400 and,
2
SPEAKER_00
There s some weird number like 438 meters or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I actually ran my numbers based on that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So normally I m dealing with 400 meters, and then it s a little more clean as to what my lap splits are going to range from one event to the next.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we re talking about running 100 miles on a track.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so then you can be really scientific about getting the pacing right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re running on the inside lane, or is there some kind of tricks to this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, are you alternating directions?
2
SPEAKER_00
Mm hmm.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they ll switch directions at most events every four hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you ll do four hours one way and then they usually put a cone out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And once it hits like like let s say it hits four hours, you finish the lap you re on and then you do a loop around and then you start the next your next lap.
2
SPEAKER_01
Would you say you take the exact same number of steps like when you re really in the groove, when you re taking the pacing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Are we talking about that level of precision or is it a little bit more feel?
2
SPEAKER_00
You mean like foot strike frequency?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like frequency, then over the distance of the lap, would you say it s so precise that you re like, you get in this groove where it s like perfect?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, gosh, you re making me wish I would have strapped more like a foot pod to my.
2
SPEAKER_00
But like, yeah, so I think my guess is it s pretty precise.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is there a video of this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Sorry, I keep interrupting.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is there a video of this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I ve actually, this is now three years ago, built a computer vision algorithm that counts foot strikes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, really?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to understand.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ll talk about that.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have the same definition of fun when I find myself on a track for all day and you find yourself counting foot strikes.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was trying to understand if there s how much variability there s in extreme like elite performers within a particular race, but also across races.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was just interesting to me from a robotics perspective, if like how much variability there is in the human body in the way they use legs to move quickly.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think my guess would be that at the individual level, it s gonna be pretty precise, assuming the pacing is consistent.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you get, so,
2
SPEAKER_00
My pacing on that day, I ran two minutes faster the second 50 miles than I did the first 50 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
So my splits were very even most of the day.
2
SPEAKER_00
I actually ran some of my fastest miles at the end.
2
SPEAKER_00
So there s going to be probably a slight variance from my fastest mile to my slowest mile in your cadence or your foot strike.
2
SPEAKER_00
But probably not by a huge margin, but you might have a pretty big variance from one person to the next.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you get someone whose gait is just a little bit different.
2
SPEAKER_00
So like for me, I supinate, which means I kind of come down on the outside of my foot, and I m kind of more of a mid forefoot striker.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s going to kind of impact my cadence to a degree, whereas you might have someone who is kind of more mid to rear their foot or heel striker, and they might pronate where their foot kind of rolls in.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that person may have a little bit of a different cadence as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you get someone, and I think you see this in elite marathoning too, which is gonna probably just be a much larger data pool, much more probably precise from just like a number of opportunities to study this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think even their ranges from one person to the next can be, I wouldn t say drastic, but to the degree of like 10 to maybe even 20 steps per minute or something like that from one person to the next.
2
SPEAKER_00
But most people, the faster they go, the higher their cadence is going to be, the slower they go, the lower their cadence is going to be.
2
SPEAKER_00
But there s going to be probably a range of optimal lowness and I don t know, probably optimal highness too, than that.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you can just linger on 11 hours, the person, first of all, would you like to be the person that breaks 11 hours?
2
SPEAKER_01
And second of all, the person that does break 11 hours, like what would it take?
2
SPEAKER_01
And third question is, is it even possible in your intuition?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I would be lying to you if I said I didn t want to be the first person to break 11 hours and 100 miles.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think that would be a cool barrier to be the one to usher that in.
2
SPEAKER_00
But with that said, I think I m much more motivated in seeing it done from the sense that, when we re talking about records,
2
SPEAKER_00
It s something that is inevitable that it s going to get broken.
2
SPEAKER_00
We were talking about happiness before this, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve contemplated this in the past where I was thinking to myself, if my motivation is to break a world record or any record for that matter, a course record, and have that be my defining reason
2
SPEAKER_00
or my defining motivator, I probably need to do an assessment of where my mind is at and where my focus is at and just reflect on how I m behaving in life.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s going to get broken, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I could run 10.50 tomorrow and in 10 years, chances are that s no longer going to be the world record anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
Someone s going to run faster than that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you re living to hold on to a record versus living to try to move the sport forward, which anytime you break a world record, you re moving the sport forward.
2
SPEAKER_00
then you have to look at that as like, that was my contribution.
2
SPEAKER_00
And whether I contribute again or not is kind of besides the point.
2
SPEAKER_00
What you want is that your performance or your contribution brings new people into the sport who are excited, motivated, and they can make their contribution.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then we can ultimately see, well, how fast can someone run a controlled environment 100 miler?
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s what I really want to see, because I think I ve gotten so much enjoyment from the sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I ve gotten so much enjoyment from the sport, I ve been able to turn it into a career.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think there s other people who can do the same thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s not necessarily going to come at the expense of my career, but it s going to bring more attention to the sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s going to bring more interest in the sport.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s going to open the sport up to people who maybe otherwise would have never thought about it, seen it, considered it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And to me, I think that s like a much more rewarding goal than saying, I want to break this record and I want to hold it for decades or I want to die with this record.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I never have to see someone go faster than me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s the progress of human civilization.
2
SPEAKER_01
We stand on the shoulders of giants and we keep creating cool stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, and it s – the other thing is just like if you re honest with yourself too, it s – I mean we re seeing this right now in the running world where new innovations come in, new technologies come in, new nutritional approaches come in and then we see like the new crop of folks have advantages that the old crop didn t have.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it can be easy to look back on that and say like, hey, well, you know, if I would have had that product or if I would have done that, I would have run this.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then you re getting into that negative, you know, thought process again, which I generally try to stay out of.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like the caveman.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I had fire, I would have done way better with this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Look at these idiots up there with their cars.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I would have had a car back then, I would have been ruled the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
Let me just zoom up briefly and ask you about kind of beauty and love.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s the most beautiful thing about running to you?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why do you love it?
2
SPEAKER_00
I think there s kind of a couple directions to look at it through, or lenses to look at it through.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s like the in the moment, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s always gonna be that run where you re clicking along and things just feel great.
2
SPEAKER_00
You get some endorphins and you get the, you know,
2
SPEAKER_00
the quote unquote runner s high and that sort of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s just like this great feeling that you can tap into on the real in the moment type of level.
2
SPEAKER_00
My wife and I talk about this because she s a competitive ultra runner as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
we ll have a day where we ll take a forced day off or something like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s necessary, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s going to allow the enjoyment to continue.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you get into this routine of I wake up in the morning, I do this run, and that kind of gets my day started.
2
SPEAKER_00
That gets my energies up.
2
SPEAKER_00
I get that runner s high afterwards.
2
SPEAKER_00
You remove that from the equation for a rest day, and you just sort of like, oh, man, I feel like I never got started today.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just this weird thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it s funny because non-runners don t always necessarily recognize it because for them it s the complete opposite.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re like, if I can get away from not having to run today, that s going to be a good day.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s one of those things that I think gets more addictive the more you do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s purely from the running perspective, there s this joy of the runner s high, of the post after the run, you feel like you can take on the world, that kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and I think that s one of the drivers from just a quality of life standpoint, just an in the moment, immediate gratification standpoint.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then there s, I think, the bigger picture stuff, or the longer term stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
And for me, that enjoyment is just the process of, okay,
3
SPEAKER_00
starting at this fitness level, and I m going to do these workouts, and by doing these workouts, I m going to see incremental progress from them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then that s another kind of short-term gratification that s maybe a little longer than the day-to-day, but still shorter than a career or a build-up for a particular race, where you re seeing yourself like, okay, maybe I m focusing on short intervals right now.
3
SPEAKER_00
And on week one, I covered this much distance in three minutes, but by week four, I m covering this much distance, and you can just see that progress.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like in elementary school when you get the gold star for reading a book, it s like, did that gold star really mean anything?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but I felt great when they gave it to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s something about just finding improvement.
3
SPEAKER_00
People love to see improvement, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s where I think you can also get some value in it, saying, like, I started here and I got there.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I think there s also just like, I would call this maybe more the cherry on top, which is like, where you express your work, which is the race itself, where that s going to be kind of the thing that kind of like, shows up on the end result and where it kind of identifies whether you did things right or wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so there s a sense in which training is a kind of preparation towards race day, and race day being the thing where you get to be the artist.
3
SPEAKER_01
You get to create this piece of art, and it might suck, it might be beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I see, in the grappling world, I see competition in that same way, when I feel the best about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
which is like Sounds pretentious to say but like I m trying to be the best version of myself in this particular day of competition and to do something
3
SPEAKER_01
that I ll be proud of in an artist way, not in a kind of, some kind of numerical way, but like as a holistic sense, like do something cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like in grappling, that means for me, that means like not stalling, like taking big risks and trying to dominate another person in the context of grappling and do it in a way
3
SPEAKER_01
like push myself to the limit, both cardio wise and technique wise, and just play beautifully.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you see this in kind of chess.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s systematic chess players and there s people that allow themselves to have those moments of genius where they take the big risk that eventually pays off or doesn t.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that to me is art.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s art within running.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s art within chess.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s art within grappling and you got a chance like all the training is More like science and then it feels like the competition days art
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that that s a really cool way to look at it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think it s when you really open up the perspective of that, too, it s like even obviously, you know, having a great day, like winning the tournament or, you know, getting further than you were expected to or beating someone who you ve never beaten before or something like that, or in the running perspective, like achieving that goal time, that sort of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, those are kind of like the ones you
3
SPEAKER_00
when you re honest with yourself, you really want and you re gonna probably get the most satisfaction out of.
3
SPEAKER_00
But even when they don t go wrong, like maybe with your grappling tournament analogy, maybe the guy you re grappling against does a move on you and you re like, I was not prepared for that move.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now the enjoyment becomes, okay, back to the drawing board.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now I need to find out what do I do when that happens to me next time?
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s where I think the why comes in again.
3
SPEAKER_00
Same thing with running, like maybe I make a mistake.
3
SPEAKER_00
eat something I didn t really want to eat or thought was going to work but didn t work and it costs me more time than I gained by having it or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well, I can t do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
That didn t work.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or if I m going to do that, I need to be more prepared to be able to do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I love that part of the sport.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just the rearranging of things and adjusting and tinkering.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s some sense in which the mistakes and like the flaws give us meaning.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because like if everything, if you weren t able to find mistakes in something you ve done, it feels like the life would be void of meaning.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a lost opportunity, too.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I look at even my 100-mile race of 11.19, I can find spots in there where I was like, oh, you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
I could clean that up a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe if I do this differently.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s going to get me a little bit faster.
3
SPEAKER_00
If I sat back and said, hey, well, things weren t great that day.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s see if we can replicate it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then I d probably run 11.19 again.
3
SPEAKER_01
So can we talk about training a little bit?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
What does your training look like year-round, day-to-day, hour-to-hour, like optimal, maybe you want to pick a race in the context of which you want to discuss that, and also people should follow you on Instagram, you have a lot of kind of interesting
3
SPEAKER_01
like little glances into your training process, into your training thinking, which is quite fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if you look at an optimal training process, what does that look like?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I think if we re looking at it from like a philosophical level or like an approach level, I think there s some things that carry over from regardless of the distance.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think working on your weaknesses and things that are least specific to what you re gonna do on race day, but are still gonna be important things in terms of improving your ability to perform on race day or maximizing your potential with the things that are specific, you do first.
3
SPEAKER_00
I say that, but there s a caveat with endurance sport.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think maybe even more specifically with things like our ultra marathons or 100 milers where you want a really strong aerobic foundation or like a base before you really start, I think, structuring things towards a specific one.
3
SPEAKER_00
So for me, I think like a target for me is oftentimes like, you know, getting really fit at like,
3
SPEAKER_00
what my pace would be at like my aerobic threshold or what a lot of people will maybe call like a maximum aerobic function.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the running world is kind of weird where we have like these terminologies where there s sometimes multiple words that essentially mean the same thing, but one is from like a, just an actual physiological reaction and one is just like a feeling and stuff like that, so.
3
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned time on feet versus time in optimal physiological state.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like how important is it just to get like running done versus like running in a particular pace?
3
SPEAKER_00
That would depend on the event, I would say, to a degree.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s conflicting ideas about how to structure it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of times, time on feet, in most cases, is just going to be like, I m running easy, whatever feels easy that day.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that can be different from one day to the next.
3
SPEAKER_00
I might feel great, and that produces a much faster pace than if I feel really miserable or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s why I think a lot is running, well, they ll do the whole perceived effort or perceived exertion.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you re looking at kind of understanding the response your body has to a certain effort level, and you re supposed to target a certain effort level in order to get a certain response.
3
SPEAKER_00
So to maybe simplify that a little bit or make it a little clearer, like I think I focus on essentially like short intervals.
3
SPEAKER_00
I focus on longer intervals or tempo runs.
3
SPEAKER_00
I focus on like race pace intensity, which is a lot of times what I ll build my long run around.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I ll also like those are kind of like the small pieces to the puzzle.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those are the options you re working with.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but I m going to always try to work with those options on top of a massive aerobic base, which is going to probably be like 80% of the work.
3
SPEAKER_01
So how do you build that massive aerobic base?
3
SPEAKER_00
What are we talking about distance, distance, and essentially, so I like to call it micro stressing, because you re going to always start at a different spot, depending on where your fitness levels at and depending on where you re at as an individual.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to be targeting my aerobic threshold, I m going to get right up to it, but not necessarily cross over it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s, you know, it s, it s been popularized as maximum aerobic function as kind of a training philosophy.
3
SPEAKER_00
That philosophy in itself, I think maybe is a little more like holistic where they re saying, do this basically all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by doing so, you re going to like you re going to raise your aerobic potential by so much that, you know, you can kind of like race yourself into shape at that point.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this would be maybe more specific for like shorter distance or endurance runs where you re not going to race yourself in the shape of 100 milers.
3
SPEAKER_00
But for five days, you might you might do like a huge base building phase, where you re going up to that maximum aerobic function.
3
SPEAKER_00
or that aerobic threshold, and you re watching your pace come down at that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the rule there is basically like, if you re seeing improvement, that s the sign you re looking for, or which would just be your pace dropping at that heart rate or at that intensity.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you re seeing that continually go down, you re heading in the right direction.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you start seeing it go the opposite way, you re probably overreaching or you re trying to do too much of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that kind of dictates how much, the dose, I guess you d say.
3
SPEAKER_01
When we talk about max aerobic function, we re talking about heart rate as the ultimate, as the really important metric here.
3
SPEAKER_01
So maintaining a particular heart rate during the run.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that the measure that, like, how do you know you re in the right place?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then that s where it gets a little tricky because, like, unless you go into a lab and get your aerobic threshold tested, it s really hard to have, like, an exact number on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, Dr. Phil Maffetone, with the maximum function process, he ll say 180 minus your age is going to give you your
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s the math 180 formula that I thought was fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like in the same way E equals MC squared is fascinating, that there could be a formula that captures optimal running.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that, for people who don t know, that s 180 minus your age.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you train at that heart rate, if you run at that heart rate, you re going to progress a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And here s the advantage of that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think like with any of these things, you want to look at it through where are the advantages here, and I need to account for those, and then where are the potential disadvantages, and then decide, for me as an individual, do these advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and what s the alternative approach, and is that going to produce more advantages or less?
3
SPEAKER_00
So with Maximal Root Function, here s some advantages.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, it is low enough intensity where you can
3
SPEAKER_00
train pretty consistently at a fairly high volume with a very low injury risk with very low like things that are going to maybe lower your quality of life like muscle damage and things like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a more efficient way in the sense that you re going to be like prioritizing like fat metabolization, which
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you re looking at like Jeff Folek and, or Dr. Jeff Folek and Dr. Dominic D Agostino, some of their research and things like that, like they re going to show that, you know, that s going to be a little cleaner way to go about things from just a recovery standpoint, a breakdown standpoint.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they could be like a, what they call like a fat adapted athlete.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you can go to your fat stores for energy if you re applying this.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is it called by the way, MAF 180?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that a good, what are your thoughts about in general for yourself and for the broader population?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think the MAF 180 formula is about as good of a formula as you re gonna find in terms of capturing as many people as you can get away with capturing with kind of a universal thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like any of these things, I mean, it s more likely kind of on a bell curve where like the bulk of that
3
SPEAKER_00
180 minus their age is probably going to be a pretty good at least starting point to kind of figure out where that is.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s some other things you can like maybe use to kind of check it that I like to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
If I m – let s say I did 180 minus my age and I went out and I started running and it was like I m running along and I m just like – my breathing is labored.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m struggling to get a sentence out without gasping for breath.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s my body telling me I m probably not actually at my true math number or underneath my true aerobic threshold.
3
SPEAKER_00
Aerobic threshold and maximum function, you should be able to do that for hours, and you should be able to breathe pretty efficiently.
3
SPEAKER_00
And talk.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yep, carry a conversation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Other people will say another way to gauge it, if you can breathe in your nose and out your mouth,
3
SPEAKER_00
that s not necessarily the best way to do from a performance standpoint, but it can be a good kind of governor that will allow you to, like, if you can no longer breathe in your nose and out your mouth, you re probably going too fast to actually technically be at your math pace or under your math pace.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I had a, actually, when I was in better shape, I had trouble getting to that math number.
3
SPEAKER_01
I found myself, like, that I would be doing way too much work.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was too hard to do it?
3
SPEAKER_01
It was too hard to get to that number.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was running a much lower heart rate, like 10 to 20, what do you call that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Beats, lower.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was still, for myself, happy with the pace.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was a good pace.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I just felt good.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was smiling and enjoying life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the moment I take myself to that level of like the math 180 level,
3
SPEAKER_01
that felt like a real workout.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it felt like I can t do that for five, 10, 15 miles.
3
SPEAKER_01
I started feeling it like this is a one or two mile thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think his answer to that, Phil Meftone s answer is maybe you re supposed to maybe do some more sprints or something like that or build up your,
3
SPEAKER_01
maybe like I m too weak, musculature wise to like, yeah, like that s a sign that you need to work on some stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t just keep enjoying life.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s two ways to look at that, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think you re right on.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that what the advice from that kind of a process would say is either
3
SPEAKER_00
you, you re doing too much of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s getting too hard for where your skeletal muscle system is currently at for that particular activity.
3
SPEAKER_00
So like, I mean, it can be different to like, if you re cycling versus running, you know, that s a little bit of different mechanic where it can be different where you could take a super fit,
3
SPEAKER_00
cyclist, and then put them on, you know, the the volume, they re gonna be able to tolerate relative to what you re going to do when you remove like impact forces and things like that is going to be lower if they haven t been practicing that activity.
3
SPEAKER_00
So for you, like, you know, you re prioritizing, like, wrestling and mixed martial art or not mixed martial arts, but jujitsu type stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
running is maybe kind of that secondary activity versus the primary activity.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, so what they would say is probably like maybe instead of doing that, let s say you were doing that for like 30 miles a week or something like that and it was getting too hard to continue, they d say, come back to 20, get used to 20, get comfortable with 20, then let s get you up to 25 and 30 and kind of just like inch you along.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the intuitions I had about
3
SPEAKER_01
the ways I was failing at running is the form was probably not great.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like the way to get to those 30, 40 miles is to get the form right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe I was doing too big of steps.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like playing with a different gate, playing with a different kind of the form.
3
SPEAKER_01
The economy, the efficiency, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that was the intuition.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I was doing something wrong.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I suppose that s the benefit of these kind of formulas.
3
SPEAKER_01
It challenges you to think like, how can I improve this kind of stuff?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, and it also, it simplifies it so much that you re forced to, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
You re forced to optimize within that real strict parameter versus, am I doing my short intervals right, but my long runs wrong?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or am I doing my long intervals right, but my short intervals, and then you just, it kind of complicates things when you start throwing a lot of stuff there.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for most people, especially when they re first getting started,
3
SPEAKER_00
You can t overcomplicate it or you re going to do a bunch of half right, half wrong things and then not really know where your progress or your deficits are necessarily at.
3
SPEAKER_00
I do think this is an amazing approach, especially for people who are just getting into it and building that foundation.
3
SPEAKER_00
where I think maybe you want to deviate from that a little bit, especially when you start to get into these events that are operating well outside that intensity.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you take something like, you know, let s say it s a race that takes you in the neighborhood of around like 12 minutes or something like that, then you re going to be running significantly faster than your maximum function pace.
3
SPEAKER_00
So most of the research is going to say at some point in time, you need to get around to practicing the pace at which you re going to perform at.
3
SPEAKER_00
and really fine tuning the mechanics, the efficiencies, how it feels, how to judge it, how to pace it at the pace you re going to try to compete at.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there s obviously like a large range of targets there when we talk about the endurance world in general, where, you know, you have these shorter events, like five kilometers, and then you also have 100 mile races, which are going to typically be quite a bit below your maximum aerobic function in especially on these trail races.
3
SPEAKER_01
I need to admit something.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I don t measure the runs at all in terms of time.
3
SPEAKER_01
I get competitive with myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I kind of decided that running for me is going to be this thing where I just go by feel.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is it possible to be that kind of runner and still have running as part of your life and be a good performer in running?
3
SPEAKER_00
I actually think that s where you want to get to.
3
SPEAKER_00
The problem is most people have a hard time getting to that because they ll go out and they ll run with a friend and match their pace, or they ll go out and they ll say, well, I want to run this pace.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they ll target that pace or target a specific heart rate, which is not necessarily how they maybe feel good doing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think once you, I mean, obviously, I think when you put a race on the calendar,
3
SPEAKER_00
If your goal is performance, it s a little harder to just say, like, well, I m going to run whatever feels good today.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because eventually you have to get around to doing what s specific.
3
SPEAKER_00
But from just a fitness standpoint, health standpoint, enjoyment standpoint, I think it s totally fine to go out and say, I m going to run what feels good today.
3
SPEAKER_00
And maybe someday you will feel like at the end of the run, I m going to do a couple sprints just to get some, you know, that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because it does.
3
SPEAKER_00
That one s a hard one to kind of jumpstart.
3
SPEAKER_00
But once you do it and you realize how kind of good it feels, maybe to throw in a few accelerations at the end of a run.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you you say, oh, wow, that feels pretty good to do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I feel a little more accomplished.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s a forcing function.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I like to finish runs with sprints anyway.
3
SPEAKER_00
OK, because you re already there.
3
SPEAKER_01
without, right, you don t need to, the timing, I m afraid of the time of becoming a drug, but the flip side of that, it s a useful tool to get you to learn the right form, the right feel, like what it feels like to have, to be in good shape, and then you can throw out the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think too with feel running and what I mean by that is that s kind of back to that perceived effort thing where like you do enough of it and you start being able to recognize like I can go out and if you said, okay, run, you know, 60 minutes at your aerobic threshold.
3
SPEAKER_00
I could go, I could know where that is on my heart rate and I could go up there and just say like, okay, I know what that feels like and go out and run that feel and I m going to hit that spot.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I bet you if we looked at my heart rate data after there d be
4
SPEAKER_00
right in there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I wouldn t have to look.
4
SPEAKER_00
And some of that s just experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
Some of it s just understanding, like noticing the physiological responses when you cross over versus step a little bit too below it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can catch yourself daydreaming and forget.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ll do this sometimes, too, where I ll be tired.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I m kind of like you, too, where when I m getting really fit, especially with my foundation, I m moving pretty quick at my aerobic threshold.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if I start daydreaming too much, I can notice, oh, I m drifting back a little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
I look down at my heart rate.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah, I m 10 beats under.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it does take a little bit of, I think, just awareness.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s also not necessarily something where you have to be so exact that you re hitting an exact heart rate all the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s usually a range.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s even some fluctuations where if you ve been healthy for a year or two without any injuries and you ve been fit, that you can probably add five beats to your maximum aerobic function if you re using that as your target from the 180 minus your age formula.
4
SPEAKER_01
So let s try to lay this out for yourself, but for others, you offer ready-made plans for people, you know, depending on their, I think the key thing there is the distance.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you can elaborate.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what does that plan look like usually?
4
SPEAKER_01
What are the key options, as you already kind of mentioned?
4
SPEAKER_01
And how does your week look like?
4
SPEAKER_01
How do a lot of people s week look like in terms of splits?
4
SPEAKER_01
Are we talking about, you know, in terms of rest days, in terms of how often do you do speed work versus longer distance?
4
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned long runs.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, is there something you could say that s generally applicable about the structure of these plans?
4
SPEAKER_00
The ready-made plans, I definitely follow like a philosophy, and it s gonna be like kind of like lockstep in that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So for those, like there s just always gonna be a sacrifice when you do like a ready-made plan because you re removing the individual context there.
4
SPEAKER_00
So for folks who are like really wanna get into the weeds, I usually do like a personalized coaching plan with them where we sit down and we actually look at their strengths, their weaknesses, and really kind of go in from that perspective and fine tune it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it also like, it avoids a situation where
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my ready-made plan says I m supposed to do this run today, but I don t feel great today.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what do I do?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, some people are fine with that because they re aware enough of the process that they can adjust it themselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
Other folks just need a little more support.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s kind of the difference there.
4
SPEAKER_00
But in terms of the structure of it, it kind of goes with an approach where what we re saying, you build this foundation, you re going to spend
4
SPEAKER_00
you know, usually anywhere between eight to 12 weeks, just building up your aerobic foundation, you re gonna be doing a lot of stuff that are kind of at, I call them base runs, but they re basically your maximum aerobic function, or you re up to your aerobic threshold type stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they re really gonna get really fit with that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And once they kind of have that foundation laid, then it s time to get into the specifics of whatever distance they re doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
So where it will differ will be like if they re doing, right now on those plans, I think I ve got 5K, half marathon, marathon, 50K, 80 to 100K, and then 100 miles.
4
SPEAKER_00
So if they pick a 5K plan, the order of operations is gonna be different than if they picked the 100 mile plan.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna see some of the same workouts show up in that plan, it s just gonna be different areas of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Once they re really fit at that foundational level, then if they re doing, say, a 100-mile plan, they might start doing some short intervals, which on my plans, I usually range between 30 seconds up to four minutes.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of that short interval range.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you describe what you mean by short interval?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like a sprint and then a rest?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I ll use basically like I ll use like a basically a 12 minute time trial.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s going to kind of like dictate for them what the intensity and the pace is going to be for some of those when they re under a minute, they ll push past that a little bit.
4
SPEAKER_00
But usually when we re up to like above a minute and certainly up to four minutes, like whatever pace or intensity that they get for that kind of 12 minute time trial where they re just seeing how far they can go in 12 minutes is going to be
4
SPEAKER_00
kind of like about where they re going to target for those intervals.
4
SPEAKER_00
So then those intervals are going to be structured.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s say they re doing two minute intervals.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re going to two minutes at that intensity that they could do for 12 minutes at a time trial.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then they re going to do a two minute real easy job or maybe even walk just to kind of bounce back.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they re going to repeat it.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you figure out how far you can go in 12 minutes?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is that just a trial and error you build up to it?
4
SPEAKER_01
There s formulas.
4
SPEAKER_01
What?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s some newer formulas that are probably a little less brutal.
4
SPEAKER_00
where you kind of, I haven t really dove into these that in depth yet.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know like that you can kind of replicate it by doing like a short, a very short interval and then a slightly longer one.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then like another one where like at the end one, that last one will kind of indicate what it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so you re doing less of it to get the same answer to the question.
4
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes I think when it s someone who s new,
4
SPEAKER_00
I d rather them just do a 12-minute time trial because it s easy for them to execute in the sense that it s pretty clear.
4
SPEAKER_00
You do a warm-up, you do some strides, maybe some dynamic stretches, and you just run as hard as you can for 12 minutes, as evenly paced as you can manage.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, it s going to produce the data I m looking for.
4
SPEAKER_00
No matter what happens, it ll produce the data.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you can screw it up, I guess.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can go way too fast and then you have this scenario where like, oh, it looks like your first two minutes were drastically faster than your last two and then it s like, oh, we maybe screwed that one up.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, really, you don t even need to do the time trial technically.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of times you can go off of feel like what we described with the threshold stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, it s a high enough intensity where, like, you can start to kind of, like, your body s going to kind of limit you to a degree where if I said we didn t do the time trial and just started doing the intervals, we could figure out that, you know, if they re doing them right or not.
4
SPEAKER_00
If we see a scenario where, oh, it looks like these first two intervals were significantly slower than the last two.
4
SPEAKER_00
chances are we re still not quite dialed in in terms of what the intensity is that you should be targeting for those.
4
SPEAKER_00
And as you do a few, you just get to know the pacing of it a little better.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you start seeing more even splits.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, you know, their first two minute intervals pretty close within a couple seconds of their second, or, you know, I guess we d be looking at distance if we re doing time.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like you went approximately the same distance on that last one as you did the first one.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we re just looking for improvement over time.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you know, we might spend four, six weeks kind of focusing on improving that we re going to still include kind of foundational running volume where you re going to be running like an easy pace and enjoyable pace kind of in the interim, and then there s gonna be some rest days.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s gonna be where the levels come in my like level one plans are gonna be like four day a week training plans level two are gonna be five day level three are gonna be six day with one day off.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can obviously operate outside of those.
4
SPEAKER_00
Those are just the ones that I put up for the ready-made.
4
SPEAKER_00
When I m coaching people, personalized, we look at what their history is with running, their schedule, all sorts of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oftentimes, people get hung up on, well, what are the elites doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
What are the professionals doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
What are the Olympians doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like, well, what the Olympians are doing is they re waking up and they re living and breathing everything around this one race that they re going to do in four years.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like we need to step away from that if you re working 10 hours a day and you got kids and all this other stuff too.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of variables that make it more interesting to coach someone who s actually not an elite athlete or someone who s a professional athlete, I should say.
4
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, so they re going to do that stuff, those shorter intervals, for probably about four to six weeks, if they re doing a longer race, like 100 miles.
4
SPEAKER_00
If they were doing, say, a 5K, we d start bringing those workouts in near the end of their plan, because that s going to be specific to their race pace.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s gonna be the intensity that maybe they re doing for, you know, like a 3K or a 5K or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s gonna be more relative to what they re gonna use.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it follows that philosophy, the plans follow that philosophy of weaknesses and least specific stuff early.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we start phasing closer to most specific stuff and strengths as you get kind of near to the end of the plan.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then the distance of or the time that you re gonna spend out doing whatever event is gonna dictate how those kind of get ordered in there.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wonder if I could ask you for some sort of advice, maybe almost, maybe look at me as a case study of a particular runner and then see how we can plan stuff out.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, which context to give?
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so I have been, first let me say how much we re currently in Austin.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wanna say how much I love Austin for many reasons.
4
SPEAKER_01
First and foremost, people are super kind and just like,
4
SPEAKER_01
There s so much love that I ve experienced immediately when I came to the city versus many of the other cities I ve been in.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not quite as welcoming and full of kindness immediately.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I really love it here in Austin.
4
SPEAKER_01
And because I ve been going through a bunch of stressful stuff, I just kind of gave myself a chance to say, okay, I m gonna stick to a diet of carnivore keto, but I m going to eat as much as I want.
4
SPEAKER_01
because primarily because just barbecue was part of the love I was getting here.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, either I resist or just give in.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I decided to give in and actually use this as an opportunity to relax and have fun for the past three, four months.
4
SPEAKER_01
plus whiskey and so on.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then the training kind of all, I also let go of the training a little bit just to relax, to really focus on the work, focus on the love I ve been getting, all those kinds of things.
4
SPEAKER_01
But now I just kind of want to set a goal for myself to get back into both competing and grappling.
4
SPEAKER_01
but also doing a, hanging out with David Goggins and doing a conversation with him.
4
SPEAKER_01
But almost, this is my own personal kind of race that I m looking forward to.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in terms of distance, that means running with David, something like a marathon plus plus.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like, it s unclear what.
4
SPEAKER_01
Plus, so my goal would be to continue eating carnivore, which is a whole nother topic I d love to talk to you about.
4
SPEAKER_01
I feel great.
4
SPEAKER_01
psychologically, sort of in terms of mental performance in my work when I eat carnivore, and physically, I love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve never felt any kind of need for carbs to improve performance in my running or anything else.
4
SPEAKER_01
Combine that with fasting, intermittent fasting, or eating once a day, that s when I feel the best.
4
SPEAKER_01
What else?
4
SPEAKER_01
I also feel best, and this is something you can push back on,
4
SPEAKER_01
I feel best when I just run every day, like no breaks ever.
4
SPEAKER_01
And usually the same way every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
So like, I know this is suboptimal.
4
SPEAKER_01
It d be interesting to hear your opinion of just how suboptimal that is.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think that actually lays out like where my mind is.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m happy eating carnivore once a day.
4
SPEAKER_01
I like running every day.
4
SPEAKER_01
The goal is to run a marathon in two months-ish, two months plus, and then about three months to do a bunch of competitions and grappling.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
With those parameters, I think like you actually probably would be a great candidate for maximum aerobic function training strategy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like you want that consistency where I m going to do the same thing each day.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to beat yourself up so much any one day that you can t get out and do the next one.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s the sweet spot with maximum aerobic function is the trademark there is that
4
SPEAKER_00
you can keep going and keep doing it again and again and again because as long as you re not, you know, going out one day and trying to do twice as much as what you re ready for, for that one – so the key for you is going to be picking the right starting point and then building from there on what that day kind of entails in terms of how much running you do.
4
SPEAKER_00
where you could maybe get creative would be if you decided that it s a hard fast rule that you run an hour every day, seven days a week, but we find out that to run your maximum aerobic function means you probably are better off sticking to 30 minutes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then what you would maybe do is you would run underneath your maximum aerobic function for the first 15 minutes in the last 15 minutes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe throw some of those strides in there if you want to do that at the very end.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that middle 30 minutes is going to be maximum road function target.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then maybe after, you know, four weeks, you start noticing, you know what, this 30 minutes isn t wearing me out near as much as it used to.
4
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I could easily push past that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, let s up that to 40 minutes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s 60.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re always staying within that 60 minute parameter that keeps your schedule consistent, your routine consistent.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m wearing a heart rate monitor as I run to monitor it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you could do that.
4
SPEAKER_00
You could go perceived effort.
4
SPEAKER_00
I like to use them in tandem in the sense that like early on, I ll maybe look at my heart rate a little more often, especially for shorter length, there is a heart rate can get messy, the longer you go.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I end up kind of maybe stepping away from heart rate a little more than some will.
4
SPEAKER_00
at a certain point, because ultimately I m gonna be usually training or working with someone to run a race that s really long, and they have cardiac drift, dehydration, heat, and things that are gonna make the heart rate super messy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you re probably, your ability to measure perceived effort is exceptionally good.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mine is actually really weak.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, heart rate then.
4
SPEAKER_01
I need to do still the work of connecting heart rate to the perceived effort.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s exactly what I would use heart rate for then.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you ll get to a point probably by like in the first couple of months where you, you can still lean on heart rate if you want, but it ll be kind of one of those things where you, you keep looking at, you re like, Oh wow, I can guess it.
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SPEAKER_00
And you play a game with yourself too.
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SPEAKER_00
And you say, well, how close can I guess?
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SPEAKER_00
You ll get it.
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SPEAKER_00
So like for me, what I ll do is I ll go, I ll do the run and then I ll look at the heart rate afterwards and be like, Oh cool.
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SPEAKER_00
I was right there.
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SPEAKER_00
Or I remember feeling like I was speeding up a little bit there and the show is right there on the heart rate or,
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SPEAKER_01
I also love sort of something we haven t talked about.
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SPEAKER_01
I love push-ups and pull-ups, so like body weight workouts.
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Again, it s mostly mental.
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SPEAKER_01
I just enjoy the mental challenge of it.
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SPEAKER_01
I also like, it makes me feel like if all I m doing is running, it makes me feel I m not like... One dimensional.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, one dimensional.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s some aspect to running that s not to be like hippie about it, but like, you know, you re you re with nature, you re running in.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like we re born to do this thing.
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SPEAKER_01
And that same way, I feel like when I m doing push ups and pull ups, I feel like I was born to do that kind of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
Like it s like this.
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SPEAKER_01
bodyweight exercises have that way about them.
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SPEAKER_01
It doesn t have that dumbbell feel or doing bench press or squats, squats with weight.
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SPEAKER_01
When you re just doing squats, bodyweight, when doing push-ups and pull-ups, bodyweight, even just basic ab stuff, core stuff, bodyweight.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I just love the way I feel doing that.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s usually, I forgot to mention that part, I combine that with the running afterwards, doing some basic bodyweight stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think like you re gonna get from, if we re not looking at it from like specifically like training a pace in order to get both the skeletal muscle adaptations as well as the cardiovascular benefits, you re probably tapping into some of the higher intensity stuff with that body weight stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
Unless you re doing, I guess.
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SPEAKER_00
No rest, it s very quick.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, so you re getting pretty high heart rate from that?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, very hard.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay.
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SPEAKER_00
Higher than running, yep.
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SPEAKER_00
So you re checking that box there from just like a lifestyle, uh, enjoyment, fitness, overall fitness standpoint.
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SPEAKER_00
Uh, I think you want to keep your running more aerobic than because you re getting that and you re probably getting it from like your grappling workouts too, I would guess.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s just not as big of a need for you from an big picture standpoint to be doubling down on that stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
with your runs as well.
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SPEAKER_00
And it sounds like you prefer not to.
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SPEAKER_00
That s right.
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SPEAKER_01
So I mean, what about the distance of marathon versus 100 miles?
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SPEAKER_01
Is that big difference?
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SPEAKER_01
What s a good goal to work towards?
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SPEAKER_01
Is it marathon and the rest of it just takes care of itself?
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SPEAKER_01
Like,
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SPEAKER_00
So you want to do a marathon and then ultimately do a hundred mile after that?
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SPEAKER_00
Is that what you re saying?
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SPEAKER_00
I have no idea what the guy- Oh, so he s going to tell you spot on what you re doing.
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SPEAKER_00
So you have to be ready for anything.
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SPEAKER_01
For anything, right.
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SPEAKER_01
My own personal goal is to feel somewhat challenged, but comfortable running a marathon.
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SPEAKER_01
The longest I ve ever run is 22 miles, but I, you know, there s been many stretches of my life where I would regularly run, like the long run would be close to 20 miles.
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SPEAKER_01
And then I was comfortably running 10 miles four months ago.
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SPEAKER_01
It feels like forever ago.
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SPEAKER_01
Until I injured myself a little bit by running in the snow and stubbing my toe to where it was like, you don t realize how much you appreciate your toes until you stub them.
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SPEAKER_00
The big toes where all that power comes off.
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And so it was surprising how long it took to heal.
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SPEAKER_01
and how essential it was and how unpleasant running, how much I hated running with it.
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SPEAKER_01
And then I kept like coming, trying to get back out there to run to think, I think it s okay.
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SPEAKER_01
And no, it s not okay.
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SPEAKER_01
You really need to let it fully heal.
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SPEAKER_01
At least that was my experience.
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SPEAKER_01
I couldn t like just suck it up.
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SPEAKER_01
It was making it worse every time.
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SPEAKER_01
It was one of those injuries that could really feel, even though it s so small.
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SPEAKER_01
But it s essential.
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SPEAKER_01
So is there any difference between the goal of marathon or 100 miles, would you say?
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SPEAKER_01
Should I be prepping for 100 miles if that s at all a possibility?
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SPEAKER_00
The big difference is going to be like you re dropping intensity significantly by going up to 100 miles versus the marathon.
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SPEAKER_00
the maximum rolling function, I think is actually going to feed into that maybe a little bit better, it s probably gonna be a little closer, depending on where I mean, all it all varies a bit because like people, people will focus on specific distances, and they ll get very efficient and very adapted to that.
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SPEAKER_00
So like,
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SPEAKER_00
It s what makes running kind of messy where you ll get, for example, the average person can hit their lactate threshold for probably about 60 minutes or something like that, whereas you get these elite marathoners who ve been basically spending their entire life preparing for a marathon race.
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SPEAKER_00
They can push almost up to their lactate threshold and at their lactate threshold for almost two hours.
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SPEAKER_00
So it gets a little messy when you start
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SPEAKER_00
looking at it from that lens, but you don t really have to worry about that too much because you re not really focusing on being the best possible 100 miler or the best possible marathoner you could be.
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SPEAKER_00
You want enough overall fitness that you can just do either one of them without absolute misery because you did the couch to 100 miler.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think like for 100 miles, the biggest difference, I think, given your context is just like the more physical things you are doing, the better prepared you re going to be for the 100 mile.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s almost given your context, I wouldn t say irrelevant, you want to be doing running
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SPEAKER_00
but you re gonna be doing that once you put it in your program, it sounds like it s gonna be pretty locked in.
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SPEAKER_00
You re gonna wanna also, if you view it this way, it s probably gonna be more mentally beneficial too, where, hey, today I did my run, I did my body weight exercises, I did some grappling practice, I spent three hours working out today.
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SPEAKER_00
If you think of it like that, then you re moving your body, you re doing things that are active for a good chunk of the day,
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SPEAKER_00
especially relative to most people.
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SPEAKER_00
So that s going to actually be very helpful for you.
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SPEAKER_00
The problem or the battle to get over is going to just be like the, you know, you re going to break down physically running 100 miles and you re going to break down physically running a marathon too.
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SPEAKER_00
So like the
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SPEAKER_00
you might just have to push through a little more discomfort from a physical standpoint compared to if you decided I m gonna do everything I can in these next 24 weeks to be able to run a full 100 miler.
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SPEAKER_01
Would you say it s physical or is it mental discomfort?
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, isn t everything physically uncomfortable?
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SPEAKER_01
Like what do you train for if you re training for the chaos of, it s not necessarily the 100 miles, it s the chaos of the unexpected, which might include 100 miles, but it might also include a thousand pushups in my case.
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SPEAKER_00
So like- You need a big jack of all trades is what you need to be.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but also like building up the confidence.
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SPEAKER_01
or maybe not, I don t know, how do you survive a thousand pushups?
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SPEAKER_01
It s a combination of confidence that you have to know that you can do that kind of thing, not necessarily the actual number, but like doing crazy stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
And the second is probably, well, okay, the base strength and endurance, and also just the practicing that process of not quitting.
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SPEAKER_01
I feel like that s one of the things I really need to do in the running space.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like doing slightly unpleasant things where I m practicing that, like bringing my mind back and saying, nope, I m going to keep doing it.
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SPEAKER_01
And part of the running every day has that benefit because some days you really don t feel like running.
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SPEAKER_01
And doing that, then you re practicing that muscle of
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SPEAKER_01
I m doing it anyway.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know if there s something you can say in terms of advice, how to practice the like doing something unpleasant every day.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, frequently.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
What I would do with that is I would try to make the unpleasant thing
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be different from one day to the next, if you can.
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SPEAKER_00
So the fear I would have with making running unpleasant every time would be it becomes like a negative feedback loop in your, physiologically, potentially, as well as mentally, where if the entire running process is miserable, you re gonna be miserable when you step on that starting line, whether it s a marathon or 100 miles.
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SPEAKER_00
So.
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SPEAKER_00
You ve trained yourself that running equals miserable.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, and here s the thing, if you look at just, here s where the literature says on paper are the dozen workouts you should do in a training plan, and this is how you should structure them right down to the minute, and you just say, I m gonna give everyone this schedule, and they re gonna do this every time, rinse and repeat.
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SPEAKER_00
My biggest concern with that approach is you are potentially putting them in a position where the training is so boring and so monotonous that
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SPEAKER_00
If they hit a roadblock mentally, they re going to fall apart very quick because they ve already exhausted themselves mentally just trying to do the same old interval every time, doing the same old workout.
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SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t necessarily have to be like,
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SPEAKER_00
one specific plan in its entirety could just be like the mix of things within it.
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SPEAKER_00
So like rather than, like if I just said, oh, we re gonna do three-minute intervals through this entire short interval process, or two-minute intervals, or four-minute intervals, or 60-second intervals, you know, by that sixth week, they might be so sick of that that they re not actually maximizing their potential within that because there s no flavor there.
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SPEAKER_00
And then they re also actually getting less out of themselves than they would if we just got a little more creative and said,
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s mix this up and let s do four one-minute intervals, then take a little bit of a break, and then we ll do three-minute intervals, or at least changing it up from week to week so that they have something different showing up, even though we re addressing the same kind of physiological adaptation.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think what you want to do is you want to introduce the misery.
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SPEAKER_00
You want to be able to test yourself to the degree where you can recognize these points of, I don t want to be here, but I can do it, push through it.
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SPEAKER_00
But recognize that like, there s not necessarily going to be one event that you want to lean on to get that from because you won t want to make that one event so miserable that you don t want to do it when it comes time for the challenge.
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SPEAKER_00
So if you can possibly say like, okay, on Tuesdays, the pushup workout, I m going to go 10 pushups more than I want to, I m going to get to that point where I m like, there s no more and then I m gonna do 10 more.
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SPEAKER_00
And you re going to make that one miserable.
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SPEAKER_00
And then maybe on Thursdays, you decide to do some of those sprints or something at the end where you do a few of them and you re like, OK, this is where I d be comfortable to stop.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, well, I m going to do two more of them because I know I don t want to do two more of them.
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SPEAKER_00
But mix that up, so you re not, so at least you re getting enjoyment from some of it and not just getting complete disgust from the entire process.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s actually quite a lot of ways that I can introduce misery into the pushups and the running, get creative, including, you know, even just like stuff outside of the running, like taking freezing cold showers, those kinds of things, just introducing.
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SPEAKER_01
random kind of chaos into the system.
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SPEAKER_01
Or having conversations with people as an introvert, it s terrifying.
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SPEAKER_01
So I m now starting the training and Zach, you ve been kind enough to also kind of be willing to help me out throughout this process, so I look forward to where that goes, it s kind of fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
On the diet side, one of the many things that make you fascinating is you ve played with diet as well and you re somewhat famous, I would say, for doing low-carb or playing with low-carb or meat-based diets.
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SPEAKER_01
Can you describe the potential, how you re thinking about that has evolved and the potential beneficial role of a carnivore diet or a keto diet or a meat-based diet in training as an ultramarathon runner?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think like where a lot of times things get confusing for people here is the context of it too, where it s like they want an answer as to what do I eat for endurance sport?
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SPEAKER_00
And it s like, well, endurance sport is quite wide ranging, as we ve talked about many times here.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s going to be differences, I think, in just like what you want to maybe necessarily prioritize.
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SPEAKER_00
both for the event you re doing and the intensity that s required for it, the training that s required for that event, and then also the individual component too where I think this one often gets overlooked where we tend to say like, well, we ve got all these Olympic medalists at the marathon and below distance who are
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SPEAKER_00
you know, eating a moderate to high carbohydrate diet.
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SPEAKER_00
So everyone needs to do that if they want to reach their potential in, you know, say the 3k to the marathon.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, in a perfect world, maybe that would be true.
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SPEAKER_00
But there s a lot of other variables that often get forgotten, then that could positively or negatively impact that decision choice.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think Dr. Jeff Volk has done a great job of kind of highlighting this in a sense that, you know, when he works with people, he works with people in the health sphere, as well as the performance sphere.
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SPEAKER_00
And he s one of the main guys at Virta Health who s, they ve got like a 60% success rate with working with folks with type 2 diabetes to reverse their type 2 diabetes.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, that s an astounding, when you think of just any nutritional protocol, its success rate, they re all incredibly low.
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SPEAKER_00
They re very, very low.
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SPEAKER_00
And the big difference with his is the coaching aspect of it, like they give support.
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SPEAKER_00
So these people like have someone to turn to when they make a mistake, or if they re thinking about doing something differently, or they don t know what to do, rather than just kind of throwing, throwing it all up in the air and quitting, they have a resource there.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s probably a big reason why that s the success rate that they have with that is they put those support mechanisms in place.
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SPEAKER_00
That
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SPEAKER_00
picture needs to be carried into the performance world or the running world to where, you know, we may have just been identifying that, you know, Olympic distance athletes that can tolerate a very large portion of their diet come from carbohydrate
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SPEAKER_00
is gonna just, it s gonna filter those ones towards the Olympics.
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SPEAKER_00
Filter those towards the- Yeah, and that doesn t mean that like, if we would have taken, say, the gold medals in the 5K and put them on a low-carb diet, they d run faster.
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SPEAKER_00
They probably wouldn t, because we may have already selected that that person s thriving on carbohydrate.
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SPEAKER_00
What I would be interested in is, let s say we have someone with equal talent, but got weeded out along the way, potentially because, for whatever reason, they just weren t able to tolerate both the training and the nutrition requirements that they re being told to do.
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SPEAKER_01
So the coaches, there s a culture where the coaches would really push a carb-heavy diet, and that in itself would do the filtering process of people that are not, it would filter out the people that are not able to tolerate carbs as part of their training.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I might be an example of this, actually, where you take someone where they, for whatever reason, the carbs aren t working for them, like it s unsustainable for them to continue that path.
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SPEAKER_00
Or if they do, they might have a shortened career.
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SPEAKER_00
So they might be able to eke out a few really good years, but then they re not going to be the person they re like, wow, that person s 38 and they re still competing at the Olympics type of a person.
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SPEAKER_00
And you put them on a low carb diet.
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SPEAKER_00
If you can control everything else, like their entire lifestyle is based around training and racing, then they may still have better potential by introducing carbohydrates at a higher level, but if that s not gonna be sustainable for them as a person, then what s the point kind of at that?
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SPEAKER_00
Unless they wanna be like a kind of a spark in the pan, so to speak.
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SPEAKER_00
I just feel good eating meat performance-wise.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I think there s that group too.
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SPEAKER_00
They may just not be the Olympians.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and so we re not talking, I guess this conversation has several layers.
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SPEAKER_01
One is for the Olympics and one is for like, what is it?
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SPEAKER_01
Active athletes, they re like amateurs, whatever category I put myself into, like people that exercise regularly.
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SPEAKER_01
And then maybe people, and then there s people who like exercise rarely.
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SPEAKER_01
So on all of those fronts, I mean, do you think it s possible to live a happy, active life eating meat only or mostly meat?
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SPEAKER_01
What have you learned about this?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think so for some context, like I followed what I would call a low carbohydrate diet for the last 10 years.
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SPEAKER_00
And just like kind of the training, I periodize it to a degree where there are parts of my training where I do bring back a little more carbohydrate.
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SPEAKER_00
and there s periods of my training, especially like the off season where I m like very low and I might be like kind of in that ballpark of like ketogenic, strict ketogenic or no carbohydrates for periods of time.
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SPEAKER_00
And what kind of food are we talking about?
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SPEAKER_00
What s a strict low carb diet?
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SPEAKER_00
I ve ranged everywhere from mostly plant-based, low-carb keto to mostly animal-based.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve very rarely gone much more than two weeks strict where it s like I m strict carnivore or strict plant-based or anything like that.
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SPEAKER_00
We re talking probably more like 95% at the peak in terms of any type of longer-lasting
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SPEAKER_00
from my personal experience of being either in the animal food camp or the plant-based camp kind of a process.
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SPEAKER_00
So I ve tried all of them, things have stayed consistent over the 10 years as a kind of the macronutrient profile that I ve done throughout the course.
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SPEAKER_00
So one didn t win over the other in terms of meat-based versus plant-based?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, for me, meat-based, definitely.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was my highest meat consumption in 2019, and that was by far my best racing season.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we keep coming back to that year.
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SPEAKER_01
That was a good year for many reasons, philosophically and nutritionally.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, only 2020 happened, and now I haven t had a really good chance to improve.
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SPEAKER_00
We ll see.
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SPEAKER_00
Hopefully I ve got some more in the tank.
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SPEAKER_01
That s strange.
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SPEAKER_01
Most athletes that compete at your level have more carbs integrated into their diets.
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SPEAKER_01
So what have you learned about using meat in high performance?
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SPEAKER_00
I think it s maybe less about the meat and it s more about like, what are you, what is it replacing?
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SPEAKER_00
So if we go, if we step away from like me specifically and just like the people that, cause I mean, we re getting to the point where I get it s anecdotes, but like, like that s what we have at the moment.
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SPEAKER_00
Cause there s, I mean, there is actually a study being done on like, I think, I guess they call it hyper carnivore where they re like,
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SPEAKER_00
I think above 80% of their intake from meat.
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SPEAKER_00
And they re looking at a few different things there.
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SPEAKER_01
It s so weird, and I keep interrupting, but it s so weird that it sounds unhealthy, hyper-carnivore, but it makes me feel really good.
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SPEAKER_01
That s the individual thing, right?
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SPEAKER_00
There s countless people now who, and I m not saying that they could not have found another route, myself included.
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SPEAKER_00
In 2011, when I switched from moderate to high carbohydrate to low carbohydrate and saw some very noticeable differences in the way I felt, the way I performed, and all this stuff, that doesn t mean that there wasn t another path.
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SPEAKER_00
I just did not find that path.
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SPEAKER_00
The fact that I found a path that was producing the results I was looking for is really all that matters in my mind.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t really care if there was a parallel path that works just as well or something like that.
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SPEAKER_00
Ultimately, we only have one shot at everything we re doing.
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SPEAKER_00
It d be great if I could go back and try four or five different things.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, the annoying thing is that the body adjusts to whatever the heck you re doing, so it s hard to do good science even on yourself.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ve referenced my 2019 racing season a few times, and it s like it d be silly for me to put all of the emphasis on my nutrition plan for that, because it also comes with two decades of endurance training.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s possible, and it s very likely, that a huge portion of that success was just the culmination of a lot of work over time from the training side of things.
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SPEAKER_00
I just think anytime you hyper-focus on one area or pick a couple variables and just target those, you find yourself in a position where you re putting other things in the most uncharitable light possible.
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SPEAKER_00
So then you have this situation where it s actually a combination of a variety of different things.
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SPEAKER_00
So where are the big movers?
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SPEAKER_00
And for me, nutritional shift was pretty clear that that improved my sleep and my recovery.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, people can say, well, there s the placebo effect, which is a very real concern.
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SPEAKER_00
But for me personally, a 10 year placebo effect would be a quite lengthy placebo effect.
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SPEAKER_00
And I do think it s individual though.
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SPEAKER_00
I emphasize that a lot because I mean, I ve worked with tons of people with this and I do see a range from person to person.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve worked with people who come to me and they re like strict keto and we raise up their carbohydrates a bit.
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SPEAKER_00
And they re like, okay, I feel way better doing it this way.
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SPEAKER_00
And I ve worked with people who they come to me, moderate carbohydrate, but they re interested enough.
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SPEAKER_00
They want to try a lower carb, so we titrate them down.
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SPEAKER_00
And I ve had clients where I m like, OK, I m going to give them this workout, and they re going to wish they brought back a little bit of carbohydrate.
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SPEAKER_00
And then they go and they nail the workout, and I m just like baffled.
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SPEAKER_00
Because they re different from me.
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SPEAKER_00
And every time, when you have your own personal experience,
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SPEAKER_00
the first guttural response is, oh, if I had done it, it would have gone this way.
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SPEAKER_00
Why did it go the complete opposite way for them?
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SPEAKER_00
And you have to just step out of your own perspective a bit and say, OK, well, they re different.
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SPEAKER_00
For whatever reason, they re getting along like this.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve had several moments in my life where you realize,
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SPEAKER_01
the body is weird and it s weirder than the average advice.
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SPEAKER_01
Like one of them is how well I perform for my own standards when I fast.
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SPEAKER_01
First of all, intellectually, but that s more known and understandable, but like physically.
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SPEAKER_01
The fact that I could train, like not eat 20 hours, 24 hours, and then do a hard like jujitsu session for like two hours, like hard.
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SPEAKER_01
It s incredible to me, like this makes no sense.
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SPEAKER_01
Cause I used to eat like many times a day.
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SPEAKER_01
Of course you have to eat, like you don t want to eat too close to the training session was my thinking, but you definitely need to load up on carbs like three hours before, like in order to have enough energy.
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SPEAKER_01
The fact that I could not eat and have like incredible focus, but also athleticism, like both.
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SPEAKER_01
Endurance and explosive.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean jujitsu is a special thing.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like more like chess.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s not like powerlifting No, not powerlifting Olympic lifting where it s like true explosiveness, but that s fascinating and makes me wonder like what other things are there to to to discover about yourself the the annoying thing about food is it s delicious and
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SPEAKER_01
And so it s hard to do good science on yourself, like to do, you know, for two weeks or a month to do like strict no carbs.
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SPEAKER_01
And then maybe next month you add 20 grams or 40 grams of carbs and see how you actually feel.
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SPEAKER_01
Not like in that moment, but over a period of several weeks.
5
SPEAKER_01
and then doing everything else right based on best available science, like with electrolytes and the vitamins, but then also remove all the humans from your life that affect you positively or negatively, because you might feel amazing because you re hanging out with cool people, and then removing basically all the variables.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of fascinating and you kind of, all of us land in a place where we find something that worked for us and then we maybe use some of the placebo effect to help us out, to stick in that place.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I suppose that s the way to live life.
5
SPEAKER_01
I guess it s possible to find the optimal for any of us, but carnivore is an interesting new kind of caveat, a new challenge to the nutritional community because more and more people seem to be doing well under carnivore.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, the nutrition community is probably like, we just got done dealing with the vegans.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now we got this opposite end of the spectrum coming at us.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think, well, I mean, what this all tells me is there is, for one, in our food environment, the failure rate of any one approach at a population level is going to be incredibly high.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s why we have, what is it, like 88% of the population has some sort of metabolic syndrome.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s like, you know, it s because there s an endless quantity of everything that you can get your hands on for relatively cheap.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think that presents a problem if your mindset is going to be, we need this set of parameters for nutrition and everyone needs to adhere to that or you re wrong.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, well, tell that to the person who like went carnivore and cleared up some like crazy skin ailment or something like that.
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SPEAKER_01
That s a weird one.
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SPEAKER_01
Like where the carnivore seems to treat like depression.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like mental stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
It s fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
There s all these stories.
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SPEAKER_00
Again, it s anecdotes, but it s like- The mental one I think may, I m stepping out a bit on a limb here, but I wanna say like some of the research of Dominic D Agostino and Jeff Volokh was looking at the ketogenic diet, which,
6
SPEAKER_00
A carnivore diet is basically going to be a part of a ketogenic.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, you could always go like way too high on the protein, I guess.
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SPEAKER_00
But most people that I see doing carnivore, they re cognizant enough that at least if they re doing it for therapeutic reasons, they re not going like, you know, 50% protein, 50.
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SPEAKER_00
They re more like 70, 30, 80, 20, something like that.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think like you do see some work with like the brain and so the mental stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
I know some of the, I m not sure if this was part of the DARPA funding that Dr. Dominic D Agostino had where they were looking at things like mental stuff, like post-traumatic stress disorder and that sort of stuff with like a strict ketogenic diet.
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SPEAKER_00
So I wonder if some of that, like the depression related stuff has to do with that where now like their body is just fueling their brain differently than maybe they were in the past.
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SPEAKER_00
That s just, you know, wild guesses on my part.
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SPEAKER_00
And I m deviating from the conversation, but like.
6
SPEAKER_01
No, that s brilliant.
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SPEAKER_01
In terms of your own story on food, can you say something?
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SPEAKER_01
I think we were kind of referring to diet broadly.
6
SPEAKER_01
Can you say something about how you like to fuel your, like, whether it s race or great training sessions, like maybe the day before, let s go even that far, during, and maybe a few hours after.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, it ll be a little different for racing than it will be for like a big workout, just because the interesting thing about ultra running is just like you never do the race even like most endurance races, you re going to cover the distance, you re going to replicate the race almost up to it in training, whereas with 100 miles, you can t, you might replicate a third of it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, so I ll do a walk you through kind of my approach for for like 100 mile race.
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SPEAKER_00
And I can tell you maybe what I would do differently on like a training day.
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SPEAKER_00
But yeah, so for where the community is in agreement is that you do want to be very good at burning fat for ultra marathons.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s just like the intensity is low.
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SPEAKER_00
If your ratios are skewed very high towards carbohydrate metabolism, then you re going to have to defend your muscle glycogen through tons of carbohydrate consumption.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s just going to be very hard to do over the course of an entire day, even at low intensities.
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SPEAKER_00
So, it s a fuel tank thing.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s like your leanest endurance athletes have way more fat than they do glycogen stores.
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SPEAKER_00
When you re doing low intensity performance, you want to be burning high levels of fat and sparing that muscle glycogen.
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SPEAKER_00
What I tend to do is I want to start the race burning really high levels of fat.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, I m going to – I ll maybe have some carbohydrate the night before for dinner, but then I m going to lean into the overnight fast.
6
SPEAKER_00
breakfast the morning of I m gonna stay away from carbohydrates for a hundred mile or anyway, and I m gonna have something like Something that s pretty like the high energy low Volume so like I ll do like an s fuels life bar.
6
SPEAKER_01
They ve got like what s in an s fuel life bar Are we talking about carbs?
6
SPEAKER_01
We re talking about protein fat and protein fat protein bar and it makes us awesome Yeah, so it s that it s not as low carb.
6
SPEAKER_01
I
6
SPEAKER_00
Yep, mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they make, Espiels makes a whole product line that s like kind of positioned for a low-carb athlete.
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SPEAKER_00
So they have some products on their lineup that offer some carbohydrate, which is perfect for me because I do introduce some carbohydrate on racing and some of my bigger training sessions and things.
6
SPEAKER_00
But the majority of their products are low-carb.
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SPEAKER_00
So like they have like, you know how you get like the powders that you put into like your drinks that are like high-carbohydrate, you know, sports products.
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SPEAKER_00
They make a version of that that s like fat-based.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, cool, that you can mix in with water?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yep, mm-hmm.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cool.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so they ve got like a creamer version and then a fruity flavored version, so you can replicate the taste and the feel of drinking like a sports drink.
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SPEAKER_00
Science is awesome.
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SPEAKER_00
I know it is.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, and that s so much of it too, because people are always like, well, I don t know, I just like to have my Gatorade or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like, well, you can have it now, it just, it won t have all that.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you can bring that kind of thing with you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I m leaning on a lot of those liquid calories, those low volume, high energy fat protein stuff the morning of so that when I start the race, my body is going to be encouraged to start out burning high levels of fat.
6
SPEAKER_00
Once I get going, probably about 45 minutes in, I ll start introducing small amounts of carbohydrate.
6
SPEAKER_00
At that point, my body is revving pretty high fat metabolism.
6
SPEAKER_00
And by introducing some carbohydrate in the context of the, you know, let s say my hundred mile personal record, you know, I m running approximately nine miles every hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I m probably going through about a thousand calories in an hour s time.
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SPEAKER_00
I m gonna start just like defending muscle glycogen by burning super high levels of fat.
6
SPEAKER_00
At the heart rate I would do for that, I m probably burning somewhere between 80, 90% fat.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, 12 hours of that, you can chip away at your muscle glycogen to the point where you don t necessarily wanna go zero carb.
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SPEAKER_00
So I m basically just trying to defend what I know I m gonna be burning from the carbohydrate side of that 80 to 90% fat.
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SPEAKER_00
10 to 20% carbohydrate by taking in like, usually, I ve gone as low as about 15 grams of carbohydrate per hour and as high as 40 grams.
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SPEAKER_00
And the reality is somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot.
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SPEAKER_00
But 40, I can get away without any digestion issues.
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SPEAKER_00
So I m not really concerned pushing up to that during a race since I m only concerned about performance on that day.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is it the carbs that s the problem or is it fiber?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, from going above 40 grams?
6
SPEAKER_01
Or just because you mentioned digestion issues.
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SPEAKER_01
Like one of the things for me, like one of the cool things about fatty protein, protein and fat is like my stomach just feels way better.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So like carbs introduce like bloating and just not feeling great.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think the funny thing is like, if you look at the position paper for ultra marathon single day events, and it s, you know, it s very limited in the sense that then it s not anyone s fault.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just we don t have a lot of great research on 100 mile races, it s really hard to study what s going on with someone s running 100 miles.
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SPEAKER_00
But they will say moderate carbohydrate diet is recommended.
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SPEAKER_00
But they ll also say that it s like something like 60% of participants are going to report some sort of like digestion issue during the event.
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SPEAKER_00
So then it kind of becomes an issue of do you want to flip that coin?
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you want to flip that coin?
6
SPEAKER_01
And be the 40%.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly.
6
SPEAKER_00
So for me, what I found is like, I can push up to 40 grams without getting any digestion issues.
6
SPEAKER_00
Do I need 40 grams?
6
SPEAKER_00
Probably not, at least not based on kind of the numbers that would be like, that I would see on like, if I went and actually got like a metabolic heart test or something like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Um, but it s possible.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if I had a really good race that I would get close to burning that per hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
Um, most folks that are following a moderate high carbohydrate diet are going to be recommended to like 50 to 70 grams during a single day ultra marathon events.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you ll see some, you know, some recommendations of up to like 100 grams, uh, not so much for ultra marathons, but just in general, from like a performance standpoint, which
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s one of those things where it s application versus what you can do in a lab for one hour is gonna be a lot different, especially when you re stretching out distances well past that.
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SPEAKER_00
I m diverting a little here, but there s an approach of training your gut so you can be able to tolerate that much carbohydrate, which you can do, and you may have to if you re gonna follow a high-carbohydrate diet.
6
SPEAKER_00
But again, we go back to that practicality standpoint of,
6
SPEAKER_00
If you re a professional Olympian who s living and breathing performance and you re burning two to three times your resting metabolic rate on some days, you may be able to actually consume 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour during your training sessions and just barely stay on top of your nutritional needs.
6
SPEAKER_00
Most people who are running ultra marathons aren t gonna be probably training much past 10 hours per week.
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SPEAKER_00
and they re probably not gonna have the, I ll call it their dietary budget to tolerate 100 grams of carbohydrate consumption during their workouts and still be able to stay healthy.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so I think that s kind of like a bit of a non-starter for the majority of people, unless we wanna talk about like a tiny percentage of the 1% of top performers.
6
SPEAKER_01
So maybe you can talk about the training, like fueling yourself during training as well.
6
SPEAKER_01
Is there, and also,
6
SPEAKER_01
as part of that, is it possible to train mostly fasted?
6
SPEAKER_01
Because as a side comment, let me just say, I like, again, not anywhere, not even like one 10th of your level of performance, but you know, I try to push myself and I just feel much better when I m fasted.
6
SPEAKER_01
So water and maybe some salt for longer runs for anything over like 10, 15 miles, but no food.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think, I mean, I like to train on an empty stomach.
6
SPEAKER_00
I do most of my biggest training sessions usually in the morning, and usually what ll determine whether I eat something or not before that is like, how much do I need to eat that day in order to stay on top of it to be able to train again the next day?
6
SPEAKER_00
Gotcha.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, I ll usually do something similar to what I do before a race if I need to kind of stay on top of calories for the day, so I m not like at noon with like no calorie intake and like 5,000 calories to try to consume before I go to bed that night and get out and do the same thing the next day.
6
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I think if I were doing what you re doing, like if that were my lifestyle, I think I would do almost all my runs fasted.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t see why I would be eating a lot before it because it s like I m just introducing something that could
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SPEAKER_00
especially if you re noticing, like here s what I d say.
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SPEAKER_00
If I was doing that and I was like, wow, this run sucks.
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SPEAKER_00
And then I introduced something beforehand and now my run was feeling great and my progress was getting better.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s when I would maybe consider having something before.
6
SPEAKER_00
But if you re running both of those, those like self-experiments, you re noticing, yeah, if I eat something before I go on this workout, the workout s less enjoyable.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m not noticing any increased improvements on it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Again, it s a little messy, like we said before, it s hard to really, you can t go back and try it a different way on that specific day.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I think most people, if they go at it with no bias in the sense that they re trying to make one work versus the other, you can get at least a good enough look at it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if absolute peak performance in one activity, one very specific activity,
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SPEAKER_00
isn t your goal, then it s like, do you really care if one has a 2% performance increase that you won t even probably notice?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because there s other variables that will clearly overpower that 2% one way or the other.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s some benefit in terms of freedom and letting go of having to think about some of these variables.
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SPEAKER_01
I see fasting is, even if it s a hit on the performance, it s worth it to just not think about it.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s some really nice aspect to just putting on shoes
6
SPEAKER_01
not caring like what shorts you wear or like what your outfit is, like not being optimal in every way and just not caring and just enjoying the purity of just running no matter what, just enjoying the natural aspect of life.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a side to me that sometimes just like craves a lifestyle where it s like I have like such a small house and only what I need and just like a handful of food products I know I enjoy and work well for me and I don t even have the distraction of the other stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s almost like a weight that comes off your shoulders when you think, even just thinking about it, it s so simple.
6
SPEAKER_01
So the reason I, I m mostly a minimalist like that, the reason I have stuff is I realize you probably have to fit into society and if you want to have other people in your life, you should probably get used to having stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because most people like stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, there s that side of it too.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s a whole, you don t want to ostracize yourself too much.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I think anything you can kind of like, you can manipulate that a little bit where there s things that are like not specific to, you know, that s gonna negatively impact the people around you or your experiences with them.
6
SPEAKER_00
So there s a balance like everything, I guess.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, that s why I drink, I think I mentioned to you offline, I drink vodka, whiskey.
6
SPEAKER_01
sort of alcohol, because I don t feel good about it the day after, or sometimes multiple days after.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I know it s not good for me.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I do a lot of stuff that s good for me, everything we talked about, exercise and diet and all those kinds of things.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the alcohol almost symbolizes
6
SPEAKER_01
embracing the chaos of life, the wild and the amazing things that could happen.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s really important because if you optimize everything about life, then you re going to miss most of the fun stuff that happens in life.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s not all about the optimization, it s some of it.
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SPEAKER_01
Like everyone has different things on how they introduce that chaos in a controlled way.
6
SPEAKER_01
For me, alcohol is that, because I m okay drinking not too much, so I can control that aspect.
6
SPEAKER_01
Even though it s unhealthy, it introduces just the right amount of fun.
6
SPEAKER_00
I embrace it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, it is one of those things where it s like, I m going to benefit now and pay later a little bit to where like, and hey, if you go and you, you go out with some friends and drink and you have memories that last a lifetime from that experience and you paid for it for a couple of days after then, Hey, maybe that s a fair trade off from a life experience.
6
SPEAKER_01
And part of the vodka thing is I need to honor my ancestors.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, you have to, you know, you can t, you can t turn your back on your past.
6
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask about the 100 mile world record on the treadmill.
6
SPEAKER_01
So for most people, running on a treadmill is really boring.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that s kind of their experience of it.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s probably the first thing they would say, that seems like really boring to run 100 miles on a treadmill.
6
SPEAKER_01
Would you say it s boring?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like what were some places your mind went to make that happen?
6
SPEAKER_00
So this one is interesting to me because I definitely recognized the boredom and the difference.
6
SPEAKER_00
The question I can t quite answer, I think, with it is, could I have remedied that with better preparation?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because the scenario that put me on a treadmill for 100 miles was, it was March 2020, basically the cascade of every race on the planet got canceled.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was in a position where I was going to be doing a runnable 100 miler
6
SPEAKER_00
uh, on a track in mid to late April.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I had, like, the majority of my training under my belt.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I was, like, kind of putting the finishing touches on that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, oh, great, here we are.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, what do I do with this fitness?
6
SPEAKER_00
Do I just scale back and hope the events come back in the fall and then peak again?
6
SPEAKER_00
Or do I find something to use this fitness for?
6
SPEAKER_00
And the treadmill was the closest thing to what I had been training for in terms of just, like, a mechanical, like, flat running, essentially, that I could think of.
6
SPEAKER_00
And my thought was, okay, well, I ll just livestream myself on a treadmill and see what happens.
6
SPEAKER_00
It ended up turning into quite a big event, but.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you don t usually incorporate treadmill running into your training?
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t not incorporate it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just don t incorporate it in the way that would be necessarily conducive to dealing with the mental aspects of being on a treadmill for 100 miles.
6
SPEAKER_00
Was it that different than running on a track?
6
SPEAKER_00
It was from the sense that, here s the way I describe it, is when I m on a track, it s a controlled environment and everything can be very uniform, but there are tiny little micro adjustments in pace that I m doing subconsciously that give me the sense of control.
6
SPEAKER_00
I might run the exact same split, but there s like a fraction of a second or a fraction of a second faster than a fraction of a second slower that equals the same outcome.
6
SPEAKER_00
It gives you that sense of control.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re determining how fast you re going.
6
SPEAKER_00
on a treadmill, you re responding to the belt.
6
SPEAKER_00
So the advantage is you can set a pace and know you re hitting it.
6
SPEAKER_00
The disadvantage is you re being told what to do by that machine.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that gets very frustrating.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve felt like I wanted to step off like you get to like, certain points where you re just like, let s fast
6
SPEAKER_00
Like even stepping off, what I noticed, I learned this on the day of actually, I noticed there s something where it didn t really matter how long I get off.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like I get off to use the bathroom, and that was a little bit of a longer break.
6
SPEAKER_00
Then I had like a hiccup during my event where we ran so much power through one end of the house that the screen on the treadmill was blacking out.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I ended up jumping back and forth on treadmills for quite a bit in the beginning.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I noticed even
6
SPEAKER_00
turning it off, stepping over and starting the other one up, gave me like, you know, a handful of seconds between, was enough of a mental break of just like that release of being told what to do to reset.
6
SPEAKER_01
So maybe if you were in the future, you would figure out what exactly, how much is needed to have that mental break.
6
SPEAKER_01
I never actually thought about that.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, obviously for you, but also for people like me, like amateur runners, that that s a source of frustration with the treadmill, that there s sometimes small adjustments in pace that we do running.
6
SPEAKER_01
Not on the treadmill on the ground that feel like essential.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah for that feel just like you said that experience of control like Feeling like you re in control somehow.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s really I Don t know that s somehow liberating in the way that a treadmill can be just the source of frustration
6
SPEAKER_00
The funny thing, though, about the treadmill is I actually like to do faster workouts on the treadmill, like long intervals or something like that, or tempo runs, because for that type of stuff, sometimes for those, I want to release the brainpower required to hit that pace and say, you take care of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And for that, it s fun.
6
SPEAKER_00
But those are over quick, so you don t really run into the times.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s fascinating, for precise control of pace.
6
SPEAKER_01
You ve also, during that stream, got to interact with one of the greatest athletes of all time, Bert Kreischer.
6
SPEAKER_01
He s actually doing, I don t know if you re paying attention to this, but I guess he has a goal of running 2,000 miles this year.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve gotten a chance to talk to Joe Rogan yesterday about this, which is fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think he s a little bit doubtful of
6
SPEAKER_01
of Burt s ability to be the ultra performer that he so naturally is.
7
SPEAKER_00
What s your thoughts about Bert as a runner?
7
SPEAKER_00
What s your advice to him?
7
SPEAKER_00
And what was your interaction like as part of this treadmill challenge with him?
7
SPEAKER_01
I love Bert because he s such a nice person.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, as a guy who s just accelerated in popularity over the last few years, like he is like super kind.
7
SPEAKER_01
So for folks who are curious, like I ve met Bert a couple of years earlier and I just randomly asked him like, hey, I m doing this live stream thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
We re doing it for Fight for the Forgotten.
7
SPEAKER_01
We re trying to raise some funds for them.
7
SPEAKER_01
Would you want to come on the live stream for a bit?
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SPEAKER_01
And I thought maybe he d come off like five or 10 minutes.
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SPEAKER_01
And I thought that d be amazing if he did that.
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SPEAKER_01
He ended up coming on for like over an hour.
7
SPEAKER_01
He went past his slot, sat in the next slot and just started talking with some of the other guests.
7
SPEAKER_01
Bert is definitely like, I feel like he s as unchanged from like his popularity as one can get away with.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it s just like his lifestyle I think is very unpredictable in the sense that like
7
SPEAKER_01
if he wants to run X time for a specific race, that s gonna pull away from his lifestyle so much to focus on that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Luckily for him, he s actually a great athlete.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s under that layer of- Of fat, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
So for people who are not familiar, Burr Kresh is a comedian who takes off his shirt often, has a elegant layer of fat around him.
7
SPEAKER_00
He s also a party animal.
7
SPEAKER_00
So he s a weird balance of like healthy and unhealthy.
7
SPEAKER_00
So he drinks a lot during, I think there s some debate about that, but certainly after his performances, but at the same time he s into kind of the running thing, and he does quite a bit of treadmill running I think.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, and like I said, has this challenge of running 2,000 miles this year.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s fascinating to have somebody who so fully embraces life and the full joys of life as represented by the
7
SPEAKER_00
huge amounts of drinking and partying and just being a wild man, but also at the same time, like being at least curious about this challenging yourself in the physical realm.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of fascinating.
7
SPEAKER_00
It reminds me of one of my favorite comedians, like Eddie Izzard, who has been doing those challenges basically off the couch, just running a marathon a day kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s fascinating.
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SPEAKER_00
to see the purity of those challenges when like exercise hasn t necessarily been deeply ingrained in your life and you kind of just embrace the challenge anyway and take it on.
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And that s another way of looking at it.
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Cause we ve been talking about running as a,
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a performance optimization thing where training is such a huge part of this process.
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Race day is just the cherry on top.
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But there s, for some people, where the race is the cake.
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It s like they just take it on as a pure challenge, as the thing you haven t really trained for, as the thing you don t understand the intricacies of, but you take it on anyway.
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And that reveals something about the human spirit as well.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and there s definitely like a switch that flips when you, in your mind, decide I m gonna do this, where then all of a sudden it goes from like, you stop thinking about, oh, that s not possible, to like, well, I m just gonna do it.
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And I think Bert highlights that perfectly in a lot of cases where like, he s maybe not even thinking it through enough to get to the point where it s like, he gets to the point where he thinks this is not possible, where most people would look at it and think, huh, I don t know if I can actually physically accomplish that task.
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Bert s just like, oh yeah, I m gonna do it.
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And my thought with Bert was the 2,000 mile thing is, are we gonna find him at the end of the year with like 36 hours to go on 100 miles and he s gonna- That s right, that s right.
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That s what s gonna happen.
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And it s going to be hilarious.
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So speaking of things that are insane and like taking on challenges that don t seem like you didn t think through,
7
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You re thinking about running across the country in a challenge you call the Transcontinental Run.
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Can you describe this challenge and what the heck you re thinking?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, so this is one thing that is exciting about ultramarathons.
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I think in a lot of places, especially early in someone s ultramarathon adventure, if they decide to do that as a part of their life, is you have these early years where you re doing things for the first time.
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And it s so cool and scary at the same time to think, today I m going to run 100 miles, and the furthest I ve ever run before is 50, or something like that.
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And you just know you re going to do something that you ve never done before.
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You re going to experience things you would have never been able to predict.
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And it s like this really interesting, unique, like human experience, I think.
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So for me, I ve spent most of my career at this point, like doing, I got through that phase and a lot of the events I m really interested in.
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And then it was like, now let s repeat it and see if we can do it better.
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And you get into that mindset for a while, which is also a fun mindset.
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But there is that kind of like, desire to kind of have that human experience again of like,
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you know, not knowing what could happen, or is this doable type of a thing, but still doing it and figuring it out along the way.
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So I would describe the Transcontinental Project as something like that.
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It s not anything unique to me or anything new.
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There s been a lot of people who ve done it before.
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But essentially, it s a route.
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There s different routes.
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There s one kind of main one that s done for like, that is used as the record route, more or less, that you go from San Francisco to New York.
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And essentially, you live out of an RV while you re running.
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So you run as much as you can during the day, then you go to bed at night, and then you get up and do it again.
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And you re handling all the logistics in the process of trying to make sure you can get up the next day and do again what you did the day before, which is going to be the biggest difference.
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So for me, I ve done all single day ultra marathons where you re going to wring yourself dry.
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at knowing the next day or week or however long you need, you re going to be able to just shut everything down and let everything catch back up.
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Whereas with this, you re doing it again and again and again.
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The record is by a guy named Pete Kostelnik who averaged just over 72 miles a day, finished in 42 days, 6 hours, and 30 minutes.
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Just 72 miles, 73 miles, and then next day again.
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next day again, just knowing every day when you finish, you spend a whole day running, and then okay, I m gonna go to bed, I m gonna wake up in the morning, I m gonna have to do this again.
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And then, you know, have that happen for six weeks.
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And that s if it goes very well.
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SPEAKER_00
So luck, I assume, is a big part of this.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure.
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I mean, there s just so many variables that are uncontrollable on this type of an experience, just because I mean, you go over the Sierras, maybe you hit a storm, you know, you try to time it, most people do it in September, start in September.
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So you
7
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can get over the mountain passes without a big storm coming through.
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But then also get to the East Coast before it s like the middle of winter.
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So like early September start is kind of ideal.
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But you can.
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I mean, Pete was very fortunate from a weather standpoint.
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I think he made one big mistake.
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He got a little too aggressive in the beginning.
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He had to take a full day off.
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So he actually averaged, from a moving day standpoint, closer to 75 miles per day.
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But yeah, I mean, there s going to be things that I can t prepare for, won t know it s going to happen.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, a lot of that will get a lot of the logistical stuff will get leaned on with the crew.
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So that s I mean, that s the hardest part right now is just like getting all that put together where it s like, OK, I need to have the RV ready.
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I need to have all the stuff.
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I mean, we need to have the places figured out where we re going to stop and and the people that can, you know, dedicate that much time to an activity like that.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, there s a lot of moving parts even before you start the adventure itself.
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SPEAKER_00
So you re taking the San Francisco to New York, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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And when are you doing the run?
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September 1st is when, barring anything catastrophic between now and then.
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This is really exciting.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, this is incredible.
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So you ll probably have a bunch of people just randomly running with you.
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SPEAKER_00
Are people going to be tracking where you re located?
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Yeah, so I ll be documenting everything, because my hope is that I m doing it primarily to raise awareness for Fight for the Forgotten, Justin Wren s charity.
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But with that said, I think I am capable of, if I have a good experience, chasing the record or going after the record, or at least getting close to it, so.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh shit, so you re gonna try to beat this record?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m gonna go out with the, I m gonna structure the process in a way that leaves that door open, is the way I would describe it.
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I m gonna try not to do anything that would potentially
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put it in a situation where that becomes the primary goal, just because I want to make sure that the reason I decided to do in the first place was for fight for the forgotten.
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So I want to make sure that I don t end up two thirds of the way across the country with a broken leg and I m like, Hey, guys, uh, I guess the donation buttons turned off.
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SPEAKER_00
So focus on, like, don t sacrifice that goal.
7
SPEAKER_00
But also there s a community aspect to it that I feel like, are you going to, I mean, so you re going to document and post, but are you going to also, is there a safety perspective here?
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SPEAKER_00
It s like the Forrest Gump thing.
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You might have large numbers of crowds that run along with you for a while.
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Are you worried about that kind of thing?
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I wouldn t say I m worried about it.
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I think there s remote enough spots along the way where you ll get some alone time more likely.
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I don t necessarily mind if people want to jump in.
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There ll be some people that will definitely want to do that and they can come in.
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But the reality is it s probably not going to be a scenario where there s 40 people following me at all times.
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SPEAKER_00
You say that now.
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Yeah, you never know.
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SPEAKER_00
Just wait for this podcast.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then if Joe finds out you re doing this, then we re really in trouble.
7
SPEAKER_00
All right.
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SPEAKER_00
So, I mean, what are the things that you think will be the hardest for you?
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SPEAKER_00
And also, like, how do you train for this kind of thing?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what are the hardest things you anticipate and how do you train for them?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so the way I m looking at this is it s much less about performance from the traditional sense, where I need to be able to be X fit, I think I need to be injury proof.
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That s what s going to be a detriment.
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If you think about it, like, if I managed to average nine minute mile pace,
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for a day, that would be 80 miles in a 12 hour time frame.
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So I ll easily have 12 hours of moving time per day.
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Nine minute pace, I think is slow enough that it s not an unreasonable clip.
7
SPEAKER_01
So like, when you I mean, obviously, there s things that slow you down, or I ll probably take walking breaks, you know, stopping breaks, you got to stay on top of nutrition.
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SPEAKER_01
That s the other big thing to I m, you know, probably eating like anywhere between 10 to 15,000 calories a day, which is,
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I can probably count on my hand a couple of occasions where I ve eaten that much in my life.
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SPEAKER_01
So now I gotta do that for six plus weeks in a row.
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SPEAKER_00
And you don t wanna have any stomach problems.
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Try to minimize the amount of stomach problems.
7
SPEAKER_00
So would you estimate about 12 to 13 to 14 hours of running every day?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s probably like from the first step to the last step, it ll probably be somewhere around like say 14 hours, 13 hours or something like that would be a pretty good estimate.
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SPEAKER_00
And then getting rest.
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SPEAKER_00
And then minimizing the risk of injury, which could be as small as like literally uneven surfaces resulting to like stepping the wrong way.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s gonna be a lot of steps.
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SPEAKER_00
So the probability of injury, are you worried about that kind of stuff?
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SPEAKER_00
Can you strengthen the ankles or those kinds of things that prevent possibility of injury?
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SPEAKER_01
And that s where I m putting a lot of my focus in, is I think just being running fit is gonna be, generally speaking, is gonna be
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Important.
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I m going to I think just from a lifetime of running is going to be a huge advantage.
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SPEAKER_01
A lot of these like kind of like mechanical movements are going to be very established.
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It s just going to be about can I tolerate that volume of it there?
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SPEAKER_01
I think that I m doing more strength work.
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SPEAKER_01
I think this is something where it s like, you know, maybe adding five pounds of lower body muscle is going to be an advantage versus a disadvantage.
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SPEAKER_01
We were looking at power weight ratio because I just really don t.
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I never need to be running a 648 mile for this adventure.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I m looking at that, I m doing a lot more of that stuff, focusing on that.
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The training is changing a fair bit where it s more polarizing versus kind of being, I mean, I ve always had some polarization in my training, but this is even to an extreme where like, I m gonna do some simulations where, you know, I go out and do two or three days where I target the exact thing I will be doing on the Transcon.
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SPEAKER_00
You were on Instagram posting about these simulated runs.
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SPEAKER_00
So you legitimately, like trying to perfectly copy what would happen in one, two, or three day segment on that run?
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Yeah, just to kind of start to weed out where are the potential problems.
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So let s say I do a two or three day simulation where I m averaging 70 miles a day.
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And I find out at the end of three days, there s a really weak spot here.
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I need to address that or I need to find a way to make that not a weak spot.
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I think that s the only way to really
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get as close as you can to avoiding injury.
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SPEAKER_00
Have you done that yet?
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SPEAKER_00
Have you done a two day, 70 mile, like even that s incredibly difficult.
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I haven t yet.
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I m going to build up to it because that s the other thing too is I don t think you want to be so aggressive with that where you get injured trying to figure out how not to get injured.
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SPEAKER_01
What I just started last week is I ve – it looks really weird on my training schedule because like last week I ran almost 150 miles but I took two days off.
7
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It s like usually for me to get to 150 miles, that s a seven-day training week.
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SPEAKER_01
So that s the way I m doing it.
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I did a day where I did two just over 20 milers, separated by just a couple hours, and within that couple hours I did a three mile walk.
7
SPEAKER_01
The following morning I woke up and ran, I think it was just over 36 miles first thing in the morning, just to get an idea of what it s like to be, I mean this was in Phoenix too, so it was 100 degrees for the majority of that.
7
SPEAKER_00
So just suffer, then rest, then suffer again, how that feels.
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there s enough precedent with this sort of an activity where like everyone I ve talked to so far has told me like there is going to be like this kind of like gradual decline in the early stages where you re just like, okay, it s getting worse, it s getting worse, it s getting worse.
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And you hit a point where you re just like,
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it hits kind of rock bottom and then like it starts to kind of gradually improve.
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So you kind of have to let yourself get, it s weird.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I can maybe eliminate, I m trying to find a way to eliminate some of that by doing the simulations.
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SPEAKER_01
Whereas I, from what I ve seen, I haven t seen a lot of people do the simulation route yet.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve seen people just do like a lot of training and then
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say like, okay, I ll spend the first seven to 10 days adapting to this, and then I ll get comfortable within this environment and be fine.
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SPEAKER_01
Whereas I m going to try to get to a point where like, some of that is already kind of cleared up before I start, but not so much that I m like adding like an extra central week to the trip worth of running.
7
SPEAKER_00
What do you think will be the hardest simulator run leading up to like, will you do three days?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think I ll probably try to do three days, somewhere between 70 and 80 miles each will be kind of like the goal.
7
SPEAKER_01
Will that be in August?
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Do you think?
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How close to?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I would like it to be in August, like early August would be ideal.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think like maybe the first week in August, because that gives me kind of three weeks to let things kind of settle down from that.
7
SPEAKER_01
But then… That s crazy.
7
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This is incredible.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s actually interesting because like if I did, let s say I did the simulation now, the problem with that is like the adaptations from just like the breakdown and the strengthening would likely be gone unless I did it again.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I want to inch up to it so that like, and get close enough to the starting date so that I m still kind of like, you know, holding on to that adaptation when I start it.
7
SPEAKER_01
So then those first few days maybe aren t quite as miserable.
7
SPEAKER_00
And you said if everything goes amazing and you re challenging the record, it ll be like a 42-day run.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so that s what the record is, almost exactly six weeks.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s at 72 and a half miles per day, so.
7
SPEAKER_00
Will you be posting online?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Instagram s gonna be a big one.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I might do a few YouTube stuff along the way, too.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m still ironing out exactly how much.
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SPEAKER_01
I think at minimum I ll do some Instagram stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I ll go live on Instagram a few times during the day when I take walking breaks.
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Partly just to kind of, I think keeping people, I mean, it stays true to the goal of raising awareness, but it also,
7
SPEAKER_01
So I find when you bring people in, there is an added pressure to that, but there s also this sense that I ve learned from the treadmill experience, since we had a pretty big production for that, in the sense that, I mean, as much as you can turn on a camera in your own house, but I remember thinking we had 30 people lined up to come in and guest speak during that, and there was points of that where I was like, you get that voice we talked about at the beginning, where it s like,
7
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you could quit.
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you really need to run 100 miles on a treadmill?
7
SPEAKER_01
Is this really going to be valuable for you?
7
SPEAKER_01
And then you think about, oh, you know what?
7
SPEAKER_01
Courtney DeWalter, one of the best female ultra runners to ever exist, is taking 30 minutes to an hour out of her day to come on in two hours to help me
7
SPEAKER_01
you know, amplify this event?
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SPEAKER_01
And do I really want to be sending emails out to these people saying, Hey, guys, I know you were gracious enough to block out time of your day.
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, I think there s a little bit of that to do where you re like, you re, you re, you re jumping in with the community that is following along and saying, here s how things are going, show them the best, the worst and everything in between.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then ultimately have that hold you accountable a little bit too.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like hard to get up in the morning and not go back out.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how you are, but I had to, whenever I did any kind of physical stuff, like the 48 hour challenge or just any kind of running, I hated turning on the camera.
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SPEAKER_00
I hated it.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, cause you have to like smile and be friendly and stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I m just gonna be super miserable if I m miserable.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s it.
7
SPEAKER_00
So like, exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
In some sense, that s what people,
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe we re gonna get a happy Zach or an angry Zach.
7
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, it s like you re making bets.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I m sure there ll be some days, maybe not many, maybe very few, where you re truly happy with yourself.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like for some weird ecstatic reason, maybe if you get over the hump that you mentioned, this dip.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s fascinating how much suffering this actually entails, I wonder.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, and one thing I m going to definitely try to leverage to my advantage, and one of the reasons why I think Fight for the Forgotten was the charity that really triggered me to decide to do this.
7
SPEAKER_01
The transcontinental route was something I learned about early in my ultra running career, and I thought to myself, I want to do that someday, but it was one of those kind of
7
SPEAKER_01
far off distance things that are never really like actualized in your mind until you put a date down or, you know, mention it on the Joe Rogan experience or something like that.
7
SPEAKER_01
But then it s like people want to know when is this happening.
7
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, what I try to think about is, you know, the reason Justin identified the Pygmy tribe was because they were super forgotten where, you know, we think about just like some of these third world countries where
7
SPEAKER_01
It s a scenario of like some people, it s easy for us here in the US to think to ourselves, well, why don t they just industrialize?
8
SPEAKER_00
Why don t they just, like, you know, start to innovate a bit?
8
SPEAKER_00
Why are they so primitive?
8
SPEAKER_00
What s wrong with them?
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SPEAKER_00
And in reality, like, when you take – when you scale things down to the degree where you need the entire day because of the situation you re in just to take care of your basic needs of water and food, you never get the opportunity to even build a real, like, establishment or, you know, build on that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like you need the free time or you need a portion of your population to have the free time available to innovate.
8
SPEAKER_00
And the pygmy tribe just hadn t had that historically.
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SPEAKER_00
In fact, they weren t even considered humans by like the local government for quite some time.
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SPEAKER_00
And, you know, the people that really pay the price in some of these situations are the women because they re the ones that get saddled with like the water gathering and things like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the reason that Justin picked wells to build was because he thought to himself, if we can get them wells,
8
SPEAKER_00
then now these women don t have to spend all day walking and carrying water.
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SPEAKER_00
Now they can just get that water and now we have half the population freed up for other things.
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SPEAKER_00
Now maybe they can start farms.
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SPEAKER_00
They can build some housing and stuff like that and it just – it exponentially improves once you take care of some of those big key early things.
8
SPEAKER_00
So, when I m thinking about like, you know, do I really need to go out here and travel 12 hours a day?
8
SPEAKER_00
My mind s gonna hopefully go to, well, if one of those women woke up in the pygmy tribe one morning and decided, you know what, do I really need to go get water today?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like, well, yeah, you do.
8
SPEAKER_00
You really do have to.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re running for that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and that will give you fuel, hopefully.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, the reality is always there where I don t have to do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, they do have to do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, but I think just keeping that perspective, it puts us back to the beginning where it s – this is one of those situations where I think it s like a no-quit situation.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have to put yourself in a no-quit situation here because it s –
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s just bigger than you.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t wait to see, like, the dark places you go.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s some, yeah, the quit situations.
8
SPEAKER_01
And hopefully we get to have a glimpse of those, because I think those are really inspiring.
8
SPEAKER_01
When somebody is, both gets broken by them, because you know how tough you are, but also is almost broken and overcomes it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s just fascinating stories.
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SPEAKER_01
I can t wait.
8
SPEAKER_01
I know, does Joe know you re doing this, by the way?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I sent him a note a while back, because he was the first spot I mentioned it on, so I think he knows.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure if he s followed along about the exact starting date or not.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, he will know.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is great.
8
SPEAKER_01
You ll probably think you re a crazy MF-er for doing this, but I think you ll love it, and I think I love it, and I think the world will love it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Ridiculous question.
8
SPEAKER_01
Who s the greatest endurance runner or endurance athlete of all time?
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s a good question.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think I d probably go maybe two directions here.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think Heli Ghebrelasi is one of the best, in my opinion, because just, I mean, 27 world records, like not all the different distance, but like breaking and re-breaking and that sort of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he ran,
8
SPEAKER_00
what was it, 203.59 before the shoe technology came in.
8
SPEAKER_00
That is estimated at anywhere between a 2% to 8% performance advantage.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re talking about a two-hour marathon, two, zero, three.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
8
SPEAKER_00
Two-hour, three-minute marathon.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you did that with the old shoe technology, which essentially dates back to anything.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you were a Nike athlete, it could date back to as early as,
8
SPEAKER_00
I think early 2016 is when the first prototype started showing up.
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SPEAKER_00
So if you re before that in your career, you re guaranteed to be using the old shoe technology.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, just the range of it too.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s hard.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s a- Is he a marathon runner purely?
8
SPEAKER_00
No, he did everything.
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SPEAKER_00
That s why I pick him, I think, because he went everywhere, everything from the 800 and is like at a national level.
8
800?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, at a national level.
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SPEAKER_00
He wasn t competing at like Olympics or anything in the 800, but he was mostly like 5K to marathon.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so just incredible.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, I could go a totally different direction too.
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SPEAKER_00
I think like Steve Prefontaine stands out as an American runner just because if you look at it outside of just like performances and stuff like that, I think
8
SPEAKER_00
You can t find an American male runner who probably didn t get some motivation or some catalyst into their running journey from a Prefontaine story.
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SPEAKER_01
What would you say is inspiring about Prefontaine, from the philosophy, from the technique, from his story?
8
SPEAKER_00
I think there s a few things.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s a lot of things, which is why he is who he is.
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SPEAKER_00
One was just his attitude about it, where he wasn t like this picture-esque runner.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, he was obviously talented, but you have the perfect story of he wanted to be good at something.
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SPEAKER_00
Most American kids tried football.
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SPEAKER_00
No hard work was going to get Prefontaine starting in varsity for football.
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SPEAKER_00
He starts running, fell in love with the mile.
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SPEAKER_00
His college coach told him, no, you re not going to be a miler.
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SPEAKER_00
You re going to be a 5K guy.
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SPEAKER_00
And he popularized the 5K in the United States, or the three mile in some cases.
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SPEAKER_00
And the way he would race, I think, is what really made him interesting for folks, where he would
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SPEAKER_00
He was just like all guts runner where he s like, he s like, I mean, one of his famous quotes was like, if you beat me, you re going to have to bleed to do it.
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SPEAKER_00
Cause he s going to be an all guts race and in a sport where it gets very tactical at times, especially at the like Nash or I shouldn t say national, but at the like competition level, the championship level, where it s like kind of more of a sit and kick approach.
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SPEAKER_00
A lot of times where everyone s kind of waiting for someone to make a move, like pre was going to make a move.
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SPEAKER_00
really early.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so this idea of leading from the front, which I guess is tactically really a bad idea.
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SPEAKER_00
From a running a PR standpoint, it s a bad idea in most cases.
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SPEAKER_00
But so race, I guess, is not just about the PR.
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SPEAKER_00
So race winning in a lot of cases, and that s what he thought was going to put him in the best advantage to win.
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SPEAKER_01
I think it s just the run from the front.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, what do you because you mentioned this the 100 mile you ran, you were in second place in the 90s.
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SPEAKER_01
You were able to get to the first place.
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SPEAKER_01
How hard is it to run when you re in first place?
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I think this is really different.
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SPEAKER_00
Some people thrive under it, where it s like for them, like I talked about Jim Walms before, I think he loves being in the front.
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SPEAKER_00
If he s in the front, he loves it.
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SPEAKER_00
That s where he s excited.
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SPEAKER_00
That s where he knows he s doing what he s doing, where he s pushing his limits and things like that.
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SPEAKER_00
Pree was probably the same way.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think there s other folks who are much more comfortable kind of saying, let s let things settle down here a little bit, and then I ll make my move when it s time to make my move.
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SPEAKER_00
Or they think of it as,
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SPEAKER_00
And this is a very important I think lesson for the average ultra runner is just like knowing what you re capable of is going to be an important piece to the puzzle because you can like
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SPEAKER_00
You can try to say, I want to run faster than I m capable of in an early part of a 100 miler, but then you re going to pay for it at the end.
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SPEAKER_00
So really, unless you re trying to go for the win, and that s a tactic that you think is going to produce a win versus trying to run your fastest time, you ve got to run within yourself, within your parameters.
8
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, there s a big question mark about where those parameters are in a lot of cases, which makes ultramarathoning even more interesting, because there s so much unknown about it.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like, well, maybe you can go faster, and we just don t know yet.
8
SPEAKER_01
So there s, in the face of that uncertainty, there s something admirable, like it was with Prefontaine, where you take the risk and run faster than you think you might be able to run in terms of pace that you can hold.
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SPEAKER_01
So push the pace that s possible.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, explore the unknown.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like a pioneer spirit, right?
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SPEAKER_00
The next frontier kind of a thing.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, Prefontaine, also there s other angles with him too, where he was like in the amateur era where to be an Olympian, you couldn t be pro.
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SPEAKER_00
So he s turning down, I mean, the guy was on food stamps and living in a trailer because he wanted to run at the Olympics.
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SPEAKER_00
And there was a lot of like politics involved with not being able to take sponsorship money and things like that, which has changed since then.
8
SPEAKER_00
But so he was huge in the movement for that to kind of like
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SPEAKER_00
have a situation where now, as an athlete, you can finish, in most cases, finish college, sign a big contract with a sponsor, and then also still compete in the Olympic Games and go to the events that are actually ones that are going to likely catapult your career in most of the Olympic distance endurance events.
8
SPEAKER_00
So he just revolutionized the sport.
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SPEAKER_00
And then to add even more flavor to the whole thing, I mean, he died a very premature death.
8
SPEAKER_00
He got in a car accident and died before he would have likely probably medaled at the Olympics.
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SPEAKER_00
And there is a tragedy in the fact that he didn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, he was fourth place at the Olympics the prior, his first go of it.
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SPEAKER_00
And it was kind of one of those things where it s like fourth place at the Olympics is the first man looking out or the first woman looking out.
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SPEAKER_00
And for a guy that had as much hype as him, I think like a medal was something he really wanted to take home with him there.
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SPEAKER_00
And- Especially how that race went.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t know, it s tragic, the whole thing, but that s one of the things that makes Olympics amazing is the tragedy of it.
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SPEAKER_01
Like one race decides the story of a lifetime, which is like,
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s why it s amazing, even if a lot of people get hurt because of it.
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SPEAKER_01
Tragedy makes the triumph special.
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SPEAKER_00
It makes life like a movie almost.
8
SPEAKER_00
If everything s all sunshine and rainbows, then it s not as entertaining to watch.
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SPEAKER_00
There s no adversity to overcome.
8
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned shoe technology.
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SPEAKER_01
How much has shoe technology advanced through the past few decades?
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SPEAKER_01
How much has it changed running generally, but also running like ultramarathon running?
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SPEAKER_00
I would say in ultra running, it s had much of a less of an impact because ultra running is still heavily skewed towards the trails.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the technology, at least from what we know, isn t necessarily translating over to these like massive varied terrain, certainly not the technical terrain and things like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Now on road races, flat stuff, like the track stuff, the roads, the run, I guess, a runnable trail, where it s just like basically crushed limestone, more or less, you definitely get an advantage from it.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s, and essentially what happened is in, this probably dated back actually before 2015,
8
SPEAKER_00
Nike decided their development team was ahead of the curve.
8
SPEAKER_00
They developed this new foam, they call it a Peebok foam, and they realized that when you step down into a shoe, the reason racers a lot of times would wear these flats is because they re trying to take out any of that lost energy into the foam in the shoe.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, this foam that Nike came out with is so good that it actually returns way more energy than the average foam did.
8
SPEAKER_00
To the point where, like, when they test these things on, like, force plate treadmills and things like that, it s, like, depending on the person s gait and some of the things, it s, like, a 2% to 8% improvement in performance.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we ve seen records just…
8
SPEAKER_00
across the board get broken since this came out.
8
SPEAKER_00
All distances?
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SPEAKER_00
Basically, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
I think from at least from the 5k up through the marathon.
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SPEAKER_00
And I mean, we ve seen some insane improvements in the marathon.
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SPEAKER_00
I think like the women s marathon went from what was considered relatively untouchable, like 216 to a 214.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, like it was like 218 was like just world-class.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like if you could run a 218 marathon as a woman, that was like, I mean, it still is to a degree, but then now you have someone run a 214.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like that s a huge jump.
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SPEAKER_01
And you attribute a lot of that to the shoe.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think there s probably other things that come in mind too.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like now that people know there s a performance advantage from a mechanical standpoint, it s also a confidence thing where it s like, oh, now I can probably try going five seconds per mile faster and maybe they could have anyway.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they just, now they think they can, so they are.
8
SPEAKER_00
So there s probably a little bit of that that s just adding to it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you think there s a lot of extra innovation that s still possible?
8
SPEAKER_01
Like what, if you could do this kind of big leap with a little innovation of foam, is there other stuff that you can do or further innovation of materials that make up the foam?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so they can definitely go much more advantage, they put a cap on it, essentially.
8
SPEAKER_00
So there was a there s also a carbon plate element to this too, where they put like this carbon plate in there in between the foam.
8
SPEAKER_00
So like, I believe when when Kipchake broke, well, when they did that, that that kind of the sub two hour project,
8
SPEAKER_00
he actually had on a shoe, if I m not mistaken, that never got to market because they put down some parameters on it before that one came to market, where it was actually stacked up to, I can t remember how many millimeters, it was an insane amount, and they had, I think, maybe even three layer plates in there.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that was a Nike shoe he was wearing?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so what makes it kind of,
8
SPEAKER_00
controversial or difficult is Nike came out with these prototypes.
8
SPEAKER_00
So a prototype, for people who don t understand shoes, like these companies will develop a shoe and it usually takes like somewhere in the neighborhood of like probably 18 months to hit the market.
8
SPEAKER_00
So if you re like a sponsored athlete or work for the company, you can get your hands on these shoes before they actually come to market.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we had an issue, I think, this wasn t necessarily as big of an issue in the ultra-running community, but in the track and field Olympic distance stuff was a big issue because you had Nike athletes having these prototype shoes before anyone could get them, and then you had athletes who were sponsored by these other brands who couldn t wear them even if
8
SPEAKER_00
even when they did come to market.
8
SPEAKER_00
So then we had this like chase to catch up where other companies are starting to make their own version of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And now we re getting to a point where most companies have a version of that shoe.
8
SPEAKER_00
But we had a huge transition phase that impacted the Olympics big time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, here s an example of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
There was an athlete, Kara Goucher.
8
SPEAKER_00
She was a Nike athlete, wasn t when they came out with this shoe.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she ran the Olympic trial marathon and got fourth place, first person out.
8
SPEAKER_00
And two of the people that had her had that shoe on.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she was maybe a minute or two.
8
SPEAKER_00
I d have to look to see exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
But it was within the performance advantage range.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so you could argue that she was the first person in modern running to lose an Olympic spot due to a technological disadvantage.
8
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, I mean, it s kind of profound.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s one of those things where, like,
8
SPEAKER_00
It s, it s a transition, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So there s going to be bumpy road, and there s going to be people that get caught in that transition that it s unfortunate for.
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s also like, you know, once everything does catch up, and every shoe company has a version of this, there s still problems.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, these are incredibly expensive shoes, it s like a $250 shoe.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it s like at what point do you tell like a wealthy family with a high school kid that, you know, you can get that $250 shoe but then you go and this kid s family can barely afford a pair of shoes for them much less a $250 pair of shoes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like where do we draw that line and that sort of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_00
Also just, here s the other big one, two to 8% is a massive range.
8
SPEAKER_00
What if you re on the 2% versus someone s on the 8%?
8
SPEAKER_00
Chances are, if you re blowing a record out of the water, you re probably closer to that high-end percentage versus someone who s maybe getting incremental gains, you re probably closer to that lower end.
8
SPEAKER_00
Is it fair to have a piece of equipment that has that big of a range when we re talking about less than a percent determining these races when all is held constant?
8
SPEAKER_01
Those are fascinating philosophical questions that I think it s nice to solve that for the shoe or to raise those questions for a shoe, because the more complicated place where they will be raised is probably genetics, genetic engineering, all those kinds of things.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you ll get a lot more complicated.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it s nice when you have a particular piece of technology that s just right there, it s a shoe, we can understand it, we can study it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we may be coming on the precipice of like human powered sport performances no longer being something that we like look at as this like pinnacle of like I don t know, maybe entertainment s the wrong word, but like is that a pursuit?
8
SPEAKER_00
you know, do we end up just going a different direction?
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think it s like, it s so hard for us to think about that right now, because it s so part of like the culture and the lifestyle of the average person where like sport is a hobby of theirs, as well as a passion to follow.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, how
8
SPEAKER_00
complicated as it need to get before people lose that interest.
8
SPEAKER_00
And there could be a future where most of the Olympics is eSports.
8
SPEAKER_01
Somebody told me that eSports is in the Olympics.
8
SPEAKER_01
I ve been meaning to look this up, which is, you know, like what video games are in the Olympics?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
It could be as like a trial that they re doing.
8
SPEAKER_01
If this is true, I m trying in real time to look it up, but if there s esports joining Olympics in 2024, wow.
8
SPEAKER_01
So that could be just a, that could be a fun side thing, but it could be a first step into a complete transformation of what sports mean.
8
SPEAKER_01
You can control video games better than you can control for genetics in humans.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, and in reality, we ve been dealing with this problem in other areas, just with the performance enhancing side of things with drugs and all that stuff, too.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that conversation s flared back up with track and field, too, where we are seeing a lot of records get broken.
8
SPEAKER_00
A lot of it probably is to shoot technology.
8
SPEAKER_00
But in 2020, with the COVID stuff, you have all these out-of-competition testing protocols that a lot of these top-tier Olympic athletes are getting to try to
8
SPEAKER_00
eliminate, like, if you just do inter competition testing, like there s potential for people to do things that are going to give them a performance advantage, but not going to show up on that test on the day of or after the race, where now you have these like limitations of being able to test.
8
SPEAKER_00
So do we have a like a group of athletes now who decide, oh, I m not going to get tested in 2020, do the COVID restrictions, is it the time to dope up and then, you know, hit some stride and some records and then taper back off when they get this thing fired back up again.
8
SPEAKER_00
And
8
SPEAKER_00
So there may be some of that as well.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, that s always been an ongoing problem.
8
SPEAKER_01
And- Yeah, but the boost you get from performance enhancing drugs could be tiny relative to the stuff we have in the future.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So you might be the last generation of like natural, unmodified humans that we re running.
8
SPEAKER_01
And who knows, maybe that s already over.
8
SPEAKER_01
Who knows who s modified.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
8
SPEAKER_01
We might be living through that transition to the new Nike shoe, but broadly defined.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you ll be in some sense in the history books as Humans used to run without any modifications used to destroy their body and let it recover and then do it again and they used to be impressed with a with an 11-hour
9
SPEAKER_00
100 mile time when we could do it in under an hour now.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
So, but nevertheless, it is incredible.
9
SPEAKER_00
The four mile, the four minute mile was incredibly impressive.
9
SPEAKER_00
I really love the 11 hour mark for the 100 miler.
9
SPEAKER_00
And the two-hour marathon by most people, for the longest time, was thought to be impossible.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s still people that think it s impossible under certain constraints.
9
SPEAKER_00
So, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, as you mentioned, ran a one hour, 59 minute, 40 second marathon.
9
SPEAKER_00
a marathon, but he had, like you said, the prototype shoes, and he had the pace setters.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how essential that is, but it seems quite essential.
9
SPEAKER_00
Do you think it s possible, first of all, what do you think about that accomplishment?
9
SPEAKER_00
And he is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, marathon runners of all time.
9
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about that accomplishment, and do you think it s possible to run a two-hour marathon without any assistance?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, I think there s no question about it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Regardless of technology, he s world class, if not the best.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think he could go under two—or someone equivalent to him could go under two hours with
9
SPEAKER_01
With the shoe technology, what it ll take is it ll take a fast course, a course that has very few tangents, because turning on a course, they estimate it adds about a percent to the distance.
9
SPEAKER_01
So when we re talking about a marathon, you re getting up to a quarter mile extra running.
9
SPEAKER_01
That alone could potentially put you down near too flat based on what we re seeing.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, Kip Jaggi s got a, was it 20140, I believe is his actual world record where it s actually like, you know, certified.
9
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, he s right on the door knocking, knocking on the door there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the prototype he had, since then, they put in a regulation where you can t stack a shoe for the roads more than 40 millimeters.
9
SPEAKER_01
So you can only have so much of that energy returning foam.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you can only have, I think, one carbon plate in there now.
9
SPEAKER_01
So that puts a little bit of a ceiling on that technological thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
But who knows what else will come out in that.
9
SPEAKER_01
And to be honest, who comes out with it?
9
SPEAKER_01
Because the fact that Nike came out with this technology is the reason why it s being allowed to be used.
9
SPEAKER_01
If it would have been like another running company that came out with it, I m sure the regulations would have been slapped down on it immediately and they would have probably just thrown it out altogether.
9
SPEAKER_01
It would have been-
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, it s it you can go you can go super like, you know, negative with that and say like, hey, like this is like this is terrible or this is like super nefarious when in reality, it s like, you know, you have a company that has, you know, billions of dollars and is interested enough in the sport that otherwise doesn t generate a ton of revenue to, you know, pick up a big tab.
9
SPEAKER_01
and support like track and field and things like that.
9
SPEAKER_01
With that, you want to be the guy who says, yeah, thanks for the millions and millions of dollars, but we re going to – all those years and money you spent on that phone, you wasted it.
9
SPEAKER_01
We re not going to let you use it.
9
SPEAKER_01
But if you re another company who revolutionizes the sport in potentially a negative way, maybe you say no to them.
9
SPEAKER_01
So it gets interesting.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s how it always happens.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s really no way around it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think Phil Mephetone, I think it s him, that he wrote a book about a two-hour marathon.
9
SPEAKER_00
What are the limits?
9
SPEAKER_00
How fast can we run?
9
SPEAKER_00
And I think he puts it like an hour and 42 minutes, something like that, or 40 something minutes.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of an interesting question of what are the limits.
9
SPEAKER_00
Do you think we ll just keep pushing the limits of what humans are capable of in the ultras, in the marathon?
9
SPEAKER_00
Is this just like the way of sport?
9
SPEAKER_01
I think ultra for sure because that is a vastly growing sport and there s a lot of potential for a much bigger pool of talent to pull from that could really push the needle down on some of these performances and things like that.
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SPEAKER_01
especially as it becomes more popular.
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SPEAKER_01
If people start realizing, or I shouldn t say realizing, but if a scenario happens where like, oh, I m one of the best endurance athletes in the world, I make more money running ultra marathons than I do running the marathon.
9
SPEAKER_01
Then, you know, all of a sudden we see every record get broken in a matter of a couple of years.
9
SPEAKER_01
But for the marathon, I mean, you know,
9
SPEAKER_01
It s gonna get faster, I think, but to what degree is so hard to know.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s very hard to know.
9
SPEAKER_00
The one hour and 40 minutes seems like- That s pretty fast.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s very fast.
9
SPEAKER_01
Folks, for some perspective there, the current world record is in the 440s per mile.
9
SPEAKER_01
Per mile.
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SPEAKER_01
Just to add a little flavor to that.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re basically sprinting.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, go out to a track and run one lap as fast as you can
9
SPEAKER_01
And then reflect on what time you get and realize the world record for the marathon is that lap at just over 70 seconds per lap.
9
SPEAKER_01
So a minute and 10, just over that.
9
SPEAKER_01
But you re doing it 26.2 miles.
9
SPEAKER_01
So over a hundred times, it s mind boggling.
9
SPEAKER_00
But watching Elliot Kipchoge just, first of all, he was like smiling at the end of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
So there s an extreme efficiency here too.
9
SPEAKER_00
So he s not, he s able to just find the right way to maximize, yeah, maximize efficiency.
9
SPEAKER_00
It makes it look easy.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s true for basically every Olympic athlete.
9
SPEAKER_00
When you watch gymnasts, they kind of make it look easy.
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SPEAKER_00
But there s like tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours behind that training.
9
SPEAKER_01
Just to be comfortable enough to even attempt some of the moves they do in gymnastics is mind boggling.
9
SPEAKER_00
That one is super awesome because how tragic it is, like one little slip up.
9
SPEAKER_00
Four years of work.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s all gone.
9
SPEAKER_00
Not just four years of work for many of them.
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SPEAKER_00
A lifetime.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like a lifetime of work.
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SPEAKER_00
And they re teenagers.
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SPEAKER_00
And they re teenagers.
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And they re getting dedicated everything to it.
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That s what makes the pursuits of humans so fascinating.
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We kind of talked about this a little bit already, but...
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Is there something that stands out to you as one of the hardest things you ve had to overcome in all the either training or the competing that you ve done?
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Has there been moments that kind of stand out where you re proud of yourself that you were truly tested and you overcame it?
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I think I d be more inclined just because it stands out to me much bigger than any one hard decision or outcome I had from a particular race is just the trajectory of doing what I m doing now is so much different from what I would have ever expected.
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a talented enough runner where I can make the state meet by my senior year at a small division three school and compete at a division three college and be pretty modest talent comparative to my peers at the top level of division three.
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To think that I d be doing anything that was revolved around running as an occupation is, I still second guess that that s actually occurring, makes me wonder about the whole simulation theory thing.
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It s like, who s got my joystick and what am I doing with it?
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I went to school to be a teacher and I really loved that profession.
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I taught for about five years and then I got to a point where some of it s just perfect timing too, like the sport gained enough popularity where there s enough money in it where I could start a coaching business.
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I could get sponsorships and things like that and actually look at it and say financially I can make a go of this or at least risk it.
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There s such a fine line between deciding to do that or kind of staying comfortable because, I mean, I was at the perfect teaching spot for me.
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I was at this project-based learning school just outside of Madison, Wisconsin.
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Loved it.
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One of the hardest decisions in my life to make was to step away from that, to pursue running more holistically.
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And I mean, I almost didn t.
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I had a co-teacher who was, I was thinking to myself, I knew that it was a decision I was going to have to make in the next few years, but it was such an easy decision to say, well,
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wait one more year.
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And he was just like, he was a little more of a free spirit than I was certainly at the time.
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He s like, dude, what are you waiting for?
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Just go.
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Why are you here?
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Like after I told him that, like every time I d come into school the next day and he d be like, why are you still here?
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But I mean, that was, there s a tongue in cheek for sure.
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But it s hard to know that you re gonna be successful in that kind of leap given your like,
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you know, because it s easier when you re like an ultra performer early on, but to have the faith that you can accomplish something.
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In some regards, it s a blessing in the sense that like, you know, failing would have been fairly predictable.
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Right.
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Whereas if like, you know, I always wonder, I mean, I think of these like, especially the big sports like baseball, football and basketball and,
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You get guys and girls who are identified in early high school as being the next.
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And it s like, what kind of pressure is that to think like, well, if I m not literally one of the best players in the NBA in 10 years, I failed.
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It s just mind boggling to think if I m not one of the best at one of the most competitive sports on the planet in what is an athletic, I think an athletic state of an NBA basketball player is probably one of the most athletic human beings on the planet.
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And to know like in a teenage year that your success bar is being the best, one of the best in the league or the best ever and that conversation is floating around everywhere you look and see versus,
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being able to kind of quietly fail and go back to teaching.
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It makes it a little more digestible, I think.
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You have a little bit more freedom to be great, because nobody s expecting you to be great.
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Is there, from that, is there advice you can give to young people today, high schoolers, college students, taking on, trying to figure out their career, trying to figure out their life, advice on how to succeed in either?
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Yeah, I think one thing I was always interested in when I was teaching was you d have students who had interests, they had what they were good at, and sometimes those ran in unison with one another, other times they didn t.
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It was always interesting to me when you d have a student who s like, I m really into guitar or I m really into skateboarding or something like that, where it s like,
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pretty small success rate on that avenue versus what you can maybe accomplish by focusing on just something like a little more standard.
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And I think really, besides the likelihood of it becoming something you can turn into a profession or not, you should just ask yourself, is this something that I want to spend my free time doing?
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If it is, then you want to keep that in your life because that s something that s rewarding, motivating.
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It might be the catalyst that gets you out of bed in the morning and go to another job in order to go do that thing afterwards.
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I think nowadays, we re getting to a point where…
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your reachability from even a really small, unmonetized thing previously is now an option where if you live in a city where there s only two other people interested in your topic of area, so you re not gonna be able to turn into a job now with the internet, you have the world at your disposal, so that two to three people in every town can turn into thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of people, and if you really focus your time and energy into that thing,
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who knows where you can go and how much more enjoyable your life can be if you re able to turn your career into a passion of yours.
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So I think that is something I would tell people, focus on that.
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See the thing you re good at and it kind of sparks that flame and go with that, even if society doesn t really want you to.
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Like it s non-traditional and the odds are low of like traditionally defined success.
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Just do that thing.
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I ve struggled with that.
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It s like, it was always clear, especially like in school, there s stuff I m actually good at and stuff that the world wants me to do.
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And I kept doing that.
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The world wanted me to be a plumber when I took that test my sophomore year.
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But even like academically, just going to university and academia, there are certain ways, even in, I would say, even in the thing you want to do, the way you do that thing, the world will want you to do it a certain way.
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And even just like finding your way of doing that thing is really powerful.
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Like for me, the way I do research, the way I learn is different than colleagues of mine.
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And I realized that I really like to follow things I m passionate about versus sort of the rigor of studying like the fundamentals all across the board and building up and castle.
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on the fundamentals, like layer upon layer.
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There s a bunch of details in the way I pursue the very thing that I currently do that s different than others.
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And it took me quite a long time to accept, you don t need to do it the way everyone else is doing it.
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Not everyone else, but majority of people are telling you to do it.
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Because one, it s beneficial to do it different, because then you ll more likely stand out.
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And two, why the hell are you doing it the way it s not working for you?
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Yeah.
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You know, I saw that.
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All the time when I was teaching, I was dual certified.
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My certifications were in history and broadfield social studies, so like econ, psychology, history, all that stuff.
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And then I also had a certification of special education, which was, you know, people think of special education a lot of times as like, oh, it s the kid who is not smart enough to do the regular thing, when in reality, it s like,
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I mean, there is some, you know, there s obviously like, you know, like certain things like down syndrome and stuff like that.
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But like, there s also like a huge population of groups of both like gifted and talented on one end of the spectrum where they re incredibly smart.
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And they re like the geniuses.
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But for
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for whatever reason, the standard method of learning does not click with them, does not work with them, and then they just need a slightly different path, or maybe a drastically different path, and they re gonna just flourish.
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And you have kids that end up falling on the other end where maybe it s really difficult for them to be able to read at the speed of other students, but if you give them this specific direction, they can just thrive in a certain area.
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And just seeing that, like,
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the, you know, that there s multiple ways to do stuff and there s not necessarily one path to the end is, I think, such an eye-opening thing to learn, especially if you learn – maybe that s what I should answer the question that you asked me with is, you know, keep an open mind as to what paths are forward and know that, you know, maybe just because – even if you look to your left and you look to your right and all your classmates are successful doing it one way, it doesn t necessarily mean that s going to be the way for you.
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Yeah, so that could land you in eating a meat-based diet running across the country.
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Like the incredible madman that you are, Zach.
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I m a huge fan, as I ve told you many times.
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You re an inspiration to many.
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I ll be there checking in every day if you somehow make it out the starting line of September 1st.
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I know Joe Rogan and millions of others will be as well, so I m excited to see all the suffering that you re gonna go through.
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I wish you the best of luck, and thank you so much for talking today.
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I really, really appreciate it.
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Well, thanks a bunch, Lex.
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It s been an honor to come on your podcast.
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I ve been a fan of it for quite some time.
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And I thought about wearing a white suit, but Michael Malice already took care of that one.
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Well, and I think it would be really good for the ratings of this conversation if you end up dying during that run.
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I ll do my best.
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So everything that could happen, it would be positive for the world.
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So you re saying I should try to average 100 miles a day.
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100 miles.
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Well, I think you re gonna push yourself to, again, it s not the main priority, but trying to beat that record, that s probably gonna take everything you have.
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And that s truly inspiring.
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I wish you the best of luck, man.
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Thanks a bunch.