Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Zach Bitter, ultramarathon runner and coach who held multiple
00:00:05 world records in the 100 mile run and other ultra endurance events. He is currently training for a
00:00:12 run across America, which for now is planned for September this year. Like many of the things Zach
00:00:18 has done in the past, this is a big, fascinating challenge. Quick mention of our sponsors,
00:00:24 Ladder, Valcampo, Noom, and BetterHelp. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:32 As a side note, let me say that Zach has been advising and coaching me on my own
00:00:36 running journey. I want to mention that Zach sent me some running shoes from Ultra,
00:00:41 which I think is a company that sponsors him. When I put those shoes on, I feel like Zach is
00:00:46 watching me, and I get that extra motivation to make him proud. And by that, I mean I want to put
00:00:52 a lot of miles on those shoes. Running is something that has always been difficult for me,
00:00:57 but I love it because it is difficult. The hardest part is I’m left alone with my thoughts
00:01:03 for one or two hours. Some thoughts are dark, like thinking about mortality, my own and that of
00:01:09 others. Some are self critical, like personal weaknesses or dreams not realized. Some are simply
00:01:16 human feelings of loneliness, personal and existential. And yet, there are the moments
00:01:23 during a run when all that fades and I’m left empty of negative thoughts and full of appreciation
00:01:30 for the beauty of experience, of nature, life, the whole thing. This is why I return to running.
00:01:37 Not to get in shape, but to face myself and to run through it. That’s why I’m inspired by people
00:01:43 like Zach and by David Goggins and others like them who seek to find the limits of their body
00:01:50 and mind. This is the Lex Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with Zach Bitter.
00:01:58 Where does your mind go when you’re running an ultra marathon? Are there a lot of positive
00:02:03 thoughts, negative thoughts, demons, inspirational things, maybe no thoughts at all? Yeah, that’s the
00:02:09 really interesting part of the sport, I think, because you can essentially what it is when we’re
00:02:13 looking at like the hundred mile distance or anything that’s like all day long is you’re
00:02:18 going to have the full range of the full spectrum of emotions of mental processes, both kind of
00:02:24 positive, negative and in between. So it almost feels like you’ve lived multiple, multiple lives
00:02:31 or full life, maybe it was way to say it in that one time period. So it’s like a it’s almost like
00:02:36 assimilation of what you may experience in a long period of time in a very condensed period of time.
00:02:40 And I think that’s just a weird mental process to reflect upon. And that’s what kind of draws people
00:02:45 back to it. But I mean, it’s a battle, too, because if you’re looking at it from a performance
00:02:50 standpoint versus an experience, you obviously want to minimize the negative mindset stuff.
00:02:55 You want to try to keep those emotions and those thought processes at a low. And I think when you
00:03:01 can keep yourself from letting those thoughts creep in, they you end up having better races
00:03:08 and it’s it can spiral in either direction. Like I notice like there’s there’s kind of like this
00:03:12 scenario that occurs where in the beginning, like a negative thing creeps in your mind. It’s like
00:03:17 super easy just to slap it down and say, like, get out of here. You know, I did the training,
00:03:21 I’m fit, I’m feeling fresh still. You know, everything’s going well at this point in time.
00:03:26 You get a little further along in the race and you’re starting to feel a bit of the fatigue,
00:03:31 I mean, a little bit of self doubt creeps in. You start asking yourself, well, you know,
00:03:34 maybe I should have done one more long run or did I did I not quite taper long enough? And those
00:03:38 things can kind of spiral into a negative way. And if if you let it keep going, it keeps going
00:03:44 all the way to like, why am I here? Why am I doing this? This is stupid. All the way to like,
00:03:51 there’s another one of these two weeks from now, I’m going to drop out of this one and sign up for
00:03:54 that one instead. And then you just find yourself in the exact same situation. So you kind of have
00:03:59 to go through the process, I think is why I think there’s kind of a I won’t say it’s a rule of thumb
00:04:06 necessarily, but something I think is fairly valuable is if you do a hundred mile or the first
00:04:11 time, make sure you get it done, even if it means like, you know, death marching is what they’ll
00:04:17 call it in the alternate community at the end of the race. Just to say, like, you got that full
00:04:22 experience, you experience the highs, the lows, the full thing, the starting, the crossing the
00:04:26 finish line, that release of emotion when you’re done and all that stuff. So that when you go back
00:04:32 to do it again, you have like a template to build off of, then you know, or you just have some data
00:04:37 to pull from about how your mind is going to work as well as your body so that you can start
00:04:41 practicing Well, what do I have to do to kind of keep my mind from spiraling in a negative direction?
00:04:45 Or how do I catch some positive momentum and kind of keep sending it that way, and things like that.
00:04:51 And that just I think, you just add to that over a career of running them or a series of running
00:04:57 them and it sharpens. It’s kind of like any sport with that where, you know, you always have this
00:05:02 balance between the youthfulness that you may have earlier in your career versus the wise
00:05:07 intelligence that you have maybe near the end of your career. So in terms of wisdom, is there
00:05:11 mechanisms by which you kind of observe the negative thoughts and let them go? So you have
00:05:18 a people like the David Goggins is who kind of this, he seems to almost like separate his mind
00:05:25 into there’s the weak David that he hates. And then there’s this strong, strong one. I mean,
00:05:32 there’s like a very contentious relationship there. So he basically says, like, I refuse to
00:05:38 be that person. And he’s almost like angry at that person. It’s almost like sometimes
00:05:42 literally yelling at that person, the weak version of themselves. And then there’s another more sort
00:05:47 of Sam Harris the approach, which is like, just observe the thought and let it go. Maybe knowing
00:05:56 that this too shall pass, like no matter what it, this moment will not last forever. And kind of
00:06:02 sort of accepting the natural flow of things and taking one step at a time and allowing whatever
00:06:07 the negativity, whatever the pain you’re experiencing just to pass, even if it means a
00:06:12 death march, which one is more effective for you? Which one, like, would you say generally speaking
00:06:18 to the population is more effective? Yeah, that’s a really good question. It’s probably unique to
00:06:24 the individual. I wouldn’t argue that, you know, David is finding success with his approach.
00:06:30 Some may argue it’s an extreme version. You know, Sam has obviously thought about these things and
00:06:37 really probably, you know, I see those guys as kind of two ends of the spectrum in just the
00:06:42 way that they kind of come across in general, where like David’s like really at your kind of
00:06:47 high energy and Sam’s kind of this calming, soft presence and he’s just going to slowly,
00:06:52 methodically lay it all out there. And I think there’s value on in both of those. I think
00:06:57 most people are probably going to get a benefit from pulling some from each. I mean, there’s
00:07:03 times where, where I need a kick in the ass and then it’s like, have the strong Zach, tell the
00:07:08 weak Zach to get moving. But there’s also times where, you know, it’s just like, you know, a
00:07:13 subtle voice entering my head about, you know, I don’t know if I feel quite right now. Should I
00:07:18 maybe pull back on the pace? And I think that little subtle voice is best approached with a
00:07:24 subtle positive voice where it’s more like, okay, well let’s think this through here for a second.
00:07:29 You’re 40 miles into a hundred mile race. You spent four months preparing for it.
00:07:33 Uh, you know, from the workouts you did that you’re ready for this, there really isn’t any
00:07:38 real reason for you to slow down or to fall off your goal or your pace or, you know, reassess
00:07:44 what you’re doing. Let’s just give this another mile or two. And then we can reassess if we need
00:07:50 to, and in order to kind of figure out if I’m doing the right things or not. And I think like
00:07:54 in that situation, um, you definitely probably want to lean more towards the Sam Harris approach
00:08:00 with that because there’s really no reason to, it’s almost like the same thing you see with like
00:08:04 just training and even nutrition to a degree where like some folks, they just want to be like,
00:08:10 kind of like drilled. They want to be like yelled at and said, like, get going, get doing this. And
00:08:15 that helps and that motivates them. That helps them stay accountable. Other people need some
00:08:19 softer love with it where it’s like, you know, this isn’t necessarily your thought, your, your
00:08:24 fault. You were put in this environment that kind of created an atmosphere of lethargy and
00:08:29 lethargy and maybe poor nutritional choices and things like that. And, and like, so, but it’s,
00:08:35 it’s correctable. So we need to, we need to step away from that and we need to kind of start
00:08:39 heading in the direction that we know is going to bear fruit down the road. And that person may
00:08:43 respond better to that. So I think both those guys have great value with their approaches.
00:08:48 They’re just probably polar ends of that, of the spectrum. And I think most people are probably
00:08:52 going to benefit like anything, right? You get the polarizing ones and those are going to work
00:08:56 right for the polarizing people. But then most people are going to fit somewhere in the middle.
00:08:59 So they’re probably going to be able to kind of pull from both of those if they’re able to sit
00:09:03 down and kind of like assess which one’s going to work better in which situation. So the quitting
00:09:08 thing that you mentioned, the, like the final stage, which actually I get to much quicker
00:09:13 than you seem to, which is like, why am I doing this? I get there with basically anything I do.
00:09:19 It’s like, this is, this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done is the feeling I get often.
00:09:26 And then immediately you have these excuses that are like, there’s all these other better things
00:09:30 you should be doing. Or, or the other alternative of that, like you said, I’m not prepared enough
00:09:37 for this moment. I’ll be much more prepared in two weeks for the next event. So like,
00:09:42 why let’s try this again. Let’s start over. Let’s start over in two weeks.
00:09:47 How do you deal with that quit? Like, so maybe do you still go through that process and
00:09:54 and by way of advice for people that are more sort of amateurish like me, how to deal with
00:10:01 that quitting voice? I think a lot of times when the quitting voice kind of comes in,
00:10:06 it, what it does is it kind of just, it comes in with the added disadvantage, I guess,
00:10:13 in this situation of being kind of a narrow scoped view where you’re looking at like,
00:10:19 what it’s doing to you in the moment or how you’re feeling in the moment versus how
00:10:23 are you feeling about the whole process? So one thing that I started doing in 2019, and I think,
00:10:30 I don’t think it’s necessarily, I think, I think, I think this was a big reason why I had one of
00:10:37 my best racing seasons in 2019 that I’d had to that date. It was part of it was I started, I
00:10:43 think, putting a little more emphasis on the big picture versus putting emphasis on like,
00:10:49 this is one opportunity or one day of work. And this is one, one emotional kind of flare up.
00:10:57 But how does that actually relate to my general broader picture? So when I decide to do a race
00:11:03 or an event or something like that, it’s often four, six months out ahead of time,
00:11:08 you’re planning to like kind of do a series of workouts and a flow of things where you’re going
00:11:12 through the process of getting fit, getting ready, preparing for the specifics of the day
00:11:16 and all that stuff. And then you get to the race itself or the event itself. And
00:11:20 it’s very easy to look at that and think that’s an isolation. Like I’m going to run 12 hours today,
00:11:26 or I’m going to run a hundred miles today or whatever it ends up being. And it’s a lot easier
00:11:31 to quit when you think to yourself, I’m 40 miles into a hundred mile race. You know, that’s just a
00:11:38 40 mile run, which sounds kind of silly to most people, but in perspective, then we’re talking
00:11:43 about the ultra marathon running community. You know, it’s a lot easier just to say like, well,
00:11:47 you know, I’ll scrap this 40 miles and try again. It’s a lot harder to say I’m going to scrap the
00:11:52 entire last four months, the entire reason why I was doing it, the countless hours I spent in there.
00:11:58 So I think I just try to reposition it of like, I’m in a bad place right now,
00:12:02 maybe in my head or I’m not, I’m hitting a low point here, but I’m 99% of the way towards the
00:12:08 goal I set out four months ago when I add in all the work I did leading up to that.
00:12:12 So I think it’s important to ask yourself why, because, I mean, there are times when you’re
00:12:18 doing something and you ask yourself why, and you don’t have a good reason. And then maybe it is
00:12:23 advantageous to step back and really reflect on that and decide, is this something I actually want
00:12:27 to invest time and energy into? Because, you know, someone like yourself who is very much
00:12:34 into a variety of different things, it can be easy probably to overextend and get, I mean,
00:12:40 I’m a very curious person. So there’s like a hundred things I would love to do if I wasn’t
00:12:44 doing what I’m doing. And I know how to enjoy all of them. So at a certain point though,
00:12:49 you have to say, okay, which one is going to be the most meaningful for me? And if the answer
00:12:53 keeps coming back to saying, I guess this is still the most meaningful to me out of that
00:12:56 a hundred things that I could otherwise be doing, then I know that I’m in it for the right reason.
00:13:02 Then I just need to identify some of those things like, well, why did this one take the top spot out
00:13:07 of the hundred things that I could have picked from? And keeping like a list of those in your
00:13:11 head so that when you get to that point where you start saying, why am I doing this? Why am I here?
00:13:16 You just have those kind of ready loaded in your head to say, well, I already took inventory on
00:13:20 that before I started this. And I knew this voice was going to come at some point, whether it’s
00:13:23 early, middle or late. And then you just remind yourself kind of what you were thinking when you
00:13:28 had a little more of a level head. Well, there’s something about the thing you mentioned when you
00:13:32 mentioned the death march. It seems extremely valuable to just never quitting. Like in the
00:13:39 moment, if you decide to do something, like never quitting, even if you do go through the process
00:13:47 and realize that it’s not the wisest thing to be doing within the full context of your life.
00:13:53 Like once you decide to do it, it seems like never quitting prevents you from sort of having that
00:14:00 escape clause from other things in your life. So I’ve quit on a few things in my life. And
00:14:06 I think I still, I deeply regret that because it opened that door. It’s almost like a muscle.
00:14:14 I don’t know. So I think I’m, I don’t know, maybe everyone is, but I think I’m kind of a quitter.
00:14:21 You know what I mean? Like I’m really good at coming up with reasons to quit.
00:14:27 My mind is really good at that. And I, it feels like I have to come up with, like really work
00:14:33 hard to make sure that there’s no quit. That I never allow myself to quit no matter how stupid
00:14:39 the thing I’m doing is. I don’t know if that any of that makes sense, but it just, maybe to
00:14:45 rephrase this whole thing. Do you think it’s good to live life by the ethos of never quit?
00:14:52 Yeah, that’s a really interesting thing. And I think it actually resonates with a lot of
00:14:57 ultra marathon runners because there seems to be a trend when you have someone who’s been in the
00:15:03 sport for a long time where there’s a point where they start the sport, right? And they’re like,
00:15:08 super excited about everything. Everything’s new. It’s very easy not to quit because you’re like,
00:15:13 Oh, this is the first time I’ve ever run a 50 case. The first time I ever run a 50 miles,
00:15:16 the first time I ever in a hundred case, first time I ever in a hundred miles and so on and so forth.
00:15:20 And when you’re doing that for the first time, I think there’s a heightened motivation to not quit
00:15:27 because you don’t want your first attempt to be a failure. And then you get a little further along
00:15:34 and you start reflecting on the landscape and all the opportunities that are out there and you find
00:15:38 yourself quitting on an event. And there does seem to be a trend where once you do that once,
00:15:44 now all of a sudden, like you, like you described perfectly that quit pops up in your head maybe a
00:15:50 little sooner than next time or maybe a little bit before. And I’ve certainly had these experiences
00:15:54 in my career as well. And what happens, I think if you stick with it, again, I think it is important
00:16:01 to assess whether you really want to be doing what you’re doing. But if you start recognizing that
00:16:06 about yourself in a certain activity where it’s like, I think I might be pulling the plug early on
00:16:10 some of this stuff. I think you just need to kind of get into a position where you just at that point,
00:16:16 you need to make a decision. Do I want to keep doing this? If the answer is yes, you hold yourself
00:16:20 accountable to not quitting. And eventually what will happen is you’ll find yourself in a position
00:16:25 where I’ll use ultra marathons, for example, where you’re just clicking on all cylinders for that day.
00:16:30 And you still get those scenarios where doubt creeps in your mind. You have these low points,
00:16:35 but for whatever reason, when those low points are high, you’re going to find yourself in a
00:16:39 reason when those low points come, you’re able to push through them better than you would have in
00:16:43 the past. And then you push through maybe two or three more than you did after you had quit the
00:16:48 time before. Then it’s accountability time, right? Because then you have to look back at that and say,
00:16:54 well, why did this time, was I able to be mentally more strong and kind of push through those extra
00:17:02 opportunities to quit when I wasn’t before? And it can be easy to look back and say,
00:17:07 and live kind of retroactively in the sense where you’re regretting, well, why did I drop out of
00:17:12 those races? Why did I do this wrong there? And I just think that’s where you have to kind of
00:17:16 catch yourself and say, no, those things happened to me in order to put me in a position where I
00:17:21 decided, well, this time I’m not going to quit no matter what, minus my leg falling off. I’m not
00:17:27 going to quit. And then you put yourself in a position to have that day where you push through
00:17:31 more times than you ever have before. And you just redefine what you’re capable of. And then once I
00:17:35 think you do that, you start looking at those earlier lessons as, as lessons, you know, were
00:17:41 they failures on paper at the time? Probably. But can you pull things from them to learn as to like,
00:17:47 well, where is your actual threshold? Where is the limit actually for you? And then kind of start
00:17:52 redefining that stuff. Um, so I think like the never quit mentality can be good in certain
00:17:59 situations, but I don’t think it’s necessarily like a, like a holistic thing where you need to be in
00:18:05 something where it’s never quit, always do more. Cause then you end up in a situation where you
00:18:09 find this like margin of diminishing returns, especially when it comes to training and workouts
00:18:13 and things like that, where there are times where often there are times where you want to actually
00:18:18 quit a little bit before you would have to, because the stress that was required to elicit a, a growth
00:18:23 response has already occurred. And then just to do more is just going to require more recovery time
00:18:27 to get back and do it again. Yeah. This is the tricky trade off living by the never quit mentality.
00:18:33 You’re not going to achieve optimal performance in your head. You might.
00:18:39 It seems like when you look at the full arc of human history,
00:18:45 the people who do great things are more leaning towards the never quit. Like, uh, I feel like at
00:18:53 any one moment you’re more in danger of quitting than you are being suboptimal. So like, um, in
00:19:00 terms of advice, it just feels like never quitting is always the right advice. Unless you deeply know
00:19:09 the person, maybe this is like wrestling mentality. I’ve seen too many, and because I’m annoyed with
00:19:15 the current culture telling me to relax and, and, uh, have a work life balance and all those kinds
00:19:19 of things, uh, which all have a deep, deep truth to them. But the reality is like, there’s not enough
00:19:27 people that walk up to me and like slap me and say, get your shit together. Like don’t quit,
00:19:35 work harder. I think we need to hear that more. I, and like, I remember that, um, from the wrestling
00:19:42 rooms, like that when you’re pushed that way, when you’re forced to the very limit and you don’t quit,
00:19:48 that makes better humans. I think people need to get that in their life. I think they need to have
00:19:55 situations where that becomes kind of the reality for them so they can see that avenue, experience
00:20:01 that avenue, um, where I think it’s maybe to the extreme as if it becomes like your entire life
00:20:08 philosophy where like every little thing you do is never quit. But life is short, Zach. Like why? I
00:20:15 mean, this is the problem I have. This is probably the programming thing too is over optimization
00:20:21 is dangerous. Uh, it’s like every once in a while, I mean, you’re, you do this kind of stuff.
00:20:28 You’re not, for example, with a hundred mile run, you’re, I mean, you could just be doing that for
00:20:32 the rest of your life and do like the most optimal hundred mile run ever, but you keep taking on like
00:20:38 new challenges and there’s a lot more chaos in that. And there it feels like the muscle of never
00:20:44 quit will be much more important than the optimality of your training. Yeah. So there’s
00:20:48 probably a couple sides to me with that kind of a thing where for one, I think when we talked about
00:20:54 the why, so like, I think the why can kind of shift a bit and it probably will if you do something
00:21:01 long enough or evolve maybe is a better way to call it, to put it. And for me, like one of my
00:21:07 my big drives and one of my big passions within ultra running is to first of all, find an event
00:21:15 that I really, really love to train for and participate in. So for me, I feel like I’ve
00:21:18 kind of identified that to a degree and that’s kind of runnable hundred milers. So once I found
00:21:24 that it became more of a driver for me to see like, well, how fast can I run a hundred miles in
00:21:31 a very controlled environment? So let’s eliminate weather, let’s eliminate, you know, elevation,
00:21:36 let’s eliminate like having to wait extra long to get crew or support and that sort of thing.
00:21:41 And that’s how you find yourself on a 400 meter track running a hundred miles. But for me, like
00:21:46 the important part of that is that I can control the environment enough where if I come back year
00:21:51 after year, I can retest myself and have a decent ability to kind of say I improved or I regressed
00:21:58 or I stayed stagnant. And I think that’s a big driver for me. But one thing I’ve recognized
00:22:03 within that is if you just keep doing that, like if I could probably pick three flat runnable hundred
00:22:10 milers a year and optimally prepare, race, recover and repeat without like burning myself out.
00:22:18 But one thing I think I learned also in 2019 was that sometimes you kind of need to step away from
00:22:26 some of these really, really kind of important markers in your like your performance or in
00:22:32 whatever you’re trying to do and take a step away from it and try to do something a little different
00:22:37 in order to kind of hit the reset button on just like what I would call just like your mental
00:22:42 energy to be able to continue to do it at a high level. So almost like happiness. Exactly. Well,
00:22:48 here’s the example. Like, I mean, I love running in trails to most people would consider me a flat
00:22:52 road track runner, runnable ultra runner. But I like to do trail runs too. So and at the end of
00:22:58 two thousand and eighteen, I recognized that I had been kind of pushing the gas pedal on trying to
00:23:06 run fast hundred milers for quite a while without really a break in that where it was like, OK,
00:23:10 I did one. Now I’m going to take a brief off season, but then I’m going to ultimately build
00:23:15 up and peak for another one. I might introduce some fun trail races in the context, but they’re
00:23:19 going to be races are going to be training races, time on feet type of stuff that are going to kind
00:23:23 of mimic like a long run, essentially. And but the main focus always in the back of my mind was
00:23:28 like getting on the track and seeing how much faster I can run a hundred miles. And that just
00:23:32 kind of that energy that it takes to continually think by that, that I think the motivation to
00:23:38 keep that stoke high enough to really meet your full potential fades if you don’t step away from
00:23:43 it for a little bit. So I took essentially half a year away from runnable stuff and just decided
00:23:49 I’m going to prepare for the San Diego hundred mile, which is like a much more elevation,
00:23:55 technical trail type of an event. Is that a trail run or no? Yeah. It’s a trail hundred miler
00:24:02 actually just kind of just outside of San Diego. And yeah, it goes through it goes over part of
00:24:08 the Pacific Crest Trail and stuff. So it’s very different than running on a runnable surface. So
00:24:13 to give you some context, like I ran was I think just under 17 hours for that race,
00:24:18 whereas on a flat surface I can run 11 hours and 19 minutes. So just the environment alone added
00:24:24 an extra, you know, five plus hours to the day. So it’s just a different experience, different
00:24:30 skill set. And what it did is it allowed me to kind of step away from kind of focusing on like
00:24:36 splits on a track, running flat stuff, like preparing for things specifically for a flat
00:24:42 environment and start training for something that’s more climbing and descending, more technical
00:24:46 running skill sets and things like that. And the cool part about it was, first of all, you know,
00:24:52 when you step away from something and after something a lot different, I mean, it’s still
00:24:55 running. There’s still a huge advantage I had from the running I’d done in the past that was
00:25:00 going to put me in a good position to be successful. But there was a much higher or a much bigger range
00:25:06 of potential improvement for me. So through the like four plus months I spent preparing for that
00:25:12 race, you know, I noticed, oh wow, I’m getting faster on this climb or I’m getting better at
00:25:17 descending this technical trail. It was one of the most fun races I’ve run actually. So it was kind
00:25:21 of a cool experience. I ended up taking the lead at like 93 miles. So you were racing, racing,
00:25:27 like you were trying to get first. So it’s still a race. Yeah. So what was the enjoyable aspect of
00:25:31 it? I don’t think I’ve recognized it so much while I was doing it actually. It surfaced afterwards. I
00:25:36 mean, the enjoyment of the race itself is like when you find yourself in a position where you’re
00:25:39 sitting in basically second place all day long and then you take the lead at 90, I think it was like
00:25:44 91 or 92 miles. It’s like, yeah, that’s kind of a cool way to race. But afterwards I recognized a
00:25:52 few things just about kind of pacing and you know, how to maybe pace the first half of a hundred
00:25:57 miler versus a second half. I also recognized shortly thereafter once I finished or covered
00:26:04 and decided my next event was going to be a flat runnable race that, wow, I really was way more
00:26:10 excited to do the workouts that I needed to do to get ready to run a fast, flat hundred miler.
00:26:15 And I don’t think that would have been the case had I just tried to do another flat, fast hundred
00:26:19 miler earlier or during that year and end up in a situation where like I maybe had like normalized
00:26:26 a suboptimal like outlook on like something that I had just done so many times already.
00:26:32 Yeah. And I recognize that it was just every workout I did. I was like, I did this workout
00:26:36 a year ago and it was not nearly this much fun. And our, you know, the interesting thing about
00:26:41 these track hundreds too, is like you find yourself doing like your peaking phase where
00:26:45 you’re running your long runs, which for me are usually like, you know, around 30 miles or so,
00:26:49 and I’ll do them on back to back days. And you know, I try to replicate the environment I’m
00:26:54 going to race on. So I’m finding myself on a 400 meter track. And it’s like when I started doing
00:26:59 that again, I just felt like I was super motivated to go out there Saturday and Sunday and do those
00:27:02 back to back long runs and see the progress and then head out again the next week and do it again.
00:27:06 So I had some of my more enjoyable long runs, which are going to be the most specific to the
00:27:10 race day environment that I had in quite some time. And I think that was really beneficial
00:27:15 and kind of putting me in the right spot to be able to push through barriers on race day
00:27:19 and put me in a position where quitting was going to be much less of a likelihood,
00:27:23 given the enjoyment I had in the months leading into the race itself.
00:27:26 Yeah, even the thought of quitting. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned the track,
00:27:31 you’ve also ran 100 miles on the treadmill, and the trail 100 mile. Broadly, if we zoom out,
00:27:38 what does it take to run 100 miles? For most of the world, that seems like a crazy distance to run.
00:27:46 So maybe it’s interesting to ask, not only is just setting the world record, but
00:27:50 purely running, what does it take to run that far? Yeah, I mean, I think people probably
00:27:56 overestimate what it takes in terms of just getting it done. I think this is consistent in
00:28:02 just running in general. I think the marathon was always a big one with that where people thought
00:28:06 like, well, you have to do this training, or you just literally won’t physically be able to complete
00:28:12 a marathon. And then we got into an era of kind of like, running as more of an enjoyment thing
00:28:17 versus a performance thing. And then you’d have people running, granted much slower. I think if
00:28:21 you look at the Boston Marathon average finishing times, it goes from like, or maybe it wasn’t the
00:28:25 Boston Marathon, it might have been marathons in general, went from like three hours to five hours
00:28:29 or something like that. So it’s like, people, I think got past the fact that you can only do it
00:28:35 if you’re optimally prepared to, well, I can do it and maybe not meet my full potential if I’m
00:28:39 going to like, not do much training, which I wouldn’t necessarily advise. But I mean, I’ve
00:28:45 I’ve talked to people who basically run 100 miles, sometimes almost off the couch. And it’s like,
00:28:50 it’s, to me, what that says is just the human body is incredible, and what it can tolerate
00:28:54 above and beyond what it’s been exposed to, if it has to, or if it feels like it has to.
00:28:58 So that’s the basic sort of getting from point A, from the start to the finish. It’s the human body
00:29:04 and the human mind is capable of doing it without much preparation. But then you start to increase
00:29:09 the goal of performance, and you try to get actually a good, like, the most out of your body
00:29:16 that you can. How does that start to change then? Yeah, going from fun to performance? Yeah, I think
00:29:23 once you start putting marks or goals on outside of just finishing, that’s where it starts getting
00:29:27 interesting. Because now you could maybe go on with multiple goals where like, if one falls off
00:29:31 due to something that you didn’t expect, then you have another one to target. But you can always
00:29:35 build those up and try to think like, well, I want to run faster than last time, or I want to, you
00:29:39 know, break a course record or an age group record or something like that. And that that I think is
00:29:46 just going to be a little bit of a different mindset. Because now you’re looking at every
00:29:50 little thing from what do I need to do to prepare as well as what I need to do to be efficient on
00:29:55 the day itself. So like transitioning aid stations and things like that, or do I want a pacer or not?
00:30:01 Or does this race allow someone to like hand me a bottle at a certain spot? Or do I have to be in
00:30:07 specific areas to get that type of stuff? And it what ends up doing is it ends up bringing a lot
00:30:12 more variables to the table. And I think it’s interesting, because there’s always going to be
00:30:17 more variables on the day than you are able to account for. So at a certain degree, you have to
00:30:24 kind of find yourself in a position where I’m going to make sure I take care of the big ones,
00:30:28 or the ones that are like, obviously, I need to be ready for like, my fueling strategy, my hydration
00:30:33 strategy, my pacing strategy, what workouts are going to put me in a position to physiologically
00:30:38 have this process go as well as possible? How am I going to like, you know, hold myself accountable
00:30:43 in aid station transition, so I’m not like having a ton of non moving time versus moving time and
00:30:49 things like that. So there’s these like, big variables that you’re aware of, and you’re trying
00:30:54 to optimize over the space of variables. Yep. So you get to start to play with that. When you’re
00:30:58 looking for performance, it’s almost like moving from checkers to chess, right? You have like, or
00:31:03 maybe even like connect for something like that, where it goes from just kind of like, well, one
00:31:08 foot in front of the other, and when I get to the next station, I’ll just eat whatever looks good,
00:31:12 drink whatever, you know, quenches my thirst, and then move on to the next one to like, well,
00:31:16 which one of these food products is actually going to make me move a little faster to the next
00:31:19 aid station? Or, you know, which one of these pacing strategies is going to get me to the
00:31:24 finish line faster than the other one and that sort of stuff. So it gets more complicated,
00:31:30 more interesting, and in my opinion, anyway, also, there’s I mean, but there’s a breaking point with
00:31:35 that too, because, like I said, there’s an endless number of variables you could account for. And
00:31:40 there’s a distance gets longer, that list gets longer too. So you find yourself in this position
00:31:45 where, where you have to at some point say, okay, I’ve accounted for everything I can reasonably
00:31:50 account for. Now I need to be in a mental space where when something happens that I wasn’t able
00:31:54 to account for, I’m able to respond to it with the right decision and keep going and not dwell on it.
00:32:00 Because that’s another thing. I mean, you’re running slow enough when you’re doing 100 miles,
00:32:03 where if you make a mistake, you can sit there and just fixate on that mistake and say, why did I do
00:32:08 that? That cost me 10 minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah. When in reality, what you need to do is that
00:32:12 happened. Everyone else out here is gonna have a situation like that at some point. Mine happened
00:32:16 now. I need to figure out how I can move forward at the fastest sustainable pace and not think about
00:32:22 what happened back there. And that’s where I think it gets really interesting. What would you say it
00:32:28 takes to set a world record in the 100 miler? First of all, I think you probably have to focus on that
00:32:34 specific event. I mean, there’s the interesting thing about ultra running where it maybe deviates
00:32:40 a bit from just other endurance sports is there’s such a wide range. I mean, we talked about a little
00:32:45 bit when I talked about the San Diego 100 versus kind of flat runnable stuff. So can you maybe
00:32:50 paint a picture of what are there’s a huge range of different kinds of ultra marathon events?
00:32:55 What are like, the big ones in your mind? So marathon, we know the distance for a marathon.
00:33:01 There’s 50k, what are different kinds of there’s 100 mile that in your mind, like kind of these
00:33:07 islands where, where people gather off? Yep. Yeah. So there’s a few that really stand out. I would
00:33:13 say the three biggest ultra marathons right now, even from a historic, maybe not necessarily a
00:33:18 historical standpoint, but in modern day ultra running is going to be the Western States 100.
00:33:24 That’s the biggest, most competitive 100 miler. It’s on the trail side of things in the United
00:33:29 States. Then there’s ultra trail Mount Blanc, which is probably the most competitive 100 miler on the
00:33:33 planet right now. In previous years, it’s been debatable as whether Western States or ultra trail
00:33:37 Mount Blanc is more competitive. I think in the most recent few years, you’re just seeing a lot
00:33:41 more like of the bulk of international talent on the trail side of the sport heading over that way.
00:33:47 And then you have the road running side of things where the comrades marathon,
00:33:52 which is technically 56 miles, but they call it the comrades marathon,
00:33:56 is going to generally be the most competitive ultra marathon. The weird thing is the distance
00:34:01 thing, right? Cause most people in the think of endurance sports, they’re thinking about
00:34:04 precise distances, like five kilometers, 10 kilometers and all that stuff. And then,
00:34:08 then you get into the ultra running world and it’s like, sometimes it’s the event. So like
00:34:12 the Western course itself is much more important than the distance, right? Yeah. So the Western
00:34:15 States 100 is actually 100.2 miles, which isn’t that big of a deviation when you think about it,
00:34:20 especially when you figure like tangents are going to probably account for more than 0.2 miles on a
00:34:24 hundred mile race. But the ultra trail Mount Blanc, you know, that’s listed as a hundred
00:34:29 mile, but it’s actually, I think like 104, 105 miles. So, you know, it’s more, there’s different
00:34:34 cultures too. So the United States is definitely more motivated, I think, to try to get as close
00:34:39 to the exact distance. You’re going to hear maybe a little more grumbling. If someone says,
00:34:42 I signed up for this hundred mile and it turned out to be 103 miles versus like over in Europe,
00:34:47 they don’t really care too much about the distance. They’re more interested in like a
00:34:50 specific route or a loop. Is consistency important in terms of the exact length of the,
00:34:55 of the route? So like you can compare performances from previous years,
00:34:58 or are they a little bit more flexible? Like they redefine the trail from year to year.
00:35:03 Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely hard to compare. I mean, there’s events that take, for example,
00:35:09 I would say the best ultra marathoner in the world today on the men’s side is Jim Walmsley.
00:35:16 The reason I think Jim Walmsley is the best is because he is the most versatile
00:35:20 and not only the most versatile, but he’s arguably the best at almost everything up to a hundred
00:35:25 miles. So there’s a race called the Angela’s crest hundred miler. They, the trail has drastically
00:35:31 changed from when they originally had that event and it’s a different time of year. So it’s much
00:35:36 warmer on that course. And Jim’s not the kind of guy who would sit back and say like, I can’t
00:35:42 chase that record. But I think Angela crest, when he looks at the segments and the pacing for that
00:35:46 one, he’s like, that one is maybe not even the same event anymore. So you have that, you have
00:35:51 some that are a little more controlled and a little more kind of like preserved, I guess you
00:35:55 would say, but I think it gets really rare on the trail side. I mean, comrades is going to be very
00:35:59 comparable from one year to the next because that’s a road race. And that’s where you get,
00:36:03 you maybe get like the split in the sport from people who really want that kind of like,
00:36:07 I want to compare myself to someone who ran this course in 1970 versus like someone who just says,
00:36:14 I want to be competitive today. And you know, maybe the weather is going to be 30 degrees
00:36:19 different from one year to the next on this course. But if I beat everyone on this day,
00:36:23 then I’m the champion of that big name race, like ultra trail Montblanc or Western States,
00:36:26 100. And my legacy will be cemented because I won that big race. And it doesn’t matter when
00:36:31 or how the course was or what the time even was to some degree. When you were optimizing
00:36:35 for trying to set the world record in the hundred miler, were you doing like analysis of maybe like
00:36:43 what were the variables you were looking at? Is it more in the realm of the actual race day,
00:36:49 the track, what it looks like versus like the variables of the training leading up to the,
00:36:56 to the race? I mean, it evolved a bit. Like, I think the, as I learned more about just like,
00:37:01 what is required to kind of really do that stuff. So there’s some variables you can control for,
00:37:07 you know, I try to control for as many as I can. The big one that kind of stands out that you can’t
00:37:11 necessarily control for is it’s pretty rare where you get an event where they’re just doing a hundred
00:37:15 miles on a track. It’s usually like a, like an event of like a series of different events where
00:37:21 they might be like some people out there doing 50 K, some people out there doing 24 or something
00:37:26 like the event I did at, there was six day folks out there. They’re trying to see how far they
00:37:28 could get in six days. So you have like this much wider range of pacing just due to like the
00:37:34 distance. So, you know, track protocol is always like you pass on the outside. So if you’re running
00:37:41 one of the faster paces of the day, which when you go on up to six days, you’re going to, and you’re
00:37:47 doing a hundred miles, you’re probably going to be running faster than most people out there.
00:37:50 Then, you know, you just end up running more because you end up running in lane two around
00:37:54 the turns and then sometimes lane three around the turns. So it’s down to those little details
00:37:57 that have a big impact. Yep. So I had to build that into my pacing strategy. I also have to build
00:38:01 into the pacing strategy, like relative nonmoving time. You know, I did a race just recently,
00:38:08 it was the US track and field hundred mile road championships. And I did not stop once other than
00:38:13 like, I guess I technically stopped like in the aid station for like a few seconds to like grab
00:38:17 bottles and get myself wet. Cause it was like 94 degrees that day, but I didn’t like stop at all
00:38:23 during that race from like what I would say is like a long period of time where we’re getting
00:38:28 up to like a minute, but that’s pretty rare. Even on the track, like when I ran 11 hours and 19
00:38:33 minutes, I think I stopped three times for maybe a total of like, I believe I have to look back for
00:38:38 sure, but I think it was like three to four minutes or something like that. So you got to,
00:38:41 you got to figure that into your pacing strategy, especially if you’re chasing a specific time.
00:38:46 Cause you know, if I’m pacing for, you know, at the time the world record was 1128. So if I’m
00:38:51 pacing for say 1127, 30 or something like that, and I don’t account for that three minutes of
00:38:58 stoppage, then I might run the exact pace I had planned on, but then I’m a minute off of the world
00:39:02 record. So 1128, we’re talking about 11 hours, we’re talking about a hundred miles. Can you
00:39:07 mention what the world record was? What kind of world record you set? Can you tell your own story
00:39:14 here of what you were able to accomplish that world record that I broke actually just recently
00:39:18 got rebroke by a guy over in Lithuania, Alex Sorkin, phenomenal race. I mean, he’s won the 24
00:39:28 hour world championships. He’s won the Spartathlon, which is another big historic ultra marathon
00:39:32 rates, 153 miles. So it’s getting a little more lengthy than some of the stuff that I’ve
00:39:35 traditionally done. He ran 1114, I believe it was 56 or 57. So his pace was 645 per mile. Mine was
00:39:44 647 and a half in terms of just like the pacing strategy. I mean, it’s, it’s just really cool
00:39:49 because for me, the motivation with chasing the world record was, it was multifaceted. I think
00:39:58 there was, as I kind of moved through, cause I mean, it took me almost six years from the day
00:40:02 I decided I wanted to chase that time to the day I actually did it. And through that five to six
00:40:09 years, I think I merged from just like my number one goal was to try to break the world record to
00:40:16 my number one goal is how fast can I run this thing? And then ultimately what needs to be done
00:40:22 for a human to break 11 hours in a hundred miles. Cause I think that’s going to be, I think that’s
00:40:25 going to happen soon. I think it’s going to happen in the next few years. What pace would that be?
00:40:31 Sub 11 would be, I think like, I think it’s like 635 right about per mile. You’re moving quick,
00:40:37 but not so quick that like you’re, you’re, you know, void of being able to think about everything
00:40:43 as it’s happening. So what’s the pace in terms of, if you look for each of the one mile segments for
00:40:50 the hundred miles, is it pretty steady six, like in order to break 11 hours, would it be pretty
00:40:57 steady 635? Does it go up and down? Do you speed up at the very end? Like what’s, what’s the pacing?
00:41:03 If you were to maybe how much variability is there in the pacing for an optimal performance here?
00:41:09 Yeah. So if you’re talking about someone, let’s say that there was someone, well,
00:41:12 let’s just take me for example, let’s say that we could just like, we had this infinite knowledge
00:41:16 and we knew for a fact, a perfect performance for me would produce a 10 59, but I’m not going
00:41:21 a second faster and I need to do everything right in order to run a 10 59. Uh, I would definitely
00:41:29 want to either have a slight negative or slight positive split. So when, um, and I think there’s,
00:41:36 I think there’s a, there’s a range in there where like being a little bit faster the first half
00:41:41 and the second half isn’t going to necessarily change your outcome or being a little bit slower
00:41:47 the first half and a little bit faster. The second half isn’t going to drastically change your outcome.
00:41:52 So that’s what you’re referring to. The split is you’re looking at the first 50 miles and
00:41:55 the second 50 miles. And you can break it down as tiny as you want. Like I think, uh,
00:42:00 when you take out the outlier laps where I stopped to use the bathroom, which would have been that
00:42:03 like three to four minute nonmoving time that I talked about before, my splits were really tight.
00:42:08 Um, I had a couple that were, um, it was weird cause that, that track that I did that on was
00:42:13 actually like 400 and some weird number, like 400 and like 38 meters or something like that. So I
00:42:19 actually like ran like my numbers based on that. So they’re there normally I’m dealing with 400
00:42:24 meters and then it’s a little more like clean as to like what my lap splits are going to range from
00:42:29 one event to the next. So we’re talking about running a hundred miles on a track. Yeah.
00:42:32 And so that you can be really scientific about getting the, the, this, the, um, the pacing,
00:42:40 right. And, uh, you’re, you’re running on the inside lane or is there some kind of tricks to
00:42:45 this? Like, are you alternating directions? Yeah. They’ll switch directions at most events every
00:42:51 four hours. So you’ll do four hours one way and then they usually put a cone out. And once it hits
00:42:57 like, like, let’s say it hits four hours, you finish the lap you’re on and then you do a loop
00:43:02 around and then you start the next, your next lap. Would you say you take the exact same number of
00:43:06 steps? Like when you’re really in the groove, when you take in the pacing, are we talking about that
00:43:12 level of precision or is it a little bit more feel? You mean like foot strike frequency? Yeah.
00:43:18 Like frequency then over the distance to the lap. Would you say it’s so precise that you’re like,
00:43:23 you get in this groove where it’s like, gosh, you’re making me wish I would have strapped more
00:43:28 like a foot pod to my head. But like, yeah, so I think like my guess is it’s pretty precise.
00:43:34 Like is there a video of this? Sorry. I keep interrupting. Is there a video of this? Cause
00:43:37 I, I’ve actually, this is now three years ago, build a computer vision algorithm that counts
00:43:44 foot strikes. Oh, really? Yeah. For fun. Yeah. I was trying to understand, uh, we’ll talk about
00:43:50 this later. We have the same definition of fun when I got my, find myself on a track for all day
00:43:55 and you find yourself counting foot strikes. I was trying to understand if, if there’s how much
00:44:00 variability there’s in a extreme, like elite performers within a particular race, but also
00:44:08 across races. It was just interesting to me from a robotics perspective, if like how much variability
00:44:14 there is in the human body and in the way they use legs to move quickly. I think my guess would be
00:44:21 that at the individual level, it’s going to be pretty precise, assuming the pacing
00:44:25 is consistent. So you get, so my pacing on that day, I ran two minutes faster the second 50 miles
00:44:32 than I did the first 50 miles. So my splits were very even most of the day. I actually ran some of
00:44:36 my fastest miles at the end. Uh, so there’s going to be probably a slight variance from my fastest
00:44:42 miles to my slowest mile in like your cadence or your foot strike. Uh, but probably not by a huge
00:44:47 margin, but you might have a pretty big variance from one person to the next. So you get someone
00:44:52 whose gate is just a little bit different. So like for me, I supinate, which means I kind of come down
00:44:57 on the outside of my foot and I’m kind of more of a mid forefoot striker. So that’s going to kind of
00:45:02 impact my cadence to a degree. Whereas you might have someone who is kind of more mid to rear their
00:45:09 foot or heel striker and they might pronate where their foot kind of rolls in. Uh, so that person
00:45:13 may have a little bit of a different cadence as well. So you get someone, and I think you see this
00:45:18 in elite marathoning too, which is going to probably just be a much larger data pool, uh,
00:45:23 much, much more probably precise from just like a number of opportunities to study this.
00:45:29 And I think even their ranges from one person to the next can be, I wouldn’t say drastic, but,
00:45:34 you know, to the degree of like 10 to maybe even 20 steps per minute or something like that from
00:45:38 one person to the next. But most people, the faster they go, the higher their cadence is
00:45:43 going to be. The slower they go, the lower their cadence is going to be, but there’s going to be
00:45:46 probably a range of optimal lowness and I don’t know, probably optimal highness too than that.
00:45:54 If you can just linger on the 11 hours, the person, first of all, would you like to be the
00:45:59 person that breaks 11 hours? And second of all, the person that does break 11 hours, like what would,
00:46:05 what would it take? And third question is, is it even possible in your intuition?
00:46:10 Yeah. I mean, I would def I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t want to be the first person
00:46:15 to break 11 hours and a hundred miles. I think that’ll be, um, would be a cool like barrier to
00:46:20 be the one to usher that in. But with that said, I think I’m much more motivated in seeing it done
00:46:27 from the sense that like, I think when we’re talking about records, it’s something that
00:46:33 is inevitable that it’s going to get broken. So, I mean, we were talking about happiness before
00:46:37 this, right? So I’ve contemplated this in the past, um, where I was thinking to myself, like,
00:46:44 uh, if my motivation is to break a world record or any record for that matter, course record
00:46:49 and have that be my defining reason or my defining motivator, I probably need to do
00:46:56 an assessment of what I’m kind of where my mind is at and where my focus is at.
00:47:01 Uh, and just reflect on how I’m behaving in life because it’s going to get broken, right? I mean,
00:47:09 I could run 10 50 tomorrow and in 10 years, chances are that’s no longer going to be my
00:47:16 world record anymore. Someone’s going to run faster than that. So if you’re living to hold
00:47:22 on to a record versus living to try to move the sport forward, which anytime you break a world
00:47:28 record, you’re moving the sport forward, then, then you have to look at that as like, that was
00:47:32 my contribution. And whether I contribute again or not is kind of besides the point. What you want
00:47:39 is that your performance, your contribution brings new people into the sport who are excited,
00:47:44 motivated, and they can make their contribution. And then we can ultimately see, well, how fast
00:47:49 can someone run a controlled environment, a hundred miler. And that’s what I really want to
00:47:53 see. Uh, cause I think I’ve gotten so much enjoyment from the sport. I mean, I’ve gotten so much
00:47:57 enjoyment from the sport. I’ve been able to turn it into a career. And I think there’s, there’s
00:48:02 other people who can do the same thing and it’s not necessarily going to come at the expense of
00:48:06 my career. Uh, but it’s going to bring more attention to the sport. It’s going to bring more
00:48:10 interest in the sport. It’s going to open the sport up to people who maybe otherwise would have
00:48:13 never thought about it, seen it, considered it. And to me, I think that’s like a much more rewarding
00:48:19 goal than saying I want to break this record and I want to hold it for decades or I want to die
00:48:25 with this record. So I never have to see someone go faster than me. Well, that’s the progress of
00:48:29 human civilization was down on the shoulders of giants and we keep creating cool stuff. Well,
00:48:34 and it’s, it’s the other thing is just like, if you’re honest with yourself too, it’s, uh, I mean,
00:48:38 we’re seeing this right now in the running world where, you know, new innovations come in, new
00:48:42 technologies come in, new nutritional approaches come in. And then we see like the new crop of
00:48:47 folks have advantages that the old crop didn’t have. And it can be easy to look back on that and
00:48:51 say like, Hey, well, um, you know, if I would have had that product or if I would have done that,
00:48:56 I would have run this. But then you’re getting into that negative, you know, thought process again,
00:49:00 which I generally try to stay off of. It’s like the caveman. If I had fire, I would have done
00:49:05 right. But with this, look at these idiots up there with their cars. If I would have had a car
00:49:10 back then, I would have been ruled the world. Um, let me just zoom up briefly and ask you about
00:49:18 kind of beauty and love. What’s the most beautiful thing about running to you? Why do you love it?
00:49:24 I think, uh, there’s kind of a couple of directions to look at it through our lenses,
00:49:29 look at it through. There’s like the, in the moment, right? There’s always going to be that
00:49:32 run where, uh, you’re clicking along and things just feel great. You get some endorphins and you
00:49:38 get the, the, you know, the, the quote unquote runner’s high and that sort of stuff. And that’s
00:49:42 like just like this great feeling that you can kind of tap into on the like the real, like,
00:49:47 like in the moment type of level. Uh, you know, you’ve, my wife and I talk about this because
00:49:53 she’s a competitive ultra runner as well. And, um, you will, you’ll, we’ll have a day where,
00:49:58 you know, we’ll take a forced day off or something like that. And it’s necessary, right? It’s going to
00:50:02 allow the enjoyment to continue. But you get into this like routine of, I wake up in the morning,
00:50:08 I do this run and that kind of gets my day started. That gets my energies up. I get that
00:50:12 runner’s high afterwards. You remove that from the equation for a rest day. And you just start
00:50:17 like, oh man, I don’t feel like I never got started today. Like, you know, it’s just this
00:50:21 weird thing. It’s almost, I think it’s, it’s funny because non runners don’t always like
00:50:26 necessarily recognize it because for them it’s the complete opposite. They’re like,
00:50:29 if I can get away from not having to run today, that’s going to be a good day versus. But it’s
00:50:35 one of those things that I think gets more addictive the more you do it. So, uh, so that’s
00:50:38 purely from the running perspective. There’s this joy of, uh, of the runner’s high of the post after
00:50:44 the run. You feel like you can take on the world, that kind of thing. Yes. And I think that’s one
00:50:48 of the drivers from just the quality of life standpoint. Uh, just, uh, you know, and in the
00:50:53 moment, immediate gratification, uh, standpoint. But then there’s like, I think the bigger picture
00:50:57 stuff or the longer term stuff. And for me, that enjoyment is like just the process like of, uh,
00:51:05 okay, I’m starting at this fitness level and I’m going to do these workouts and by doing these
00:51:11 workouts, I’m going to see incremental progress from them. And then that’s another kind of like,
00:51:15 kind of short term gratification. That’s maybe a little longer than the day to day, but,
00:51:19 um, still like shorter than like a career or a, or a buildup for a particular race
00:51:24 where you’re saying you’re seeing yourself like, okay, maybe I’m focusing on short intervals right
00:51:28 now. And on week one, I covered this much distance in three minutes, but by week four, I’m covering
00:51:34 this much distance and you can just see that progress is almost like, uh, in elementary
00:51:39 school when you get the gold star for reading a book, it’s like, did that gold star really mean
00:51:42 anything? I don’t know, but I felt great when they gave it to me. There’s something about just
00:51:48 finding improvement and people love to see improvement, I think. So that’s where, uh,
00:51:53 I think you can also get some value in it saying like I started here and I got there.
00:51:57 Um, and then I think there’s also just like, uh, I would call this maybe more the cherry on top,
00:52:02 which is like where you express your work, which is the race itself, where that’s going to be kind
00:52:07 of the thing that kind of like, uh, shows up on the end result and where it kind of identifies
00:52:13 whether you did things right or wrong. Yeah. So there’s a sense which, in which training is a kind
00:52:18 of, uh, preparation towards race day and race day being the thing where you get to be the artist.
00:52:25 You get to create this, this piece of art and they might suck, it might be beautiful. Uh, I mean,
00:52:31 I, I, I see in the grappling world, I see competition in that same way when I feel the best
00:52:36 about it, which is like, sounds pretentious to say, but like, I’m trying to be the best version of
00:52:43 myself in this particular day of competition and to do something that I’ll be proud of in, in, uh,
00:52:51 in an artist way, not in a kind of some kind of numerical way, but like as a holistic sense, like
00:52:59 do something cool. Like in grappling, that means for me, that means like not stalling,
00:53:04 like taking big risks and trying to dominate another person in the, in the context of grappling
00:53:10 and, and do it, like push myself to the limit, both cardio wise and technique wise, and just play,
00:53:18 play beautifully. I mean, you see this in kind of chess, there’s systematic chess players and
00:53:22 there’s people that allow themselves to have those moments of genius where they take the big risk
00:53:28 that eventually pays off or doesn’t. And that to me is art that, I mean, there’s art within running,
00:53:34 there’s art within chess, there’s art within grappling. And you got a chance, like all the
00:53:38 training is more like science. And then it feels like the competition days art. Yeah. I think that
00:53:44 that that’s a really cool, cool way to look at. And I think it’s when you really open up the
00:53:49 perspective of that too, it’s like even, uh, obviously, you know, having a great day,
00:53:53 like winning the tournament or, you know, getting further than you were expected to,
00:53:57 or beating someone who you’ve never beaten before or something like that. Uh, or in the running
00:54:00 perspective, like achieving that goal time, uh, that sort of stuff. Obviously those are kind of
00:54:05 like the ones you, if, when you’re honest with yourself, you really want, and you’re going to
00:54:09 probably get the most satisfaction out of, but even when they don’t go wrong, like maybe like
00:54:13 with your grappling tournament, uh, analogy, the, you know, maybe the guy you’re grappling against
00:54:19 does a move on you and you’re like, I was not prepared for that move. So now the enjoyment
00:54:23 becomes, okay, back to the drawing board. Now I need to find out what do I do when that happens
00:54:28 to me next time. And that’s where the, I think the why comes in again, same thing with running.
00:54:33 Like maybe I make a mistake and, you know, like eat something I didn’t really want to eat or,
00:54:39 or thought was going to work, but didn’t work. And it costs me more time than I gained by having it
00:54:43 or something like that. And then I go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well,
00:54:46 I can’t do that. That didn’t work. Or if I’m going to do that, I need to be more prepared to
00:54:50 be able to do it. And I love that part of the sport. Um, just the rearranging of things and
00:54:56 adjusting and tinkering. There’s some sense in which the mistakes and like the flaws give us
00:55:01 meaning. Cause like if, if everything, um, if you weren’t able to find mistakes and something you’ve
00:55:07 done, it feels like the life would be void of meaning. It’s a lost opportunity too. Like if,
00:55:15 I mean, like when I look at even my a hundred mile race of 11, 19, I can find spots in there
00:55:24 where I was like, Oh, you know what? I could clean that up a little bit. Maybe if I do this
00:55:27 differently. And I mean, that’s going to get me, you know, a little bit faster. If I sat back and
00:55:33 said, Hey, well things went great that day. Cool. Let’s see if we can replicate it. Then, you know,
00:55:37 I probably run 11, 19 again. So can we talk about training a little bit? What does your training
00:55:45 look like year round day to day, hour to hour, like optimal? Maybe, uh, maybe you want to pick a
00:55:53 race in the context of what you want to discuss that, but, and also people should follow you on
00:55:58 Instagram. You have a lot of kind of interesting, um, like little glances into your training process
00:56:05 and into your training thinking, which is quite fascinating. But if you look at an optimal training
00:56:10 process, what does that look like? Yeah. So I think, uh, the, if we were looking at it from
00:56:15 like a philosophical level or like an approach level, I think there’s some things that carry over
00:56:20 from regardless of the distance. So I think working on your weaknesses and things that are least
00:56:27 specific to what you’re going to do on race day, but are still going to be important things in
00:56:32 terms of improving your ability to perform on race day or maximizing your potential, uh,
00:56:39 with the things that are specific you do first. I say that, but there’s a caveat with endurance
00:56:46 sport. I think maybe even more specifically with things like our ultra marathons or a hundred
00:56:49 miles where you want a really strong aerobic foundation or like a base before you really start,
00:56:56 I think, structuring things towards a specific one. So for me, I think like a target for me is
00:57:03 oftentimes like, uh, you know, getting really fit at like what my pace would be at like my aerobic
00:57:10 threshold or what a lot of people may be called like a maximum aerobic function. Um, I mean,
00:57:14 the running world is kind of weird where we have like these terminologies where there’s
00:57:17 sometimes multiple words that essentially mean the same thing, but one is from like, uh,
00:57:21 just an actual physiological reaction and one is just like a feeling and stuff like that. So
00:57:25 you mentioned time on feet versus time in optimal physiological state. Like how important is it just
00:57:33 to get like running done versus like running in a particular pace that would depend on the event.
00:57:40 I would say to a degree and there’s contradicting ideas about like kind of how to structure it. I
00:57:46 think a lot of times like, uh, you do want to like time on feet in most cases is just going to be
00:57:52 like I’m running easy, whatever feels easy that day. And that can be different from one day to
00:57:56 the next. Like I might feel great and you know, that produces a much faster pace than if I feel
00:58:01 really miserable or something like that. Um, so that’s why I think a lot of times running,
00:58:06 well they’ll, they’ll do the whole perceived, perceived effort or perceived exertion.
00:58:10 And there you’re looking at kind of understanding the response your body has to a certain effort
00:58:18 level and you’re supposed to target a certain effort level in order to like get a certain
00:58:22 response. So to maybe simplify that a little bit or make it a little clearer, like I think I focus
00:58:27 on essentially like short intervals. I focus on longer intervals or tempo runs. Uh, I focus on,
00:58:35 um, like race pace intensity, which is a lot of times what I’ll build my long run around. Um,
00:58:42 but I’ll also like, those are kind of like the small pieces to the puzzle. Those are the options
00:58:46 you’re working with. Yeah, but I’m going to always try to work with those options on top of a massive
00:58:51 aerobic base, which is going to probably be like 80% of the work. So how do you build that massive
00:58:55 aerobic base? What are we talking about? Just distance? Distance and essentially, so I like
00:59:00 to call it microstressing because you’re going to always start at a different spot depending
00:59:03 on where your fitness level is at and depending on where you’re at as an individual. I’m going
00:59:07 to be targeting my aerobic threshold. I’m going to get right up to it, but not necessarily cross
00:59:11 over it. Um, it’s, it, you know, it’s, it’s been popularized as maximum aerobic function as kind
00:59:16 of a training philosophy. That philosophy in itself, I think maybe is a little more like
00:59:22 holistic where they’re saying, do this basically all the time. And by doing so, you’re going to,
00:59:28 like, you’re going to raise your aerobic potential by so much that, you know, you can kind of like
00:59:34 race yourself into shape at that point. And this would be maybe more specific for like shorter
00:59:37 distance or endurance runs where you’re not going to really race yourself in the shape of a hundred
00:59:41 milers. But for five Ks, you might, you might do like a huge base building phase where you’re going
00:59:46 up to that maximum aerobic function or that aerobic threshold and you’re watching your pace come down
00:59:53 at that. So the rule there is basically like if you’re seeing improvement, that’s the sign
00:59:58 you’re looking for, or which would just be your pace dropping at that heart rate or at that
01:00:02 intensity. And, uh, if you’re seeing that continually go down, you’re heading in the
01:00:06 right direction. If you start seeing it go the opposite way, you’re, you’re probably overreaching
01:00:11 where you’re trying to do too much of it. So that’s kind of dictates how much the dose,
01:00:15 I guess you’d say, when we talk about max aerobic function, we’re talking about heart rate as the
01:00:19 ultimate, as the really important metric here. So maintaining a particular heart rate during the run.
01:00:25 Uh, is that the measure that, like, how do you know you’re in the right place? Yeah. Yeah. And
01:00:29 then that’s where it gets a little tricky because like, unless you go into a lab and get your aerobic
01:00:32 threshold tested, it’s really hard to have like an exact number on it. Um, you know, Dr. Phil
01:00:37 Maffetone with the maximum function process, he’ll say 180 minus your age is going to give you your.
01:00:42 Yeah. That’s the MAF 180 formula that I thought was fascinating for, it’s like, uh, in the same
01:00:47 way E equals E equals MC squared is fascinating that there could be a formula that captures like
01:00:52 optimal running. So that for people who don’t know that’s 180 minus your age, if you train at that
01:00:59 heart rate, if you run at that heart rate, you’re going to progress a lot. And here’s the advantage
01:01:02 of that. I think like with any of these things, you want to look at it through where are the
01:01:07 advantages here and I need to account for those. And then where are the potential disadvantages
01:01:11 and then decide for me as an individual, do these advantages outweigh the disadvantages
01:01:16 on what’s the alternative approach and is that going to produce more advantages or less?
01:01:20 So with, with maximum function, uh, here’s some advantages. Like it is low enough intensity
01:01:26 where you can train pretty consistently at a fairly high volume with a very low injury risk
01:01:33 with a very low, like things that are going to maybe lower your quality of life, like muscle
01:01:38 damage and things like that. Um, it’s a more efficient way in the sense that you’re going to
01:01:43 be like prioritizing like fat metabolization, which, um, I mean, if you’re looking at like
01:01:48 Jeff Follick and Dr. Jeff Follick and Dr. Dominic DiAgostino, some of their research and things like
01:01:53 that, like they’re going to show that, you know, that’s going to be a little cleaner way to go
01:01:57 about things from just a recovery standpoint, a breakdown standpoint. So they could be like a,
01:02:02 what they call like a fat adapted athlete. So you can go to your fat stores for energy if you’re
01:02:08 applying this math. What is it called by the way? Math 180. Is that a good, what are your thoughts
01:02:14 about in general for yourself and for the broader population? I think the math 180 formula is about
01:02:21 as good of a formula as you’re going to find in terms of capturing as many people as you can get
01:02:27 away with capturing with a kind of a universal thing. Uh, like any of these things, I mean,
01:02:31 it’s, it’s more likely kind of on a bell curve where like the bulk of that 180 minus their age
01:02:37 is probably going to be a pretty good, at least starting point to kind of figure out where that is.
01:02:41 There’s some other things you can like maybe use to kind of check it that I like to do. If I’m,
01:02:46 let’s say I just, I did 180 minus my age and I went out and I started running and it was like,
01:02:51 I’m running along and I’m just like, my, my breathing is labored. I’m, you know, I’m struggling
01:02:56 to get a sentence out without gasping for breath. Well, that’s my body telling me I’m probably not
01:03:01 actually at my true like math number or my true, like underneath my true aerobic threshold, like
01:03:06 aerobic threshold and maximum function, you should be able to do that for hours and you should be
01:03:10 able to breathe pretty efficiently and talk. Yep. Carry a conversation. Um, other people will say,
01:03:15 like you, another way to kind of gauge it, if you can breathe in your nose and out your mouth,
01:03:19 that’s not necessarily the best way to do on a, from a performance standpoint, but it can be a
01:03:23 good kind of governor that will allow you to, like, if you can, if you can no longer breathe
01:03:28 in your nose and out your mouth, you’re probably going too fast to actually technically be at your
01:03:31 math pace or under your math pace. Yeah. I had, uh, actually when I was in, in better shape,
01:03:36 I had trouble getting to that math number. I found myself like that I would be doing way too much
01:03:43 work. Like it was too hard to do. It was too hard to get to that number. I was running a much lower
01:03:49 heart rate, like 10 to 20, what do you call that beats lower. And that’s, I was still for myself,
01:03:55 happy with the pace. It was a good pace and, and I was, felt good. I was smiling and enjoying life
01:04:01 and, uh, I did. And the moment I take myself to that, uh, level of like the, the math 180 level,
01:04:08 that’s like, that felt like a real workout. Yeah. And it felt like I can’t do that for five, 10,
01:04:13 15 miles. Like I, I started feeling it like this is a one or two mile thing.
01:04:18 No, but I think his answer to that, uh, Phil Meftone’s answer is maybe you’re supposed to like,
01:04:26 uh, what, maybe do some more sprints or something like that, or build up your, maybe like I’m too
01:04:32 weak. Yeah. Musculature wise to like, uh, yeah, like that, that’s a sign that you need to work
01:04:37 on some stuff. You can’t just keep enjoying life. There’s, there’s two ways to look at that,
01:04:40 I think. And I think you’re, you’re, you’re right on. I think that what the advice from that, from
01:04:45 that kind of a process would say is either you, you’re doing too much of it. So it’s getting too
01:04:52 hard for where your skeletal muscle system is currently at for that particular activity. So
01:04:56 like, it can be different too. Like if you’re cycling versus running, you know, that’s a little
01:05:00 bit of different mechanic where it can be different where you could take a super fit cyclist and then
01:05:06 put them on, you know, the, the volume, the volume they’re going to be able to tolerate relative to
01:05:10 what you’re going to do when you remove like impact forces and things like that is going to be
01:05:14 lower if they haven’t been practicing that activity. So for you, like, you know, you’re prioritizing,
01:05:18 like, uh, uh, wrestling and mixed martial arts or not mixed martial arts, but jujitsu type stuff. So,
01:05:24 uh, you know, running is maybe kind of that, that, uh, that secondary activity versus the primary
01:05:30 activity. But yeah, so what they would say is probably like, maybe instead of doing that at,
01:05:35 let’s say you were doing that for like 30 miles a week or something like that, and it was getting
01:05:39 too hard to continue there, they’d say, you know, come back to 20, get used to 20, get comfortable
01:05:44 with 20, then let’s get you up to 25 and 30 and kind of just like inch you along.
01:05:50 One of the intuitions I had about the ways I was failing at running is the form was probably not
01:05:56 great. Like the way to get to those 30, 40 miles is to get the form right. Maybe I was doing too
01:06:04 big of steps, not so like playing with a different gate, playing with a different kind of, um, the
01:06:10 form of your form, the economy, the efficiency. Yeah. So that was, that was the intuition. Like
01:06:15 I was doing something wrong, but I suppose that’s the benefit of these kind of formulas. It
01:06:19 challenges you to think like, how can I improve this kind of stuff? Well, and it also, it simplifies
01:06:24 it so much that you’re forced to, right? You’re forced to optimize within that real strict
01:06:29 parameter versus am I doing my short intervals right, but my long runs wrong? Or am I doing my
01:06:35 like long intervals right, but my short intervals, and then you just, it kind of complicates things
01:06:39 when you start throwing a lot of stuff there. And for most people, especially when they’re first
01:06:43 getting started, you know, you’re, you can’t overcomplicate it or you’re just going to like,
01:06:48 you’re going to do like a bunch of half right, half wrong things and then not really know where
01:06:52 your progress or your deficits are necessarily at. So I do think this is an amazing approach,
01:06:58 especially for people who are just getting into it and building that, that foundation, um, where,
01:07:04 where I think maybe you want to deviate from that a little bit, especially when you start getting
01:07:08 to these events that are operating well outside that intensity. So you take something like, um,
01:07:14 you know, let’s say it’s a race that takes you in the neighborhood of around like 12 minutes or
01:07:19 something like that, then you’re going to be running significantly faster than your, your
01:07:23 maximum function pace. So most of the research is going to say at some point in time, you need to
01:07:28 get around to practicing the pace at which you’re going to perform at and really fine tuning the
01:07:33 mechanics, uh, the efficiencies, uh, how it feels, how to judge it, how to pace it at the pace you’re
01:07:40 going to try to compete at. So there’s obviously like a large range of targets there when we’re
01:07:43 talking about the endurance world in general, where, you know, you have these shorter events,
01:07:47 like five kilometers, and then you also have a hundred mile races, which are going to typically
01:07:50 be quite a bit below your maximum heroic function in, especially on these trail races.
01:07:54 I need to admit something. So I don’t measure the runs at all in terms of, uh, time, uh,
01:08:01 because I get competitive with myself. So I kind of decided that running for me is going to be this
01:08:07 thing where I just go by feel. Is it possible to be that kind of runner and, you know, still have
01:08:13 running as part of your life and be a good performer in running? I actually think that’s,
01:08:17 that’s where you want to get to. The problem is most people have a hard time getting to that
01:08:22 because they’ll go out and they’ll run with a friend and match their pace. Or they’ll go out
01:08:27 and they’ll say, well, I want to run this pace. So they’ll target that pace or target a specific
01:08:32 heart rate, which is, you know, not necessarily how they maybe feel good doing it. So I think
01:08:38 like once you, I mean, obviously I think when you put a race on the calendar, if your goal is
01:08:43 performance, it’s a little harder to just say like, well, I’m going to run whatever feels good today
01:08:47 because eventually you have to get around to doing what’s specific. But from just a fitness
01:08:51 standpoint, health standpoint, enjoyment standpoint, um, I think it’s totally fine to go out and say,
01:08:56 I’m going to run what feels good today. And you know, maybe someday you will feel like at
01:08:59 the end of the run, I’m going to do a couple of sprints just to get some, you know, that,
01:09:02 because it does, that one’s a hard one to kind of jumpstart, but once you do it and you realize how
01:09:06 kind of good it feels, maybe to throw in a few accelerations at the end of a run. And then you,
01:09:10 you say, oh wow, that feels pretty good to do that. I feel a little more accomplished.
01:09:13 That’s right. That’s a forcing function, but I like to finish runs with sprints anyway.
01:09:17 Okay. Because you’re already there without, right. You don’t need to the timing. I’m afraid
01:09:21 of the time becoming a drug, but the flip side of that, it’s a useful tool to get you to learn
01:09:27 the right form, the right feel, like what it feels like to have to be in good shape.
01:09:32 And then you can throw out the time. Well, I think too with, with feel running. And what
01:09:36 I mean by that is that kind of back to that perceived effort thing where like you do enough
01:09:39 of it and you start being able to recognize, like I can go out and if you said, okay, run,
01:09:45 you know, 60 minutes at your aerobic threshold, I could go, I could know where that is on my
01:09:51 heart rate. And I could go out there and just say like, okay, I know what that feels like and go
01:09:54 out and run that feel. And I’m going to hit that spot. Like I bet you if we looked at my heart
01:09:59 rate data after that, it’d be right in there. And I wouldn’t have to look at some of that’s
01:10:02 just experience. Someone’s just understanding like when like noticing the physiological responses,
01:10:07 when you cross over versus step a little bit too below it, uh, you can get yourself daydreaming
01:10:12 and forget. I’ll do this sometimes too, where I’ll be tart. Cause I’m kind of like you too,
01:10:15 where when I’m getting really fit, uh, especially with my foundation, like I gotta, you know,
01:10:20 I’m moving pretty quick at my aerobic threshold. So like if I start daydreaming too much, I can
01:10:25 notice, Oh, I’m drifting back a little bit. I looked down at my heart rate matter. Oh yeah,
01:10:27 I’m 10 beats under, you know, so you do it. It does take a little bit of, I think just awareness.
01:10:33 Um, but it’s also not necessarily something where you have to be so exact that you’re hitting things,
01:10:38 you know, an exact heart rate all the time. There’s usually a range and there’s even like
01:10:43 some fluctuations where like if you’ve been healthy for a year or two without any injuries
01:10:47 and you’ve been fit that you can probably add five beats to your maximum aerobic function.
01:10:51 If you’re using that as kind of your, your target from the 180 minus your age formula.
01:10:55 So let’s try this, lay this out for yourself, but for others, you, you offer readymade plans
01:11:01 for people, you know, depending on their, I think the key thing there is the distance.
01:11:06 Maybe you can elaborate, but what does that plan look like? Usually what are the key
01:11:13 options as you’ve already kind of mentioned? And how does your week look like? How do a lot of
01:11:19 people’s week look like in terms of splits? Are we talking about, um, you know, in terms of rest
01:11:25 days, in terms of how often do you do speed work versus longer distance? You mentioned long runs.
01:11:31 Like, is there something you could say that’s generally applicable about the, the structure
01:11:38 of these plans? The readymade plans, I definitely follow like a philosophy, um, and it’s going to
01:11:43 be like kind of like lockstep in that. Um, so for those, like there’s always going to be a sacrifice
01:11:48 when you do like a readymade plan because there’s, you’re removing the individual context there.
01:11:52 So for folks who are like really want to get into the weeds, I usually do like a personalized
01:11:56 coaching plan with them where we sit down and we actually look at their strengths, their weaknesses
01:12:00 and really kind of go in from that perspective and fine tune it. And it also like it avoids
01:12:06 it avoids a situation where, Oh, my readymade plan says I’m supposed to do this run today,
01:12:12 but I don’t feel great today. So what do I do? I mean, some people are fine with that because
01:12:15 they’re, they’re, they’re aware enough of like the process that they can adjust it themselves.
01:12:21 Other folks just need a little more support. So, um, that’s kind of the difference there,
01:12:24 but in terms of the structure of it, it kind of goes with an approach where
01:12:29 ogre saying you build this foundation, you’re going to spend, you know, usually anywhere
01:12:33 between eight to 12 weeks just building up your, your aerobic foundation. You’re going to be doing
01:12:38 a lot of stuff that are kind of at, I call them base runs, but they’re basically your maximum
01:12:42 aerobic function or you’re up to your aerobic threshold type stuff. And they’re really going
01:12:46 to get really fit with that. And once they kind of have that foundation laid, then it’s time to
01:12:50 get into the specifics of whatever distance they’re doing. So if it, where it will differ will
01:12:55 be like if they’re doing a right now on those plans, I think I’ve got 5k half marathon marathon,
01:12:59 50k, 80 to a hundred K and then a hundred miles. So if they pick a 5k plan, the order of operations
01:13:05 is going to be different than if they pick the a hundred mile plan, you’re going to see
01:13:09 some of the same workouts show up in that plan. It just going to be different areas of it. So once
01:13:14 they’re really fit at that, uh, you know, that foundational level, then, you know, if they’re
01:13:19 doing say a hundred mile plan, they might start doing some short intervals, which I would, on my
01:13:24 plans, I usually range between 30 seconds up to four minutes. It’s kind of that short interval
01:13:28 range. Can you describe what you mean by short interval? It’s like a sprint and then a rest.
01:13:33 Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll use basically like, I’ll use like a, basically a 12 minute time trial
01:13:39 and that’s going to kind of like dictate for them what the intensity and the pace is going to be
01:13:43 for some of those. When they’re under a minute, they’ll push past that a little bit. Um, but
01:13:48 usually when we’re up to like above a minute and certainly up to four minutes, like whatever pace
01:13:53 or intensity that they get for that kind of 12 minute time trial, where they’re just seeing how
01:13:57 far they can go in 12 minutes is going to be, um, kind of like about where they’re going to target
01:14:02 for those intervals. So then those intervals are going to be structured. Let’s say we were doing
01:14:05 two minute intervals. They’re going to do two minutes at that intensity that they could do for
01:14:09 12 minutes at a time trial. Then they’re going to do a two minute real easy jog, or maybe even walk
01:14:14 just to kind of bounce back. And they’re going to repeat it. How do you figure out how far you can
01:14:18 go in 12 minutes? Is that just a trial and error you build up to it? There’s formulas with,
01:14:23 yeah, there’s some newer formulas that are probably a little less, uh, um, brutal, uh,
01:14:29 where you kind of, uh, I haven’t really dove into these that that in depth yet. I know like, um,
01:14:35 that you can kind of replicate it by doing like a short, a very short interval and then a slightly
01:14:40 longer one. Um, and then like another one where like at the end one, that last one will kind of
01:14:45 indicate what it is. Uh, and so you’re doing less of it to get the same answer to the question.
01:14:50 But sometimes I think when it’s someone who’s new, I’d rather them just do a 12 minute time trial
01:14:56 because it’s easy for them to execute in the sense that it’s pretty clear. You do a warm up,
01:15:01 you do some strides, maybe some dynamic stretches, and you just run as hard as you can for 12 minutes
01:15:06 as evenly paced as you can manage. And, uh, I mean, if the, if it’s going to produce the data
01:15:11 I’m looking for, uh, and I mean, it’s also no matter what happens, they’ll produce the data.
01:15:17 Yeah. I mean, you can, you can screw it up. I guess you can go way too fast. Then you have this
01:15:21 scenario where like, Oh, it looks like your, you know, your first two minutes were drastically
01:15:24 faster than your last two. And then it’s like, Oh, we maybe screwed that one up. But, um,
01:15:28 but I mean really like you don’t even need to do the time trial technically. Um, a lot of times
01:15:34 you can go off of feel like what we described with, um, the threshold stuff and, and, you know,
01:15:41 it’s a high enough intensity where, where like you can start to kind of like your, your body’s
01:15:47 going to kind of limit you to a degree where, um, if I said we didn’t do the time trial and just
01:15:51 started doing the intervals, we could figure out that, you know, if they’re doing them right or
01:15:56 not, if we see a scenario where, Oh, it looks like these first two intervals were significantly
01:16:00 slower than the last two chances are, we’re still not quite dialed in in terms of what the intensity
01:16:05 is that you should be targeting for those. And as you do a few of them, you just get to know
01:16:08 the pacing of it a little better. And then you start seeing more even split. So like, you know,
01:16:12 their first two minute intervals pretty close within a couple seconds of their second, or,
01:16:16 you know, I guess we’d be looking at distance if we’re doing time. So like you went approximately
01:16:19 the same distance on that last one as you did the first one. And then we’re just looking for
01:16:23 improvement over time. So, you know, we might spend four, six weeks kind of focusing on improving
01:16:29 that we’re going to still include kind of foundational running volume where you’re going
01:16:33 to be running like an easy pace and enjoyable pace kind of in the interim. And then there’s going to
01:16:37 be some rest days and that’s going to be where the levels come in. My like level one plans are
01:16:41 going to be like four day a week training plans. Level two are going to be five day level three
01:16:45 are going to be six day with one day off. Um, and you can obviously operate outside of those,
01:16:50 those, those are just the ones that I put up for the readymade when I’m coaching people kind of
01:16:53 personalized. We just, we look at like what their history is with running their schedule,
01:16:57 all sorts of stuff. Cause oftentimes people get hung up on like, well, what are the elites doing?
01:17:01 What are the professionals doing? What are the Olympians doing? It’s like, well, it’s like what
01:17:05 the Olympians are doing is they’re waking up and they’re living and breathing everything around
01:17:08 this one race that they’re going to do in four years. Or so it’s like, we need to step away from
01:17:13 that. If you’re working, you know, 10 hours a day and you got kids and all this other stuff too. So,
01:17:17 um, there’s a lot of variables that make it more interesting to coach someone who’s actually like
01:17:22 not an elite athlete or someone who’s a professional athlete, I should say, uh, the, but,
01:17:28 but yeah, so they’re, they’re going to do that stuff. Those, those shorter intervals, um, for
01:17:33 probably about like four to six weeks. If they’re doing, if they’re doing a longer race, like a
01:17:37 hundred miles, if they were doing say a 5k, we’d start bringing those workouts in near the end of
01:17:42 their plan. Cause that’s going to be specific to their race pace. That’s going to be the intensity
01:17:45 that maybe they’re doing for, you know, like a three K or a five K or something like that. So
01:17:49 it’s going to be more relative to what they’re going to use. So it follows that philosophy.
01:17:53 The plans follow that philosophy of weaknesses and least specific stuff early. And then we start
01:17:58 phasing closer to most specific stuff and strengths as you get kind of near to the end of
01:18:04 the plan. And then the distance of, or the time that you’re going to spend out doing whatever event
01:18:09 it is, is going to dictate how those kind of get ordered in there. I wonder if I could ask you for
01:18:13 some sort of advice, maybe almost, uh, maybe look at me as a case study of a particular runner and
01:18:21 runner and then see how we can plan stuff out. So which context to give. Okay. So I have been,
01:18:30 first, let me say how much we’re currently in Austin. I want to say how much I love Austin for
01:18:34 many reasons. Uh, first and foremost, people are super kind and just like, there’s so much love
01:18:41 that I’ve experienced immediately when I came to the city versus many of the other cities I’ve been
01:18:46 in. It’s, uh, it’s not quite as welcoming and full of kindness immediately. I mean, I really love,
01:18:53 love it here in Austin. And because I’ve been going through a bunch of stressful stuff,
01:18:58 I just kind of gave myself a chance to say, okay, I’m going to stick to a diet of carnivore, keto,
01:19:05 but I’m going to eat as much as I want because, uh, primarily because just barbecue was part of
01:19:13 the love I was getting here. And I was like, either I resist or just give in. And I decided
01:19:17 to give in and actually use this as an opportunity to relax and have fun for the past three, four
01:19:22 months, plus whiskey and so on. And then the training kind of all, I also let go of the
01:19:27 training a little bit, just to relax, to really focus on the work, focus on the love I’ve been
01:19:32 getting all those kinds of things. But now I just kind of want to set a goal for myself to get back
01:19:37 into both competing and grappling, but also doing a, um, hanging out with David Goggins and, uh,
01:19:44 doing a conversation with him, but almost this is my own personal kind of race that I’m looking
01:19:48 forward to. And in terms of distance, that means running with David, uh, something like a marathon
01:19:57 plus plus it’s like, it’s unclear what plus. So my goal would be to, uh, continue eating carnivore,
01:20:05 which is a whole nother topic that I’d love to talk to you about. I feel great psychologically,
01:20:10 sort of in terms of mental performance in my work when I eat carnivore and physically,
01:20:14 I love it. I’ve never felt any kind of need for carbs to, uh, to improve performance in my running
01:20:22 or anything else. Combine that with fasting, intermittent fasting, or eating once a day.
01:20:26 I just, that’s when I, uh, feel the best. What else? I also feel best. And this is something
01:20:33 you can push back on. I feel best when I just run every day, like no breaks ever,
01:20:40 and usually the same way every day. So like, I know this is suboptimal. It’d be interesting
01:20:48 to hear your opinion of just how suboptimal that is. Uh, so I think that actually lays
01:20:53 out like where my mind is. I’m happy eating carnivore once a day. I like running every day.
01:20:58 Uh, the goal is to run a marathon in two months ish, two months plus, and then about three months
01:21:06 to do a bunch of competitions and grappling. Okay. With those parameters, I think like you
01:21:11 actually probably would be a great candidate for maximum heroic function training strategy.
01:21:15 Like you want that consistency where I’m going to do the same thing each day. Uh, you don’t want to
01:21:20 beat yourself up so much any one day that you can’t get out and do it the next one. That’s the
01:21:24 sweet spot with maximum heroic function is the, the, the trademark there is that you,
01:21:30 you can keep going and keep doing it again and again and again, because as long as you’re not,
01:21:35 you know, going out one day and trying to do twice as much as what you’re ready for, for that
01:21:39 one specific, the key for you is going to be picking the right starting point and then building
01:21:43 from there on what that day kind of entails in terms of how much running you do. So, um,
01:21:50 where you could maybe get creative would be if you decided that it’s a hard, fast rule that you run
01:21:56 an hour every day, seven days a week. But we find out that to run your maximum robot function means
01:22:02 you probably are better off sticking to 30 minutes. Then what you would maybe do is you would run
01:22:07 underneath your maximum aerobic function for the first 15 minutes in the last 15 minutes,
01:22:13 maybe throw some of those strides in there if you want to do that at the very end. Uh, and then that
01:22:17 middle 30 minutes is going to be maximum road function target. And then maybe after, you know,
01:22:23 four weeks, you start noticing, you know what, this 30 minutes isn’t wearing me out near as much as
01:22:27 it used to. Um, I feel like I could easily push past that. Well, let’s up that to 40 minutes. So
01:22:31 that 60, you’re always staying within that 60 minute parameter that keeps your, your schedule
01:22:35 consistent, your routine consistent. I’m wearing a heart rate monitor to sort of as I run to monitor
01:22:41 it. Sure. You could do that. You could go perceived effort. Um, I like to use them in tandem in the
01:22:47 sense that like early on, I’ll maybe look at my heart rate a little more often, especially for
01:22:52 shorter length. There is heart rate can get messy the longer you go. So I, I end up kind of maybe
01:22:58 stepping away from heart rate a little more than some will at a certain point because I’m ultimately
01:23:03 I’m going to be usually training or working with someone to run like, you know, a race that’s really
01:23:07 long and they get cardiac drift, dehydration, heat and things that are going to make the heart rate
01:23:12 super messy. Yeah. But you’re probably your ability to measure perceived effort is exceptionally good.
01:23:18 Mine is actually really weak. Okay. Heart rate then I need to do the, still the work of connecting
01:23:22 heart rate to the perceived effort. Yep. And that’s exactly what I would use heart rate for then. And
01:23:26 you’ll get to a point probably by like in the first couple of months where you, you can still
01:23:32 lean on heart rate if you want, but it’ll be kind of one of those things where you keep
01:23:36 looking at, you’re like, Oh wow, I can guess it. And you play a game with yourself too. And you
01:23:39 say, well, how close can I guess? You’ll get it. So like for me, what I’ll do is I’ll do the run
01:23:44 and then I’ll look at the heart rate afterwards and be like, Oh cool. I was right there. Or I
01:23:47 remember feeling like I was speeding up a little bit there and their show is right there on the
01:23:51 heart rate or. I also love sort of something we haven’t talked about. I love pushups and pull ups
01:23:56 of like body weight workouts. Again, it’s mostly mental. I just enjoy the mental challenge of it.
01:24:02 I also like, it makes me feel like if all I’m doing is running, it makes me feel I’m not like.
01:24:09 One dimensional.
01:24:10 Yeah. One dimensional. I mean, there’s some aspect to running that’s not to be like hippie
01:24:16 about it, but like, you know, you’re, you’re with nature, you’re running in the, it’s like,
01:24:20 we’re born to do this thing. And that same way, I feel like when I’m doing pushups and pull ups,
01:24:25 I feel like I was born to do that kind of stuff. Like it’s like this body weight exercise that
01:24:30 is, body weight exercises have that way about them. It’s, it doesn’t have that dumbbell feel
01:24:36 or doing bench press or squats, squats with weight. When you’re just doing squats,
01:24:42 body weight, we do pushups and pull ups, body weight, even just basic ab stuff, core stuff,
01:24:47 body weight. I don’t know. I just love the way I feel doing that. So it’s usually,
01:24:52 I forgot to mention that part. I combine that with the running afterwards,
01:24:55 doing some basic body weight stuff.
01:24:57 Yeah. And I think like you’re going to get from, if we’re not looking at it from like specifically,
01:25:02 like training at a pace in order to get both the skeletal muscle adaptations, as well as the
01:25:09 cardiovascular benefits, you’re probably tapping into some of the higher intensity stuff with that
01:25:13 body weight. So this, and unless you’re doing, I guess no rest. Okay. So is it,
01:25:19 you get pretty high heart rate from that. Yeah. Very hard. Okay. Higher than running. Yep.
01:25:23 So you’re checking that box there from just like a lifestyle, enjoyment, fitness,
01:25:28 overall fitness standpoint. I think you want to keep your running more aerobic then because
01:25:34 you’re getting that and you’re probably getting it from like your grappling workouts too,
01:25:37 I would guess. So there’s just not as big of a need for you from a big picture standpoint to be
01:25:44 doubling down on that stuff with your runs as well. And it sounds like you prefer not to.
01:25:50 Yeah. That’s right. So I mean, what about the distance of marathon versus a hundred miles?
01:25:57 Is that a big difference? What’s a good goal to work towards? Is it marathon and the rest of it
01:26:03 just takes care of itself? Yeah. So you want to do a marathon and then ultimately do a
01:26:08 hundred mile after that? Is that what you’re saying? I have no idea what the guy. Oh, so he’s
01:26:13 going to tell you spot on what you’re doing. So you have to be ready for anything. For anything.
01:26:17 Right. My own personal goal is to feel somewhat challenged, but comfortable running a marathon.
01:26:24 The longest I’ve ever run is 22 miles, but there’s been many stretches of my life where I would
01:26:30 regularly run. Like the long run would be close to 20 miles. And then I was comfortably running 10
01:26:37 miles four months ago. Feels like forever ago. Until I injured myself a little bit by running
01:26:44 in the snow and stubbing my toe to where it was like, you don’t realize how much you appreciate
01:26:49 your toes until you stub them. That big toes where all that power comes off. And so it was surprising
01:26:57 how long it took to heal and how essential it was and how unpleasant running, how much I hated
01:27:03 running with it. And then I kept like coming, trying to get back out there to run to think,
01:27:07 I think it’s okay. And no, it’s not okay. You really need to let it fully heal. At least that
01:27:13 was my experience. I couldn’t like just suck it up. It was making it worse every time. And one of
01:27:17 those injuries that could really feel, even though it’s so small, but it’s essential. So is there any
01:27:23 difference between the goal of marathon or a hundred miles? Would you say, should I be prepping
01:27:28 for a hundred miles if that’s at all a possibility? The big difference is going to be like you’re
01:27:33 dropping intensity significantly by going up to a hundred miles versus the marathon. So
01:27:38 the maximum aerobic function I think is actually going to feed into that maybe a little bit better.
01:27:42 It’s probably gonna be a little closer. It all varies a bit because people will focus on specific
01:27:49 distances and they’ll get very efficient and very adapted to that. So it’s what makes running kind
01:27:58 of messy where you’ll get, for example, the average person can hit their lactate threshold
01:28:04 for probably about 60 minutes or something like that. Whereas you get these elite marathoners
01:28:08 who’ve been basically spending their entire life preparing for a marathon race. They can push
01:28:13 almost up to their lactate threshold and after lactate threshold for almost like two hours.
01:28:18 So it gets a little messy when you start looking at it from that lens, but you’re,
01:28:23 you don’t really have to worry about that too much because you’re not really focusing on being
01:28:27 the best possible hundred mile or the best possible marathon. Or you could be, you want
01:28:31 enough overall fitness that you can just do either one of them without absolute misery because you
01:28:36 did the couch to a hundred miles. So I think like for a hundred miles, the biggest difference I think
01:28:42 given your context is just like the more physical things you are doing, the better prepared you’re
01:28:47 going to be for the hundred mile. So it’s almost given your context. I wouldn’t say irrelevant.
01:28:53 You want to be doing running, but you’re going to be doing that. Once you put it in your program,
01:28:56 it sounds like it’s going to be pretty locked in. If you view it this way, it’s probably going to
01:29:04 be more mentally beneficial to where, Hey, today I did my run. I did my body weight exercises. I
01:29:10 did some grappling practice. You know, I spent three hours working out today. If you think of
01:29:16 it like that, then you know, you’re, you’re moving your body, you’re doing things that are active for
01:29:21 a good chunk of the day, especially relative to most people. So that’s going to actually be very
01:29:27 helpful for you. Uh, the, the problem or the, the, the battle to get over is going to just be like
01:29:32 the, you know, you’re going to break down physically running a hundred miles and you’re
01:29:37 gonna break down physically running a marathon too. So like the, you might just have to push
01:29:42 through a little more discomfort, like from a physical standpoint compared to be a few decided
01:29:47 I’m gonna do everything I can in these next like 24 weeks to be able to run a, a full hundred,
01:29:54 a hundred miler. Would you say it’s physical or is it mental discomfort? Like, uh, I mean,
01:30:00 isn’t everything physically uncomfortable? Like what, uh, do you train for if you’re training for
01:30:06 the chaos of, uh, so it’s not necessarily the hundred miles. It’s the chaos of the unexpected,
01:30:11 which might include a hundred miles, but it might also include a thousand pushups in my case. So
01:30:15 like, you need a bit jack of all trades is what you need to be. But also like building up the
01:30:19 confidence or maybe not. I don’t know. How do you survive a thousand pushups? It’s combination of
01:30:27 confidence that you have to know that you can do that kind of thing. Not necessarily the actual
01:30:32 number, but like doing crazy stuff. And the, the second is probably the base strength and endurance
01:30:43 and also just the practicing that process of not quitting. I feel like that’s one of the things I
01:30:49 really need to do in the running space is like doing slightly unpleasant things where I’m
01:30:53 yeah, practicing that, like bringing my mind back and saying, Nope, uh, I’m going to keep doing it.
01:30:59 And part of the running every day has that benefit because some days you really don’t want to feel,
01:31:04 don’t feel like running and doing that. Then you’re practicing that muscle of,
01:31:08 um, of doing it anyway. Um, I don’t know if there’s something you can say in terms of advice,
01:31:14 how to practice the, like doing something unpleasant every day frequently. Yeah. What
01:31:21 I would do with that is I would try to make the unpleasant thing be different from one day to the
01:31:27 next if you can. So the fear I would have with making running unpleasant every time would be,
01:31:35 it becomes like a negative feedback loop in your physiologically potentially as well as mentally,
01:31:41 where if the entire running process is miserable, you’re going to be miserable when you step on that
01:31:48 starting line, whether it’s a marathon or a hundred miles. So you’ve trained yourself that
01:31:51 running equals miserable. Well, and here’s the thing. Like if you look at just like,
01:31:56 here’s where the literature says on paper are like the dozen workouts you should do in a training
01:32:01 plan. And this is how you should structure them right down to the minute. And you just say,
01:32:06 like, I’m going to give everyone this schedule and they’re going to do this every time rinse
01:32:10 and repeat. My biggest concern with that approach is you are potentially putting them in a position
01:32:16 where the training is so boring and so monotonous that like if they hit a roadblock mentally,
01:32:23 they’re going to fall apart very quick because they’ve already exhausted themselves mentally,
01:32:27 just trying to do the same old interval every time doing the same old workout. And it doesn’t
01:32:32 necessarily have to be like one specific plan in its entirety could just be like,
01:32:37 like the, the mix of things within it. So like, rather than like, if I just said, do,
01:32:41 oh, we’re going to do three minute intervals, this entire short interval process or two minute
01:32:46 intervals or four minute intervals or 62nd intervals, you know, by that sixth week,
01:32:51 they might be so sick of that, that they’re not actually maximizing their potential within that
01:32:54 because there’s no flavor there. And, and then they’re also actually getting less out of themselves
01:32:59 than they would if we just got a little more creative and said, okay, let’s mix this up and
01:33:03 let’s do, uh, you know, for one minute intervals, then take a little bit of a break and then we’ll
01:33:09 do three minute intervals or at least changing it up from week to week so that they have something
01:33:12 different showing up, even though we’re addressing the same kind of physiological adaptation.
01:33:17 Uh, so like, I think what you want to do is you want to introduce the misery. You want to be able
01:33:22 to test yourself to the degree where like, when you can recognize these points of, I don’t want
01:33:26 to be here, but I can do it and push through it, but recognize that like, there’s not necessarily
01:33:33 going to be one event that you want to lean on to get that from because you won’t want to make that
01:33:37 one event so miserable that you don’t want to do it when it comes time for the challenge. So
01:33:41 if you can possibly say like, okay, on Tuesdays, the pushup workout, I’m going to go 10 pushups
01:33:48 more than I want to. I’m going to get to that point where I’m like, there’s no more. And then
01:33:51 I’m going to do 10 more and you’re going to make that one miserable. And then maybe on, uh, you
01:33:56 know, Thursdays you decide to do like some of those sprints or something at the end where
01:34:01 you do a few of them and you’re like, okay, this is where I’d be comfortable to stop. Like, well,
01:34:05 I’m going to do two more of them because I know I don’t want to do two more of them,
01:34:07 um, but mix that up. So you’re not, so at least you’re getting enjoyment from some of it and not
01:34:12 just getting complete disgust from the entire process. There’s actually quite a lot of ways
01:34:17 that I can introduce misery into the running, get creative, including, um, you know, even just like
01:34:23 stuff outside of the running, like taking a freezing cold showers, those kinds of things,
01:34:27 just introducing random kind of chaos into the, into the system, um, or having conversations with
01:34:33 people as an introvert. It’s terrifying. More podcasts. So, um, now starting, uh, the training
01:34:43 and, uh, Zach, you’ve been kind enough to also kind of, um, be willing to help me out throughout
01:34:48 this process. So I look forward to where that goes. It’s kind of, uh, fascinating. Um, on the
01:34:53 diet side, you’re, uh, one of, one of the many things that, uh, make you fascinating is, uh,
01:35:00 you’ve played with diet as well and you’re, um, somewhat famous, I would say, for doing low carb
01:35:06 or playing with low carb or meat based diets. Can you describe the potential, like how you’re
01:35:11 thinking about that has evolved and the potential beneficial role of a carnivore diet or keto diet
01:35:17 or a meat based diet in training as an ultra marathon runner? Yeah. And I think like where
01:35:22 a lot of times things get confusing for people here is the context of it too, where it’s like,
01:35:26 they want an answer as to what do I eat for endurance sport? And it’s like, well, endurance
01:35:32 sport is quite wide ranging as we’ve talked about many, many times here. So there’s going to be
01:35:36 differences, I think, in just like what you want to maybe necessarily prioritize, uh, both for the
01:35:42 event you’re doing and the intensity that’s required for it, the training that’s required
01:35:46 for that event. And then also the individual component too, where I think this one often
01:35:50 gets overlooked, where we tend to say like, well, we’ve got all these Olympic medalists
01:35:55 at the marathon and below distance who are, you know, eating a moderate to high carbohydrate diet.
01:36:01 So everyone needs to do that if they want to reach their potential in, you know,
01:36:06 say the three K to the marathon. And, you know, in a perfect world, maybe that would be true,
01:36:12 but there’s a lot of other variables that often get forgotten then that could positively or
01:36:17 negatively impact that decision choice. So I think Dr. Jeff Volk has done a great job of kind of
01:36:22 highlighting this in the sense that, you know, when he works with people, he works with people
01:36:26 in the health sphere as well as the performance sphere. And, you know, he’s one of the main guys
01:36:30 at Virta health who’s, uh, they’ve got like a 60% success rate with working with folks with the
01:36:36 type two diabetes to, um, reverse their type two diabetes. Uh, and I mean, that’s an astounding,
01:36:42 when you, when you think of just any nutritional protocol, its success rate, they’re all incredibly
01:36:47 low. They’re very, very low. And the big difference with his is the coaching aspect of it. Like the
01:36:52 give support. So these people like have someone to turn to when they make a mistake, or if they’re
01:36:56 thinking about doing something differently, or they don’t know what to do rather than just kind
01:37:00 of throwing, throwing it all up in the air and quitting. They, they, they have a resource there.
01:37:04 And that’s probably a big reason why that’s the success rate that they have with that,
01:37:07 is they put those support mechanisms in place. That picture needs to be carried into the
01:37:12 performance world or the running world too, where, you know, we may have just been identifying
01:37:18 that, uh, you know, Olympic distance athletes that can tolerate a very large portion of their diet
01:37:26 coming from carbohydrate is going to just, it’s going to filter those ones towards the Olympics
01:37:31 filter those towards interesting. Yeah. And that doesn’t mean that like, uh, if we would have taken
01:37:38 say the gold medals in the five came, put them on a low carb diet, they’d run faster. They probably
01:37:42 wouldn’t, because we may have already selected that that person’s thriving on carbohydrate.
01:37:45 Uh, what I would be interested in is like, you have, let’s say we have someone with equal talent,
01:37:50 but got weeded out along the way potentially because for whatever reason, they just weren’t
01:37:56 able to tolerate like the, both the training and the nutrition requirements that they’re being told
01:38:00 to do. So the coaches can, there’s a culture where the coaches would really push a carb heavy diet
01:38:04 and that that would in itself would do the filtering process of people that are not,
01:38:11 it would filter out the people that are not able to tolerate carbs as part of their training.
01:38:16 I mean, I might be an example of this actually where, you know, you take someone where, uh,
01:38:20 they, for whatever reason, the carbs aren’t working for them. Like it’s unsustainable for them to
01:38:24 continue that path. Or if they do, they might have a shortened career, so they might be able to eke
01:38:27 out a few really good years, but then, you know, they’re not going to be the person they’re like,
01:38:30 wow, that person’s 38 and they’re still competing at the Olympics type of a person. Uh, and, you
01:38:36 know, you, you, you put them on a low carb diet, uh, if you can control everything else, like their
01:38:41 entire lifestyle is based around training and racing, then, uh, you know, they may still have
01:38:49 better potential by introducing carbohydrates at a higher level. But if that’s not going to,
01:38:55 if that’s not going to be sustainable for them as a person, then, you know,
01:38:59 what’s the point kind of at that, unless they want to be like a kind of a spark in the pan,
01:39:04 so to speak. I just feel good eating meat performance wise. Well, I think there’s that
01:39:09 group too. And they may just not be the Olympians. Yeah. And so we’re not talking,
01:39:15 I guess this conversation has several layers. One is for the Olympics and one is for like,
01:39:22 what is it? Active athletes that are like amateurs, whatever, whatever category I
01:39:28 put myself into, like people that exercise regularly. And then, um, maybe people,
01:39:33 and then there’s people who like exercise rarely. So on all of those fronts, I mean,
01:39:40 do you think it’s possible to live a happy, uh, active life eating meat only or mostly meat?
01:39:48 Yeah. What have you learned about this? Yeah. I think, uh, so for, for some context,
01:39:52 like I followed what I would call a low carbohydrate diet for the last 10 years.
01:39:56 And just like kind of the training, I periodize it to a degree where there are parts of my training
01:40:01 where I do bring back a little more carbohydrate. And there’s periods of my training, especially
01:40:05 like the off season where I’m like very low and I might be like kind of in that ballpark of, uh,
01:40:09 like, you know, ketogenic, strict ketogenic or no carbohydrates for, for periods of time.
01:40:14 And what kind of food are we talking about? What’s a strict low carb diet?
01:40:18 I’ve ranged everywhere from like mostly plant based, low carb keto to like mostly animal based.
01:40:23 I very rarely gone much more than like two weeks strict where it’s like I’m strict carnivore or
01:40:30 strict plant based or anything like that. Like we’re talking probably more like 95%
01:40:35 at the, at the peak. Um, in terms of any type of like, like longer lasting, uh, from my personal
01:40:42 experience of like being like either in like the animal food camp or her, like the plant based camp
01:40:47 kind of a, of a process. Um, so I’ve tried all of them, things that stayed consistent over the 10
01:40:52 years as a kind of the macro nutrient profile that I’ve done throughout the course. So one
01:40:56 didn’t win over the other in terms of meat based versus plant based. Oh, for me, meat based,
01:41:00 definitely. What was, I mean, I was, I was my highest meat consumption in 2019 and that was
01:41:04 by far my best racing season. Yeah. We keep, we keep coming back to that year. That was a good
01:41:08 year for many reasons, philosophically and nutritionally. Yeah. Well in 2020 happened and
01:41:13 now I haven’t had a really good chance to, to, uh, to improve. We’ll see. Hopefully I’ve got some
01:41:18 more, some more in the tank. That’s strange. There’s so most athletes that compete at your level
01:41:23 have more carbs integrated into their diets. So what have you learned about using meat in a high
01:41:29 performance? I think it’s maybe less about the meat and it’s more about like, what are you,
01:41:35 what is it replacing? So if we go, if we step away from like me specifically and just like the people
01:41:43 that, cause I mean, we’re getting to the point where I get it’s anecdotes, but like, like that’s
01:41:47 what we have at the moment. Cause there’s, I mean, there is actually a study being done on, like,
01:41:51 I think I guess they’d call it hypercarnivore where they’re like, I think above 80% of their
01:41:55 intake from meat. Um, and they’re looking at a few different things there, but it’s so weird
01:42:01 and I keep interrupting, but it’s so weird that it sounds unhealthy, uh, hypercarnivore. Yeah. But
01:42:07 it makes me feel really good. So I, that’s the individual thing, right? There’s countless people
01:42:14 now who like, and I’m not saying that they could not have found another route, myself included,
01:42:19 like in 2011, when I switched from moderate to high carbohydrate to low carbohydrate and saw some
01:42:24 very noticeable differences in the way I felt, the way I performed in all this stuff, that doesn’t
01:42:30 mean that there wasn’t another path. I just did not find that path. And the, the, the fact that
01:42:38 I found a path that was producing the results I was looking for is really all that matters in my
01:42:42 mind. You know, like I don’t really care if there was a parallel path that works just as well or,
01:42:46 you know, something like that, because ultimately we only have one shot at everything we’re doing.
01:42:52 So like, it’d be great if I could go back and try four or five different things. Well,
01:42:55 the annoying thing is that the body adjusts to whatever the heck you’re doing. So you can’t,
01:43:00 it’s hard to do good science even on yourself. Yeah. I’ve referenced my 2019 racing season a few
01:43:04 times and it’s like, it’d be silly for me to put all of the emphasis on my nutrition plan for that,
01:43:09 because it’s also comes with two decades of endurance training. So it’s possible and it’s
01:43:14 it’s possible. And it’s very likely that a huge portion of that success was just the culmination
01:43:19 of a lot of work over time from the training side of things. I just think like anytime you hyper
01:43:23 focus on one area or pick a couple of variables and just target those, you find yourself in a
01:43:29 position where you are, you’re putting other things in the most uncharitable light possible.
01:43:35 So, so then you have this situation where like, it’s actually a combination of a variety of
01:43:40 different things. So where are the big movers? And you know, for me, nutritional shift was pretty
01:43:45 clear that that improved my sleep and my recovery. And I mean, people can say, well, there’s the
01:43:51 placebo effect, which is a very real concern. But you know, for me personally, a 10 year placebo
01:43:56 effect would be a quite lengthy placebo effect. And I do think it’s individual, though I emphasize
01:44:03 that a lot because I mean, I’ve worked with tons of people with this and I do see a range from
01:44:07 person to person. I’ve worked with people who come to me and they’re like strict keto and we raise up
01:44:13 their carbohydrates a bit. And they’re like, okay, I feel way better doing it this way. And I’ve worked
01:44:18 with people who they come to me moderate carbohydrate, but they’re interested enough.
01:44:23 They want to try a lower carb. So we, you know, we titrate them down and I’ve had clients where
01:44:28 I’m like, okay, I’m gonna give them this workout. And they’re gonna wish they brought back a little
01:44:32 bit of carbohydrate. And then they go and they nail the workout. And I’m just like baffled that
01:44:36 because because they’re different from me. And every time, you know, when you have your own
01:44:39 personal experience, the first guttural response is, oh, if I had done it, it would have gone this
01:44:45 way. Why did it go the complete opposite way for them? And you kind of have to just kind of step
01:44:48 out of your own perspective a bit and say like, okay, well they’re different, you know, for
01:44:53 whatever reason they’re getting, getting along like this. I’ve had like several moments in my
01:44:58 life where you kind of realize the body is weird and it’s weirder than the average advice. Like
01:45:04 one of them is how well I perform for my own standards when I fast. First of all, intellectually,
01:45:12 but that’s more known and understandable. But like physically, the fact that I could train,
01:45:18 like not eat 20 hours, 24 hours, and then do a hard like jiu jitsu session for like two hours,
01:45:26 like hard. It’s incredible to me. Like this makes no sense. Cause I used to eat like many times a
01:45:33 day. Of course you have to eat, like you don’t want to eat too close to the training session
01:45:37 was my thinking, but you definitely need to load up on carbs like three hours before they can,
01:45:41 in order to have enough energy. The fact that I could not eat and have like incredible focus,
01:45:47 but also athleticism, like both endurance and explosive. I mean, jiu jitsu is a special thing.
01:45:54 It’s like more like chess. It’s not like powerlifting, no, not powerlifting, Olympic
01:45:58 lifting, where it’s like true explosiveness, but that’s fascinating. And it makes me wonder like,
01:46:04 what other things are there to discover about yourself? The annoying thing about food is it’s
01:46:11 delicious. And so it’s hard to do good science on yourself, like to do, you know, for two weeks or
01:46:17 a month to do like strict no carbs. And then maybe next month you add 20 grams or 40 grams of carbs
01:46:25 and see how you actually feel. Not like in that moment, but over a period of several weeks and
01:46:31 then doing everything else right with based on best available science, like with electrolytes
01:46:36 and then vitamins, but then also like remove all the humans from your life that affect you
01:46:41 positively or negatively. Cause you might feel amazing because you’re hanging out with cool
01:46:45 people and then, you know, like removing basically all the variables. It’s kind of fascinating. And
01:46:51 you kind of, all of us land in a place where we find something that worked for us. And then we
01:46:57 maybe use some of the placebo effect to help us out, to stick in that place. And then I suppose
01:47:03 that’s the way to live life. I guess it’s impossible to find the optimal for any of us,
01:47:07 but carnivore is an interesting new kind of caveat, a new challenge to the nutritional community,
01:47:16 because more and more people seem to be doing well under carnivore.
01:47:19 Yeah. Well, the nutrition community is probably like, we just got done like dealing with the
01:47:24 vegans and now we got this opposite end of the spectrum coming at us. But I think, well, I mean,
01:47:28 what this all tells, what this all tells me is like, there is a, for one, like in our food
01:47:35 environment, like the failure rate of any one approach at a population level is going to be
01:47:41 incredibly high. I mean, it’s why we have, you know, what is it like 88% of the population has
01:47:46 some sort of like metabolic syndrome. And it’s, it’s like, you know, it’s because there’s an
01:47:50 endless quantity of everything that you can get your hands on for relatively cheap. And I think
01:47:56 that’s, that, that presents a problem. If your mindset is going to be, we need this set of
01:48:02 parameters for nutrition and everyone needs to adhere to that or you’re wrong. And it’s like,
01:48:07 well tell that to the person who like went carnivore and cleared up some like crazy skin
01:48:13 ailment or something like that. That’s a weird one. Like where the carnivore seems to treat like,
01:48:19 like depression, like mental stuff. It’s fascinating. There’s all these stories. Again,
01:48:25 it’s anecdotes, but it’s like the mental one, I think may, I’m stepping out a bit on a limb here,
01:48:31 but I want to say like some of the research of Dominic DiAgostino and Jeff Volokh was looking at
01:48:37 the ketogenic diet, which of carnivore diet is basically going to be a part of a ketogenic. I
01:48:43 mean, you could always go like way too high on the protein, I guess, but most people that I see
01:48:48 doing carnivore, they’re cognizant enough that at least if they’re doing it for therapeutic reasons,
01:48:54 they’re not going like, you know, 50% protein, 50%. They’re more like 70, 30, 80, 20, something
01:49:00 like that. And, and I think like you, you do see some, some work with like the brain. So the mental
01:49:07 stuff, I know some of the, I’m not sure if this was part of the DARPA funding that, that Dr.
01:49:13 Dominic DiAgostino had where they were looking at things like mental stuff, like post traumatic
01:49:18 stress disorder and that sort of stuff with, with like a strict ketogenic diet. So I wonder if some
01:49:22 of that, like the depression related stuff has to do with that, where now like their body is just
01:49:26 fueling their brain differently than maybe they were in the past, but that’s just, you know,
01:49:31 wild guesses on my part. And I’m deviating from the conversation, but like, no, that’s brilliant.
01:49:36 In terms of your own story on food, can you say something? I think we were kind of referring to
01:49:42 diet broadly. Can you say something about how you like to fuel your like, whether it’s race or great
01:49:50 training sessions, like maybe the day before, let’s go even that far during, and maybe a few
01:49:58 hours after. Okay. It’ll be a little different for racing than it will be for like a big workout,
01:50:04 just because the interesting thing about ultra running is just like, you never do the race even
01:50:08 like most endurance races, you’re going to cover the distance. You’re going to replicate the race
01:50:11 almost up to it in training. Whereas with a hundred miles, you can’t, you might replicate a
01:50:16 third of it. So, so I’ll do, I’ll walk you through kind of my approach for, for like a hundred mile
01:50:21 race. And I can tell you maybe what I would do differently on like a training day. But yeah, so
01:50:26 for where, where the community is an agreement is that you do want to be very good at burning fat
01:50:33 for ultra marathons. I mean, there’s just like the intensity is low. If your, if your ratios are
01:50:38 skewed very high towards carbohydrate metabolism, then you’re going to have to defend your muscle
01:50:47 glycogen through tons of carbohydrate consumption. And that’s just going to be very hard to do over
01:50:52 the course of an entire day, even at low intensities. So it’s a fuel tank thing. I mean,
01:50:56 it’s like your, your leanest endurance athletes have way more fat than they do. Glycogen stores.
01:51:01 When you’re doing the low intensity performance, you want to be burning high levels of fat and
01:51:05 sparing that muscle glycogen. What I tend to do is I want to start the race burning really high
01:51:11 levels of fat. So I’m going to, I’ll maybe have some carbohydrate the night before for dinner,
01:51:15 but then I’m going to lean into the overnight fast breakfast the morning of I’m going to stay
01:51:20 away from carbohydrates for a hundred mile or anyway. And I’m going to have something like
01:51:25 something that’s pretty like a high energy, low volume. So like I’ll do like an S fuels, a life
01:51:33 bar. They’ve got like, what’s in an S fuel life bar? Are we talking about carbs or we’re talking
01:51:38 about protein fat and protein? Yeah. Fat protein bar. And then they make some awesome. Yeah. So
01:51:45 it’s, it’s not as low carb. Yep. Yeah. They make S fuels makes a whole product line. That’s like
01:51:49 kind of positioned for a low carb athlete. So they have some products on their lineup that
01:51:55 offers some carbohydrate, which is perfect for me because I do introduce some carbohydrate on
01:51:59 racing and some of my bigger training sessions and things, but the majority of their products are
01:52:04 low carb. So like they have like, you know how you get like the powders that you put into like your
01:52:09 drinks that are like high carbohydrate, you know, sports products. They make a version of that.
01:52:13 That’s like fat based. Oh, cool. That you can mix in with water. Yep. Cool. Yeah. So they’ve got
01:52:19 like a creamer version and then a fruity flavored version. So you can like replicate the taste and
01:52:23 the feel of drinking like a, like, you know, a sports drink. Science is awesome. I know it is.
01:52:27 Well, and that’s so much of it too, cause people are always like, well, I don’t know. I just,
01:52:30 I just like to have my Gatorade or whatever. It’s like, well, you can have it now. It just,
01:52:35 it won’t have all that. So you can bring that kind of thing with you. Yeah. So I’m leaning
01:52:39 on a lot of those like kind of liquid calories, like those low volume, high energy fat protein
01:52:45 stuff the morning of so that when I start the race, my body’s going to be encouraged to start
01:52:48 out burning high levels of fat. Once I get going probably about 45 minutes in, I’ll start introducing
01:52:55 small amounts of carbohydrate. So at that point, my body’s been revving pretty high fat metabolism
01:53:01 and by introducing some carbohydrate in the context of the, you know, let’s say my a hundred
01:53:06 mile, uh, personal record, you know, I’m, I’m running approximately nine miles every hour.
01:53:12 So I’m probably going through about a thousand calories in an hour’s time. Uh, I’m going to
01:53:17 start just like defending muscle glycogen by burning super high levels of fat at the heart
01:53:23 rate I would do for that. I’m probably burning somewhere between 80, 90% fat, you know, 12 hours
01:53:28 of that you can chip away at your muscle glycogen, uh, to the point where you don’t necessarily want
01:53:32 to go zero carb. So I’m basically just trying to defend what I know I’m going to be burning from
01:53:37 the carbohydrate side of that 80 to 90% fat, 10 to 20% carbohydrate by taking in like, usually,
01:53:44 you know, I’ve gone as low as about 15 grams of carbohydrate per hour and as high as 40 grams.
01:53:49 Um, and the reality is somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot, but 40, I can get away
01:53:54 without any digestion issues. So I’m not really concerned pushing up to that during a race since
01:53:59 I’m only concerned about performance on that day, the carbs, the problem, or is it fiber?
01:54:05 Oh, from going above 40 grams or just cause you mentioned digestion issues. Like one of the things
01:54:10 for me, like one of the cool things about fatty protein protein and fat is like my stomach just
01:54:16 feels way better. So like carbs introduce like bloating and just not feeling great.
01:54:22 Yeah. And I think the funny thing is like, if you look at the position paper for ultra marathon
01:54:27 single day events and it’s, you know, it’s very limited in the sense that then it’s not anyone’s
01:54:31 fault. It’s just, we don’t have a lot of great research on a hundred mile race. It’s really hard
01:54:34 to study what’s going on when someone’s running a hundred miles, but they’ll say moderate carbohydrate
01:54:40 diet is recommended, but they’ll also say that it’s like something like 60% of participants are
01:54:45 going to report some sort of like digestion issue during the event. So then it kind of becomes an
01:54:49 issue of, do you want to flip that coin? Do you want to flip that coin and be the 40%.
01:54:53 Right. Exactly. So for me, what I found is like, I can push up to 40 grams without getting any
01:55:00 digestion issues. Um, do I need 40 grams? Probably not, at least not based on kind of the numbers
01:55:07 that would be like, uh, that, that I would see on, like if I went and actually got a,
01:55:12 like a metabolic heart test or something like that. Um, but it’s possible. I mean,
01:55:15 if I had a really good race that I would get close to burning that per hour, um, most folks that are
01:55:20 following a moderate high carbohydrate diet are going to be recommended to do like 50 to 70 grams
01:55:24 during a single day ultra marathon events. And you’ll see some, you know, some recommendations
01:55:29 of up to like a hundred grams, uh, not so much for ultra marathons, but just in general, from
01:55:34 like a performance standpoint, which I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s like application
01:55:38 versus like what you can do in a lab for one hour is going to be a lot different, especially when
01:55:43 you’re stretching out distances well past that. And you, you, there’s, there’s, I’m diverting a
01:55:49 little here, but I mean, there’s like an approach of like training your gut so you can like be able
01:55:53 to tolerate that much carbohydrate, which you can do, and you may have to, if you’re going to follow
01:55:57 a high carbohydrate diet. But again, we go back to that practicality standpoint of if you’re a
01:56:02 professional Olympian who’s living and breathing performance and you’re burning two to three times,
01:56:08 you’re messing, resting metabolic rate on some days, like you, you may be able to actually
01:56:15 consume a hundred grams of carbohydrate per hour during your training sessions and, and just,
01:56:20 you know, barely stay on top of your nutritional needs. Most people who are running ultra marathons
01:56:24 aren’t going to be, you know, probably training much past 10 hours per week. And they’re probably
01:56:30 not going to have the, I’ll call it their, a dietary budget to tolerate a hundred grams of
01:56:35 carbohydrate consumption during their workouts and still be able to stay healthy. And, you know,
01:56:40 so I think that’s kind of like a, a bit of a, of a non, a non starter for the majority of people,
01:56:46 unless we want to talk about like a tiny percentage of the 1% of top performers.
01:56:51 So maybe you can talk about the training, like fueling yourself during training as well.
01:56:55 Is there, and also as part of that, is it possible to train mostly fasted?
01:57:02 Because as a side comment, let me just say, I like, again, not anywhere, not even like one
01:57:10 10th of your level of performance, but you know, I, I try to push myself and I just feel much better
01:57:15 when I’m fasted. So water and maybe some salt for longer runs for anything over like 10, 15 miles,
01:57:21 but not no food. Yeah. I think, I mean, I like to train on an empty stomach. I do most of my,
01:57:27 my biggest training session usually in the morning. And it usually what will determine
01:57:30 whether I eat something or not before that is like, how much do I need to eat that day in order
01:57:33 to stay on top of it, to build training in the next day. So I’ll, I’ll, I’ll usually do something
01:57:38 similar to what I do before a race. If I need to kind of stay on top of calories for the day. So
01:57:42 I’m not like at noon with like no calorie intake and like 5,000 calories to try to consume before
01:57:48 I go to bed that night and get out and do the same thing the next day. But yeah, I think if I were,
01:57:54 if I were doing what you’re doing, like if that were my lifestyle, I think I would do almost all
01:58:00 my runs fasted. I don’t see why I would be eating a lot before it because it’s like I’m just
01:58:05 introducing something that could, especially if you’re noticing, like here’s what I’d say.
01:58:11 If I was doing that and I was like, wow, this run sucks. And then I introduced something beforehand
01:58:15 and now my run was feeling great and my progress was getting better. That’s when I would maybe
01:58:19 consider having something before. But if you’re running both of those, those like self experiments,
01:58:24 you’re noticing, yeah, if I eat something before I go on this workout, the workouts less enjoyable,
01:58:28 I’m not noticing any, any increased improvements on it. Again, it’s a little messy. Like we said
01:58:33 before, it’s hard to really, you can’t go back and try it a different way on that specific day.
01:58:37 But I think, I think most people, if they’re just like, they go at it with like no bias in the sense
01:58:43 that they’re like trying to make one work versus the other, you can get at least a good enough look
01:58:48 at it. And if absolute peak performance in one activity, one very specific activity isn’t your
01:58:55 goal, then it’s like, do you really care if one has a 2% performance increase that you won’t even
01:59:01 probably notice because there’s other variables that will clearly overpower that 2% one way or
01:59:06 the other. And there’s some benefit in terms of freedom and letting go of like having to think
01:59:11 about some of these variables. I see sort of fasting as even if it’s like a hit on the performance,
01:59:17 it’s worth it to just not think about it. There’s some really nice aspect to just putting on shoes,
01:59:23 not caring like what shorts you wear or like what your outfit is, like not being optimal
01:59:29 in every way and just not caring and just enjoying the purity of just running no matter what.
01:59:35 Just enjoying the natural aspect. There’s a side to me that sometimes just like craves a lifestyle
01:59:40 where it’s like I have like such a small house and only what I need and just like a handful of
01:59:48 food products I know I enjoy and work well for me and I don’t even have the distraction of the other
01:59:52 stuff. There’s almost like a weight that comes off your shoulders when you think even just thinking
01:59:58 about it like it’s so simple. So the reason I’m mostly a minimalist like that, the reason I have
02:00:03 stuff is I realize like you probably have to fit into society and if you want to have other people
02:00:08 in your life you should probably get used to having stuff because most people like stuff.
02:00:14 Right. Well yeah there’s that side of it too and there’s a whole, you don’t want to ostracize
02:00:20 yourself too much and I think anything you can kind of like you can manipulate that a little
02:00:24 bit where there’s things that are like not specific to, that’s going to negatively impact
02:00:30 the people around you or your experiences with them. So there’s a balance like everything I guess.
02:00:35 Yeah I mean that’s why I drink, I think I mentioned you offline, drink vodka, whiskey,
02:00:40 sort of alcohol because I don’t feel good about it the day after or sometimes multiple days after
02:00:49 so I know it’s not good for me. So I do a lot of stuff that’s good for me, everything we talked
02:00:53 about exercise and diet and all those kinds of things but the alcohol almost symbolizes
02:00:58 embracing the chaos of life, the wild and the amazing things that could happen and I think
02:01:03 that’s really important because if you optimize everything about life then you’re going to miss
02:01:10 most of the fun stuff that happens in life. So it’s not all about the optimization, it’s some of it
02:01:16 like everyone has different things and what they, how they introduce that chaos in a controlled way.
02:01:21 For me alcohol is that because I’m okay drinking not too much so I can control that aspect even
02:01:28 though it’s unhealthy it introduces just the right amount of fun that I embrace it.
02:01:34 Yeah and I mean it is one of those things where it’s like I’m going to benefit now and pay later
02:01:38 a little bit too where like and hey if you go and you go out with some friends and drink and you
02:01:45 have memories that last a lifetime from that experience and you paid for it for a couple
02:01:49 days after then hey maybe that’s a fair trade off from a life experience.
02:01:52 And part of the vodka thing is I need to honor my ancestors so it’s like you have to you know you
02:01:59 can’t you can’t turn your back on your past. Let me ask about the 100 mile world record on the
02:02:08 treadmill. So for most people running a treadmill is really boring so that’s kind of their experience
02:02:16 of it that’s probably the first thing that would say that seems like really boring to run 100 miles
02:02:20 in a treadmill. Would you say it’s boring? Like what were some places your mind went to make that
02:02:27 happen? So this one is interesting to me because I definitely recognized the boredom and the
02:02:33 difference. The thing that the question I can’t quite answer I think with it is like could I have
02:02:39 remedied that with better preparation because the scenario that put me on a treadmill for 100 miles
02:02:44 was you know it was March 2020 basically the cascade of every race on the planet got cancelled
02:02:51 and I was in a position where I was going to be doing a runnable 100 miler on a track in
02:02:59 mid to late April so I had like the majority of my training under my belt so I was like kind of
02:03:03 putting the finishing touches on that and I was like oh great here we are like you know what do
02:03:08 I do with this fitness? Do I just scale back and hope the events come back in fall and then peak
02:03:13 again or do I find something to use this fitness for? And the treadmill was the closest thing to
02:03:19 what I had been training for in terms of just like a mechanical like flat running essentially
02:03:23 that I could think of and my thought was okay well I’ll just live stream myself on a treadmill
02:03:31 and see what happens. It ended up turning into like a quite a big event. So you don’t usually
02:03:36 incorporate treadmill running into your running into your training? I don’t not incorporate it.
02:03:41 I just don’t incorporate it in the way that would be necessarily conducive to uh you know dealing
02:03:46 with the mental aspects of being on a treadmill for 100 miles. Was it that different than running
02:03:51 on a track? It was from the sense that here’s the way I describe it is when I’m on a track it’s a
02:03:55 controlled environment and everything can be very uniform but there are tiny little micro adjustments
02:04:02 and pace that that I’m doing subconsciously that give me the sense of control. Right. No I might
02:04:08 run the exact same split but there’s like a fraction of a second or you know a fraction
02:04:13 second faster than a fraction of seconds slower that equals the same outcome. It gives you that
02:04:17 sense of control. You’re determining how fast you’re going. On a treadmill you’re responding
02:04:22 to the belt so the advantage is you can set a pace and know you’re hitting it. The disadvantage is
02:04:27 you’re being told what to do by that machine and that gets very frustrating. I’ve felt like I wanted
02:04:32 to step off like you get to like certain points where you’re just like like even stepping off
02:04:37 what I noticed I learned this on the day of actually I noticed there’s something where it
02:04:41 didn’t really matter how long I get off like I get off to use the bathroom and that was a little
02:04:44 bit of a longer break. Then I had like a hiccup during my event where we ran so much power through
02:04:52 one end of the house that the screen on the treadmill was blacking out. So I ended up jumping
02:04:58 back and forth on treadmills for quite a bit in the beginning and I noticed even turning it off
02:05:03 stepping on the other and starting the other one up gave me like you know a handful of seconds
02:05:06 between was enough of a mental break of just like that release of being told what to do to reset.
02:05:12 So maybe if you were in the future you would figure out what exactly how much is needed to
02:05:17 have that mental break. I never actually thought about that that I mean obviously for you but also
02:05:21 for people like me like amateur runners that that’s a source of frustration with the treadmill
02:05:26 that there’s sometimes small adjustments in pace that we do running not on the treadmill on the
02:05:33 ground that feel like essential. Just like you said that experience of control like
02:05:41 feeling like you’re in control somehow that’s really I don’t know that’s somehow liberating
02:05:46 in the way that a treadmill can be just the source of frustration. The funny thing though
02:05:51 about the treadmill is I actually like to do faster workouts on the treadmill like long intervals or
02:05:57 something like that or tempo runs because for that type of stuff sometimes for those I want
02:06:02 to release the brainpower required to hit that pace and say you take care of that and for that
02:06:07 it’s fun but those are over quick so you don’t really run into the times. Yeah that’s fascinating
02:06:11 for like precise control of pace. You’ve also during that stream got to interact one of the
02:06:18 greatest athletes of all time, Berg Kreischer. What’s your he’s actually doing I don’t know
02:06:22 if you’re paying attention to this but I guess he has a goal of running 2,000 miles this year. Yeah.
02:06:27 I’ve got a chance to talk to Joe Rogan yesterday about this which is fascinating. I think he’s a
02:06:33 little bit doubtful of Bert’s ability to be the ultra performer that he so naturally is. Yeah.
02:06:41 What’s your thoughts about Bert as a runner? What’s your advice to him and what was your
02:06:46 interaction like as part of this treadmill challenge with him? I love Bert because he’s
02:06:50 such a nice person. I mean as a guy who’s just accelerated in popularity over the last few years
02:06:57 like he is like super kind so for folks who are curious like I’ve met Bert a couple years earlier
02:07:04 and I just randomly asked him like hey I’m doing this live stream thing we’re doing it for fight
02:07:08 for the forgotten we’re trying to raise some funds for them would you want to come on the live
02:07:12 stream for a bit and I thought maybe he’d come off like five or ten minutes and I thought that’d
02:07:16 be amazing if he did that he ended up coming on for like over an hour he said he went past his slot
02:07:20 sat in the next slot and just started talking with some of the other guests it’s just he’s just
02:07:25 like Bert is definitely like I feel like he’s as unchanged from like his popularity as one can get
02:07:32 away with and it’s just like his his lifestyle I think is very unpredictable in the sense that like
02:07:40 if he wants to run like x time for a specific race that’s going to pull away from his lifestyle so
02:07:47 much to focus on that luckily for him he’s actually a great athlete like you it’s it’s under that layer
02:07:53 of uh of fat yeah so for people who are not familiar Bert Kresch is a comedian who takes off
02:07:58 his shirt often has he’s a uh uh elegant layer of fat around him he’s also a party animal so he’s a
02:08:06 weird balance of like healthy and unhealthy yeah so he drinks a lot during I think there’s some
02:08:14 debate about that but certainly after his uh his performances but at the same time he’s into kind of
02:08:20 the running thing and he does quite a bit of treadmill running I think so and like I said
02:08:25 has this challenge of running 2000 miles this year so it’s fascinating to have somebody who
02:08:30 so fully embraces life and the full joys of life as represented by the huge amounts of drinking and
02:08:37 partying and just being a wild man but also at the same time like being at least curious about this
02:08:45 challenging yourself in the physical realm it’s kind of fascinating it reminds me of um one of
02:08:51 my favorite comedians like Eddie Izzard who’s been doing those challenges basically off the
02:08:56 couch just running um a marathon a day kind of thing it’s fascinating to see the purity of those
02:09:04 challenges when like exercise hasn’t necessarily been deeply ingrained in your life and you kind
02:09:10 of just embrace the challenge anyway and take it on and that’s another way of looking at it
02:09:16 because we’ve been talking about running as a a performance like optimization thing where training
02:09:22 is such a huge part of this process like race day is just the cherry on top but there’s for some
02:09:28 people where the race is the cake yeah it’s like they just take it on as a pure challenge as the
02:09:33 as the as the thing you haven’t really trained for as the thing you haven’t you don’t understand
02:09:38 the intricacies of but you take it on anyway and that that reveals something about the human spirit
02:09:43 as well yeah and there’s definitely like a switch that flips when you in your mind is saying
02:09:48 i’m going to do this where then all of a sudden it goes from like you stop thinking about oh that’s
02:09:52 not possible to like well i’m just going to do it and i think Burt highlights that perfectly in a
02:09:56 lot of cases where like he’s he’s maybe not even thinking it through enough to get to the point
02:10:01 where it’s like he gets the point where he thinks this is not possible where most people would look
02:10:05 at it and think huh i don’t know if i can actually physically accomplish that task Burt’s just like
02:10:09 oh yeah i’m gonna do it and my my thought with Burt was the 2000 mile thing where he’s like
02:10:14 yeah i’m gonna do it and my my thought with Burt was the 2000 mile thing is where are we gonna find
02:10:19 him at the end of the year with like 36 hours to go on 100 miles and that’s right that’s right
02:10:24 that’s what’s gonna happen and it’s going to be hilarious uh so speaking of things that are insane
02:10:31 and like taking on challenges that don’t seem like you didn’t you didn’t think through uh
02:10:38 uh you’re thinking about running across the country in in a challenge you call the transcontinental
02:10:46 run can you describe this challenge and what the heck you’re thinking yeah yeah so this is uh you
02:10:52 know one thing that is exciting about ultra marathons i think in a lot of places especially
02:10:56 early in someone’s ultra marathon adventure if they decide to do that as a you know part of their
02:11:01 life is you have like these early years where you’re doing things for the first time and it’s
02:11:05 like so cool and scary at the same time to think today i’m gonna run 100 miles and the first ever
02:11:11 run before is 50 or something like that and you just know you’re gonna do something that you’ve
02:11:15 never done before you’re gonna experience things you would have never been able to predict
02:11:19 and it’s like this really interesting unique like human experience i think so for me i’ve
02:11:26 spent most of my career at this point like doing i got through that phase and a lot of the events
02:11:30 i’m really interested in and then it was like now let’s repeat it and see if we can do it better
02:11:34 and you get into that mindset for a while which is also a fun mindset but there is that kind of
02:11:39 like uh desire to kind of have that human experience again of like you know not knowing
02:11:45 what could happen or is this doable type of a thing but still doing it and figuring it out
02:11:49 along the way so i would describe the transcontinental project as something like that it’s
02:11:53 not anything unique to me or anything new there’s been a lot of people who’ve done it before
02:11:57 but essentially it’s a route there’s different routes there’s one kind of main one that’s done
02:12:01 for like the that is used as the record route more or less that you go from san francisco to
02:12:06 new york and essentially you live out of an rv uh while you’re running so you run as much as you
02:12:11 can during the day then you go to bed at night and then you get up and do it again and you’re
02:12:16 you’re handling all the logistics and the process of trying to make sure you can get up the next day
02:12:22 and do again what you did the day before which is going to be the biggest difference so for me
02:12:26 i’ve done all single day ultra marathons where you’re going to wring yourself dry at knowing the
02:12:32 next day or week or however long you need you’re going to be able to just kind of like shut
02:12:35 everything down and let everything catch back up whereas with this like you know you’re doing it
02:12:39 again and again again yeah and you know the record is by a guy named p costa who averaged just over
02:12:44 72 miles a day finished in 42 days six hours and 30 minutes and i mean just like 72 miles 73 miles
02:12:50 and then like next day again next day again just knowing every day when you finish you spend a whole
02:12:55 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
02:12:58 this again and then you know have that happen for six weeks and that’s if it goes very well
02:13:04 so luck i assume is a big part of this yeah for sure i mean there’s just so many variables that
02:13:08 are uncontrollable on this type of an experience just because i mean you go over the sierras maybe
02:13:12 you hit a storm you know you try to time it most people do it in sep start in september so you
02:13:18 can get over the mountain passes without a big storm coming through uh but then also get to the
02:13:23 east coast before it’s like the middle of winter so like september early september start is kind
02:13:28 of ideal but you can you know i mean pete was very fortunate from a weather standpoint i think
02:13:33 he made one big mistake he got a little too aggressive beginning had to take a full day off
02:13:36 so he actually averaged from a moving day standpoint closer to 75 miles per day um but
02:13:42 yeah i mean there’s going to be things that i can’t prepare for won’t know it’s going to happen
02:13:47 you know a lot of that will get a lot of the logistical stuff will get leaned on with the crew
02:13:51 so that’s i mean that’s the hardest part right now is just like getting all that put together
02:13:56 where it’s like okay i need to have the rv ready i need to have all the stuff and we need to have
02:14:00 the places figured out where we’re going to stop and and the people that can you know dedicate
02:14:05 that much time to an activity like that you know there’s a lot of moving parts even before you
02:14:09 start the adventure itself when are you see you’re taking the san francisco to new york yeah and when
02:14:14 are you doing the the run september 1st is when uh you know barring anything like catastrophic
02:14:20 between now and then it’s really exciting but i mean this is incredible so you you’ll probably
02:14:24 have a bunch of people just randomly running with you are people going to be tracking where you’re
02:14:28 located yeah so i’ll be documenting everything because i mean my hope is that i’m doing it
02:14:32 primarily to raise awareness for fight for the forgotten justin wren’s charity uh but with that
02:14:37 said i think i am capable of uh if i have a good experience uh you know chasing the record or going
02:14:44 after the record or at least getting close to it so oh shit so you’re gonna try to beat this record
02:14:49 yeah i’m gonna i’m gonna go out with the i’m gonna structure the process in a way that leaves
02:14:54 that door open is the way i would describe it i’m gonna try not to do anything that would potentially
02:15:00 put it in a situation where that becomes the primary goal just because i want to make sure
02:15:04 that the reason i decided to do in the first place was for fight for the forgotten so i want
02:15:08 to make sure that i don’t end up two thirds of the way across the country with a broken leg and i’m
02:15:13 like hey guys uh i guess the donation button’s turned off so focus on like don’t sacrifice that
02:15:20 right that goal but also there’s a community aspect to it that i feel like are you going to
02:15:27 i mean so you’re going to document and post yeah but are you going to also is there a safety
02:15:34 perspective here it’s like the forest gum thing you might have large numbers of crowds that run
02:15:39 along with you for a while yeah are you worried about that kind of thing i wouldn’t say i’m
02:15:43 worried about i mean i think there’s probably there’s remote enough spots along the way where
02:15:47 you’ll get some alone time more more likely i don’t necessarily mind if people want to jump in
02:15:52 there’ll there’ll be some people that will definitely want to do that and and they can come
02:15:56 in and but the reality is like it’s probably not going to be a scenario where there’s like
02:16:01 you know 40 people following me at all times you say that now yeah you never know just wait for
02:16:06 this podcast yeah and then if joe finds out you’re doing this then we’re in trouble all right so um
02:16:13 i mean what are the things that you think will be the hardest for you and also like how do you
02:16:18 train for this kind of thing um and what yeah what are the hardest things you anticipate how do you
02:16:25 train for them yeah so the way i’m looking at this is it’s much less about performance from
02:16:30 the traditional sense where i need to be able to be x fit i think i need to be injury proof that’s
02:16:37 what’s going to be a detriment if you think about it like if i manage to average nine minute mile
02:16:43 pace for a day that would be 80 miles in a 12 hour time frame so i’ll easily have 12 hours
02:16:51 of moving time per day um nine minute pace i think is slow enough that it’s not an unreasonable clip
02:16:57 so like when you i mean obviously there’s things that slow you down or i’ll probably take walking
02:17:03 breaks you know stopping breaks you got to stay on top of nutrition that’s the other big thing too i’m
02:17:07 you know probably eating like anywhere between 10 to 15 000 calories a day which is you know i can
02:17:11 probably count on my hand a couple of occasions where i’ve eaten that much in my life so now i
02:17:15 got to do that for six plus weeks in a row and you don’t want any having a stomach problem i’m
02:17:19 trying to try to minimize the amount of stomach problems so you would you estimate about 12 to 13
02:17:25 to 14 hours of running every day yeah that’s probably like from from the first step to the
02:17:29 last step it’ll probably be somewhere around like say 14 hours 13 hours or something like that would
02:17:35 be a pretty good estimate and then getting rest and so and then minimizing the risk of injury
02:17:40 which could be as small as like like literally uneven surfaces resulting to like stepping the
02:17:46 wrong way i mean that’s going to be a lot of steps yeah yeah uh huh so the probability of injury are
02:17:51 you worried about that kind of stuff is can you strengthen the ankles or those kinds of things
02:17:55 that prevent yeah possibility of injury and that’s that’s where i’m putting a lot of my focus in is
02:18:01 i think like just being running fit is going to be like generally speaking is going to be
02:18:07 important i’m going to i think just from a lifetime of running is going to be a huge advantage
02:18:12 a lot of these like kind of like mechanical movements are going to be very established
02:18:16 it’s just going to be about can i tolerate that volume of it there i think that i’m doing more
02:18:21 strength work i think this is something where it’s like you know maybe adding five pounds of
02:18:25 lower body muscle is going to be an advantage versus a disadvantage when you’re looking at
02:18:29 power weight ratio because i just don’t really don’t i don’t i never need to be running a 648
02:18:33 mile for this adventure um and i so i’m looking at that i’m doing a lot more of that stuff focusing
02:18:40 on that the training is changing a fair bit where it’s more polarizing versus kind of being
02:18:46 i mean i’ve always had some polarization in my training but this is even to an extreme where
02:18:50 like i’m going to do some simulations where uh you know i go out and do two or three days where i
02:18:55 target the exact thing i will be doing on the transcon you were on instagram posting about
02:19:00 these simulated runs so you legitimately like trying to perfectly copy what would happen in
02:19:05 one two or three day segment on that run yeah just to kind of start to weed out where are the
02:19:11 potential problems so let’s say i do a two or three day simulation where i’m averaging 70 miles a day
02:19:18 and i find out at the end of three days there’s a really weak spot here um i need to address that or
02:19:23 i need to find a way to make that not a weak spot i think that’s the only way to really get as close
02:19:28 as you can to avoiding injury have you done that yet have you done a two day 70 mile like even that’s
02:19:33 incredibly difficult i haven’t yet i’m going to build up to it because that’s the other thing too
02:19:37 is like i don’t think you want to be so aggressive with that where you get injured trying to figure
02:19:41 out how not to get injured uh so i’ll i’ll what i’m going to start what i just started last week
02:19:47 is i’ve uh it looks really weird on my training schedule because like last week i ran almost 150
02:19:52 miles but i took two days off so it’s like usually for me to get to 150 miles that’s a seven day
02:19:57 training week uh so that’s the way i’m doing it like i did i did a day where i did uh you know
02:20:02 two like just over 20 milers separated with by just a couple hours and within that couple hours
02:20:08 i did like a three mile walk the following morning i woke up and ran i think it was like
02:20:12 just over 36 miles first thing in the morning just to get an idea of just like kind of like
02:20:17 what is it like to be i mean this was in phoenix too so it was 100 degrees for the majority of that
02:20:21 just suffer then rest yeah suffer again how that feels there’s enough precedent with this sort of
02:20:27 an activity where like everyone i’ve talked to so far has told me like there is going to be like
02:20:32 this kind of like gradual decline in the early stages where you’re just like okay it’s getting
02:20:36 worse it’s getting worse it’s getting worse and you hit a point where you’re just like it hits
02:20:41 kind of rock bottom and then like it starts to kind of gradually improve so you kind of have to
02:20:46 let yourself get it’s weird i think i can maybe eliminate i’m trying to find a way to eliminate
02:20:52 some of that by doing the simulations whereas i from what i’ve seen i haven’t seen a lot of people
02:20:57 do the simulation route yet i’ve seen people just do like a lot of training and then say like okay
02:21:02 i’ll spend the first seven to ten days adapting to this and then i’ll get comfortable within this
02:21:07 environment and be fine whereas i’m going to try to get to a point where like some of that is
02:21:13 already kind of cleared up before i start but not so much that i’m like adding like an extra
02:21:16 central week to the trip with worth of running what do you think will be the hardest simulator
02:21:22 run leading up to like will you do three days yeah i think i’ll probably try to do three days
02:21:28 somewhere between 70 and 80 miles each will be kind of like the goal will that be in august do
02:21:32 you think how close to yeah i would like it to be in august like early august would be ideal i think
02:21:37 like maybe the first week in august because that gives me kind of three weeks to let things kind
02:21:40 of settle down from that but then it’s crazy this is incredible it’s it’s actually interesting
02:21:46 because like if i did let’s say i did the simulation now um the problem with that is
02:21:50 like the adaptations from just like the breakdown and the strengthening would likely be gone unless
02:21:55 i did it again uh so i want to inch up to it so that like and get close enough to the starting
02:22:02 date so that i’m still kind of like you know holding on to that adaptation when i start it
02:22:07 so then those first few days maybe aren’t quite as miserable and you said uh if everything goes
02:22:12 amazing and you’re challenging the record it’ll be like a 42 day run yeah so that’s what the record
02:22:18 is almost exactly six weeks and that’s at 72 and a half miles per day so will you be posting online
02:22:23 and like yeah instagram’s gonna be a big one i think i might do a few like youtube stuff along
02:22:28 the way too um yeah i’m still ironing out exactly how much i think at minimum i’ll do i’ll do some
02:22:35 instagram stuff i think i’ll go live on instagram a few times during the day when i take like walking
02:22:39 breaks uh partly just to kind of i think keeping people i mean it stays true to the the goal of
02:22:45 raising awareness but it also i find when you bring people in there is an added pressure to
02:22:52 that but there’s also this sense that i’ve learned from the treadmill experience since we had like
02:22:57 a pretty big production for that in the sense that i mean as much as you can turn on a camera
02:23:01 in your own house but like the i remember thinking we had like 30 people lined up to
02:23:07 come in and guest speak during that and there’s points of that where i was like you know you get
02:23:12 that voice we talked about the beginning where it’s like you know maybe you could quit like
02:23:15 you really need to run 100 miles on a treadmill is this really going to be valuable for you
02:23:19 and then you think about oh you know what there’s uh you know courtney dewalter one of the best
02:23:23 female ultra runners to ever exist is taken in the 30 minutes to an hour out of her day
02:23:29 to come on in two hours to you know help me you know amplify this event and do i really want to
02:23:36 be sending emails out to these people saying hey guys i know you were gracious enough to
02:23:39 block out time of your day you know i think there’s a little bit of that to do where you’re
02:23:43 like you’re you’re you’re jumping in with the community that is following along and saying
02:23:47 here’s how things are going show them the best the worst and everything between and then ultimately
02:23:52 have that hold you accountable a little bit too it’s like hard to get up in the morning and not
02:23:55 go back out i don’t know how you are but i had to uh whenever i did any kind of physical stuff
02:24:01 like the 48 hour challenge or just any kind of running i hated turning on the camera yeah i hated
02:24:08 it like because you have to like smile and be friendly and stuff oh i’m just gonna be super
02:24:13 miserable if i’m miserable well that’s it so like exactly in some sense that’s what people
02:24:20 you know we’re gonna get a happy zac or an angry exactly it’s like you’re making bets
02:24:24 and i’m sure there’ll be some days maybe not many maybe very few where you’re truly happy with
02:24:31 yourself like for some weird ecstatic reason maybe if you get over the hump whatever that you mentioned
02:24:38 that this dip i mean it’s it’s fascinating how many how much suffering this actually entails
02:24:44 i wonder well and one thing i’m gonna definitely try to leverage to my advantage and one of the
02:24:50 reasons why i think fight for the forgotten was the charity that really triggered me to decide to
02:24:55 do this the transcontinental route was something i learned about early in my ultra running career
02:25:00 and i thought to myself i want to do that someday but it was one of those kind of far off distance
02:25:04 things that had never really like actualized in your mind until you put a date down or
02:25:08 you know mention it on the joe rogan experience or something like that
02:25:11 when then it then it’s like people want to know when is this happening and uh um you know what i
02:25:17 try to think about is you know the reason justin identified the pygmy tribe was because they were
02:25:23 super forgotten where you know we think about just like some of these third world countries where
02:25:29 it’s a scenario of like some people it’s easy for us here in the us to think to ourselves well why
02:25:34 don’t they just industrialize why don’t they just like you know start to innovate a bit why are they
02:25:39 so primitive what’s wrong with them and in reality like when you take uh when you scale things down
02:25:45 to the degree where you need the entire day because of the situation you’re in just to take
02:25:52 care of your basic needs of water and food you never get the opportunity to even build a real
02:25:57 like establishment or you know a build on that like you need you need the free time or you need
02:26:03 a portion of your population to have the free time available to innovate and the pygmy tribe just
02:26:08 hadn’t had that historically in fact they weren’t even considered humans by like the local government
02:26:12 for quite some time and you know the people that really pay the price in some of these situations
02:26:17 are the women because they’re the ones that get saddled with like the water gathering and things
02:26:21 like that so the reason that justin picked wells to build was because he thought to himself if we
02:26:26 can get them wells then now these women don’t spend all day walking and carrying water now they
02:26:32 can just get that water and now we have half the population freed up for other things now maybe they
02:26:36 can start farms they can build some housing and stuff like that and it just it exponentially
02:26:41 improves once you take care of some of those big key early things so when i’m thinking about like
02:26:47 you know do i really need to go out here and travel another 12 hours a day my mind is going
02:26:51 to hopefully go to well if one of those women woke up in the pygmy tribe one morning deciding you
02:26:55 know what do i really need to go get water today well yeah you do you really do have to yeah you’re
02:27:00 running for that uh huh yeah and that that will give you fuel hopefully but yeah yeah i mean the
02:27:07 reality is always there where i don’t have to do it like they do have to do it so you know but i
02:27:12 think just keeping that perspective it it puts us back to the beginning where it’s this is one of
02:27:20 those situations where i think it’s like uh a no quit situation you have to put yourself in a no
02:27:25 quit situation here because it’s uh you know it’s just bigger than you i can’t wait to see like the
02:27:31 dark places you go i mean there’s some yeah the the quit situations and hopefully we get to have
02:27:38 a glimpse of those because i think those are really inspiring when somebody is uh both gets
02:27:44 broken by them because you know how tough you are but also is almost broken and overcomes it i mean
02:27:49 that’s just fascinating stories i can’t wait i i know does joan know you’re doing this by the way
02:27:55 yeah i sent him i sent him a note a while back because he was the first spot i mentioned it on
02:27:59 so i think he knows i’m not sure if he’s following along about the exact starting date or not you will
02:28:03 know this is great you probably think you’re a crazy uh mfr for doing this but uh i think you
02:28:11 love it and i think i love it and i think the world will love it ridiculous question who’s the
02:28:16 greatest endurance runner or endurance athlete of all time oh that’s a good question um i think
02:28:25 i’d probably go maybe two directions here uh i think uh heli geber lassie is one of the best
02:28:36 in my opinion because just i mean 27 world records like like not all the different distance but like
02:28:46 braking and rebraking and that sort of stuff um i mean he ran two what was it 203
02:28:52 359 before the shoe technology came in that is estimated at anywhere between a two to eight
02:28:58 percent performance advantage i’m talking about a two hour marathon 203 yep two hour three minutes
02:29:04 yeah so he did that with the old shoe technology which uh essentially dates back to anything if
02:29:10 if you were a nike athlete it could date back to as early as i think early 2016 is when the first
02:29:16 prototype started showing up uh so if you’re before that in your career you were using you’re
02:29:21 guaranteed to be using the old shoe technology um and i mean just the range of it too and uh
02:29:27 yeah it’s it’s hard i mean there’s there it’s uh is he a marathon runner purely
02:29:32 no he did everything that’s why i pick him i think because he he he went everywhere
02:29:36 everything from the 800 and is like at a national level yeah at a national level i don’t he wasn’t
02:29:40 competing at like olympics or anything in the 800 but he was he was mostly like 5k to marathon
02:29:46 um yeah yeah so just incredible i mean i i could go a totally different direction too i think like
02:29:52 steve prefontaine stands out in as an american runner just because if you look at it outside
02:29:57 of just like performances and stuff like that i think um he basically like you can’t find an
02:30:06 american male runner who probably didn’t get some motivation or some catalyst into their running
02:30:13 journey from a prefontaine story or what would you say is inspiring about prefontaine uh like from the
02:30:19 philosophy from the technique from his story uh i think there’s a few things i mean there’s a lot
02:30:24 of things which is why he is who he is it’s uh one was just his attitude about it where um he wasn’t
02:30:30 like this picture ask runner uh i mean he was obviously talented but you know you have the
02:30:36 perfect story of like he wanted to be good at something you like most american kids tried
02:30:40 football was no hard work was gonna get prefontaine starting in varsity for football starts running
02:30:47 fell in love with the mile uh his college coach told him no you’re not gonna be a miler you’re
02:30:52 gonna be a 5k guy and he popularized the 5k in the united states or three mile in some cases
02:30:57 and uh i mean he the way he would race i think is what really made him interesting for folks
02:31:03 where he would he was just like all guts runner where he’s like he’s like i mean one of his famous
02:31:08 quotes was like if you if you beat me you’re gonna have to bleed to do it because he’s gonna be an
02:31:12 all guts race in in a sport where it gets very tactical at times especially at the like national
02:31:18 or i shouldn’t say national but at the like competition level the championship level where
02:31:23 it’s like kind of more of a sit and kick approach a lot of times where everyone’s kind of waiting
02:31:26 for someone to make a move like pre was gonna make a move really early yeah so this idea of
02:31:30 leading from the front which i guess is tactically really a bad idea well from a
02:31:36 from a running a pr standpoint it’s a bad idea in most cases but so a race i guess is not just about
02:31:45 the pr so race winning in a lot of cases and that’s what he thought was going to put him in
02:31:49 the best advantage to win i think it’s just the run from the front i mean what what do you because
02:31:53 you mentioned this uh the 100 mile you ran you were in second place and then in 90s you were
02:32:00 able to get to the first place how hard is it to run when you’re in first place you know i think
02:32:06 this is really different some people thrive under it where it’s like for them i mean like i talked
02:32:11 about jim walsh before i think he loves being in the front if he’s in the front he loves it that’s
02:32:15 where he’s excited that’s where he knows he’s he’s doing what he’s doing where he’s pushing his limits
02:32:20 and things like that uh pre was probably the same way and i think there’s other folks who are much
02:32:25 more comfortable kind of saying let’s let things settle down here a little bit and then i’ll make
02:32:30 my move when it’s time to make my move or they think of it as and this is a very important i
02:32:35 think lesson for for the average ultra runner is just like knowing what you’re capable of
02:32:40 is going to be an important piece to the puzzle because you can like you you you can try to say
02:32:47 i want to run faster than i’m capable of in an early part of a hundred miler but then you’re
02:32:52 going to pay for it at the end so really unless you’re trying to go for the win and that’s a
02:32:56 tactic that you think is going to produce a win versus trying to run your fastest time you got
02:33:00 to run within yourself within your parameters obviously there’s a big question about where
02:33:04 those parameters are in a lot of cases which makes ultra marathon even more interesting because it’s
02:33:08 like there’s so much unknown about it it’s like well maybe you can go faster and we just don’t
02:33:12 know yet so there’s in the face of that uncertainty there’s something admirable like it was with
02:33:17 prefontaine where you take the risk and run faster than you know you you think you might be able to
02:33:25 run in terms of pace that you can hold so push the pace that’s possible yeah explore the unknown
02:33:32 explore it’s like a pioneer spirit right yeah you know the next frontier kind of a thing but
02:33:37 i mean prefontaine also there’s other angles with him too where he was like in the amateur era where
02:33:42 to be an olympian you couldn’t be pro so he’s turning down i mean the guy was on food stamps
02:33:47 and living in a trailer because he wanted to run at the olympics and there was a lot of like
02:33:52 politics involved with not being able to take take sponsorship money and things like that which
02:33:56 has changed since then but so he was huge in the movement for that to kind of like you know have a
02:34:03 situation where now as an athlete you can finish in most cases finish college sign a big contract
02:34:09 with you know a sponsor and then also still compete in the olympic games and go to the events
02:34:14 that are actually ones that are going to likely catapult your career and most of the olympic
02:34:18 distance endurance events so so he just revolutionized the sport and then to add even
02:34:22 more flavor to the whole thing i mean he died a very premature death he got a car accident and
02:34:27 died before he would have likely probably medaled at the olympics so he and there is a tragedy the
02:34:33 fact that he didn’t yeah well he was fourth place at the olympics the prior his first go of it and
02:34:40 it was kind of one of those things where it’s like fourth place at the olympics is the first man
02:34:44 looking out of the first woman looking out and for a guy that had as much hype as him i think
02:34:48 like a medal was something he really wanted to take home with him there and especially how that
02:34:52 race went i mean yeah i don’t know it’s it’s it’s tragic the whole thing but that’s one of the things
02:34:58 that makes olympics amazing is the tragedy of it like one race decides the story of a lifetime which
02:35:04 is like yeah that’s why it’s that’s why it’s amazing even if a lot of people get hurt because of it
02:35:12 tragedy makes the the triumph special right yeah and well it makes i mean it makes life
02:35:19 like a movie almost exactly you know if everything’s all sunshine and rainbows then
02:35:23 it’s not as entertaining to watch yeah there’s no adversity to overcome you mentioned shoe technology
02:35:28 how much has shoe technology advanced through the past few decades how much has it changed running
02:35:34 generally but also running like ultra marathon running i would say an ultra running it’s had
02:35:41 much of a less of an impact because ultra running is still heavily skewed towards the trails so the
02:35:49 technology at least from what we know isn’t necessarily translating over to these like
02:35:53 massive varied terrain certainly not the technical terrain and things like that now on road races
02:35:57 flat stuff like the track stuff the roads the run i guess you a runnable trail um where it’s
02:36:03 like basically crushed limestone more or less uh you definitely get an advantage from it it’s uh
02:36:08 and essentially what what happened um is in this probably dated back actually before 2015 uh you
02:36:16 know nike decided well their their their uh development team uh was ahead of the curve they’ve
02:36:24 developed this new foam they call like a pibak foam uh and they they realized that like when you
02:36:30 step down into a shoe the reason like uh racers a lot of times would wear these flats because they’re
02:36:35 trying to take out any of that lost energy into the foam in the shoe well this foam that nike
02:36:41 came out with is so good that it actually returns way more energy than the average foam did to the
02:36:47 point where like when they test these things on like force plate treadmills and things like that
02:36:51 it’s like a depending on the person’s gait and some of things like a two to eight percent
02:36:55 improvement in performance i mean we’ve seen records just across the board get broken since
02:37:00 this came out all distances basically yeah yeah i i think from at least from the 5k up through
02:37:07 the marathon and i mean we’ve seen some insane improvements in the marathon i think like uh the
02:37:13 women’s marathon went from what was considered relatively untouchable like 216 to a 214 and
02:37:20 i mean like it was like 218 was like just world class like if you could run a 218 marathon as a
02:37:26 woman that was like i mean it still is to a degree but then you know now you have someone run a 214
02:37:31 like that’s a huge and you attributed a lot of that to the the shoe yeah yeah i think there’s
02:37:36 probably other things that come in mind too like now that people know there’s a performance
02:37:40 advantage from a mechanical standpoint it’s also a confidence thing where it’s like oh now i can
02:37:44 probably try going five seconds per mile faster and maybe they could have anyway and they just
02:37:48 now they think they can so they are so there’s probably a little bit of that that’s just adding
02:37:52 to it do you think there’s a lot of extra innovation that’s still possible like what yeah
02:37:57 if you could do this kind of big leap uh with a little innovation of foam is there other stuff
02:38:02 that you can do or further innovation materials that make up the foam yeah so they can definitely
02:38:07 go much more advantage they put a cap on it essentially so there was a there’s also a carbon
02:38:12 plate element to this too where they put like this carbon plate in there in between the foam
02:38:16 so like i believe when when kipchiki broke well when they did that that kind of uh uh the sub
02:38:24 two hour project he actually had on a shoe if i’m not mistaken that never got to market because
02:38:30 they put down some parameters on it after uh before it that one came to market where it was
02:38:35 actually like stacked up to i can’t remember how many millimeters it was an insane amount and they
02:38:40 had like i think maybe even three layer plates in there and that was a nike shoe he was wearing yeah
02:38:44 yeah so what makes it kind of controversial or difficult is nike came out with these prototypes
02:38:50 so a prototype for people don’t understand shoes like these these companies they’ll develop a shoe
02:38:55 and it usually takes like somewhere in the neighborhood of like probably 18 months to hit
02:38:59 the market so if you’re like a sponsored athlete or work for the company you can get your hands
02:39:05 on these shoes before they actually come to market so we had an issue i think this wasn’t
02:39:09 necessarily as big of an issue in the ultra running community but uh in the track and field olympic
02:39:14 distance stuff was a big issue because you had nike athletes having these prototype shoes before
02:39:20 anyone could get them and then you had athletes were sponsored by these other brands who couldn’t
02:39:24 wear them even if even when they did come to market so then we had this like chase to catch up
02:39:29 where uh other companies are starting to make their own version of it and now we’re getting to
02:39:34 a point where most companies have a version of that shoe um but we had a huge transition phase
02:39:41 that impacted the olympics big time i mean think of here here’s a here’s an example of it uh there’s
02:39:47 a there was a an athlete cara goucher um she was not she was a nike athlete wasn’t uh when they
02:39:55 came out with this shoe and she ran the olympic trial marathon and got fourth place the first
02:40:01 person out and uh two of the people had ever had that shoe on and she was maybe a minute or two like
02:40:07 i’d have to look to see exactly but it was within the the performance advantage range and so you
02:40:12 could argue that she was the first person in modern running to lose an olympic spot due to
02:40:17 a technological disadvantage wow and and it’s like i mean it’s one of those yeah i mean it’s one of
02:40:24 those things where like um it’s it’s a transition right so there’s gonna be bumpy road and there’s
02:40:30 gonna be people that get caught in that transition that it’s unfortunate for but it’s also like uh
02:40:36 you know once everything does catch up and every shoe company has a version of this there’s still
02:40:41 problems i mean these are incredibly expensive shoes it’s like a 250 shoe so it’s like at what
02:40:46 point do you tell like a wealthy family with a high school kid that you know you can get that
02:40:51 250 shoe but then you go and this kid’s family can barely afford a pair of shoes for them much
02:40:55 less a 250 parachute like where do we draw that line and that sort of stuff um also just here’s
02:41:03 the other big one like let’s i mean two to eight percent is a massive range what if you’re on the
02:41:07 two percent versus someone’s on the eight percent you know chances are if you’re you know blowing
02:41:12 a record out of the water you’re probably closer to that high end percentage versus someone who’s
02:41:16 maybe getting incremental gains you’re probably closer to that lower end so is it fair to have
02:41:21 a piece of equipment that has that big of a range when we’re talking about less than a percent
02:41:25 determining these races when all is held constant those are fascinating like philosophical questions
02:41:30 that i think it’s nice to solve that for the shoe or to raise those questions for a shoe
02:41:35 because the more complicated place where they will be raised is probably like genetics
02:41:40 genetic engineering all those kinds of things yeah it’ll get a lot more complicated so it’s
02:41:45 nice when you have like a particular piece of technology that’s just like right there it’s
02:41:49 a shoe we can understand it we can study it right we may be coming on the precipice of like
02:41:55 human powered sport performance is no longer being something that we like look at as this
02:41:59 like pinnacle of uh like i guess i don’t maybe entertainment’s the wrong word but like is that
02:42:05 a pursuit you know do we end up just going a different direction i mean i think it’s like
02:42:10 it’s so hard for us to think about that right now because it’s so part of like the culture
02:42:14 and the lifestyle of the average person where like sport is a hobby of theirs as well as a
02:42:19 passion to follow and it’s like how complicated does it need to get before people lose that
02:42:25 interest and and there could be a future where most of the olympics is esports somebody told me
02:42:31 that esports is in the olympics i’ve been meaning to look this up which is you know like what video
02:42:36 so video games are in the olympics yeah yeah it could be as like a trial that they’re doing um
02:42:44 yeah if this is true i’m trying in real time look it up but if this esports joining olympics in 2024
02:42:51 wow so that could be just a that could be a fun side thing but it could be a first step into a
02:42:59 complete transformation what sports mean yeah because you can control video games better than
02:43:03 you control for genetics and humans well and in reality we’ve been dealing with this problem in
02:43:09 other areas just with the performance enhancing side of things with drugs and all that stuff too
02:43:14 and anyway that that conversation’s flared back up with track and field too where we are seeing a lot
02:43:19 of records get broken a lot of it probably is to shoot technology but you know in 2020 with the
02:43:23 covid stuff you have all these out of competition testing protocols that a lot of these top tier
02:43:28 olympic athletes are getting uh to try to eliminate like if you just do inter competition
02:43:34 testing like there’s potential for people to do things that are uh going to give them a
02:43:40 performance advantage but not going to show up on that test on the day of or after their race where
02:43:45 now you have these like limitations of being able to test so do we have a like a group of athletes
02:43:50 now who decide oh i’m not going to get tested in 2020 do the covid restrictions this is the time
02:43:54 to dope up and then you know hit some stride and some records and then you taper back off when they
02:43:59 get this thing fired back up again and so there may be some of that as well and i mean that’s
02:44:03 always been an ongoing problem and yeah so the boost you get from performance enhancing drugs
02:44:07 could be tying you relative to the stuff we have in the future right yeah so you might be the last
02:44:11 generation of like natural unmodified humans that were running and who knows maybe that’s already
02:44:19 over who knows who’s who’s modified that that’s that’s true you might we might be living through
02:44:25 that transition to the new nike shoe but broadly defined yeah so you’ll be uh in some sense in in
02:44:33 the history books as uh humans used to run without any modifications they used to destroy their body
02:44:40 and let it recover and then do it again and they used to be impressed with a with an 11 hour
02:44:46 an 100 mile time when we could do it in under an hour now yeah yeah so uh but nevertheless it
02:44:54 is incredible the four mile the four minute mile was incredibly impressive uh the i really love
02:45:01 the 11 hour mark for the 100 miler and the two hour marathon by most people um for the longest
02:45:09 time will start to be impossible you know there’s still people that think it’s impossible with under
02:45:14 certain constraints so uh uh eliot kipchoge of kenya as you mentioned ran a one hour 59 minute
02:45:23 40 second marathon but he had like you said the prototype shoes and he had the the the pace
02:45:32 setters yeah i don’t know how essential that is but it seems quite essential do you think it’s
02:45:37 possible first of all what do you think about that accomplishment uh and he is one of the greatest if
02:45:43 not the greatest marathon runners of all time what do you think about that accomplishment and
02:45:47 do you think it’s possible to run a two hour marathon without any assistance yeah i mean
02:45:53 i think yeah there’s no question about it regardless of technology he’s world class if
02:45:57 not the best um the i think he i think he could go under two or someone equivalent to him could
02:46:06 go under two hours with with the shoe technology probably what it’ll take is it’ll take a fast
02:46:14 course a course that has like very few tangents because like you know turning on a course they
02:46:20 estimate adds about a percent to the to the distance so you know when we’re talking about
02:46:25 a marathon you’re getting up to like a quarter mile extra running you know that alone could
02:46:29 potentially put you down near near too flat based on what you know we’re seeing because i mean
02:46:34 kip jaggi he’s got a was it 201 40 i believe is his actual world record where it’s actually like
02:46:41 you know certified so i mean he’s right on the door knocking knocking on the door there um yeah
02:46:47 the prototype he had since then they put in a regulation where you can’t stack a shoe for the
02:46:51 roads more than 40 millimeters so you can only have so much of that energy returning foam and
02:46:56 you can only have i think one carbon plate in there now uh so that puts a little bit of a
02:47:02 ceiling on that technological thing uh but but who knows what else will come out that and and
02:47:08 and to be honest who comes out with it because the fact that nike came out with this technology
02:47:13 is the reason why it’s being allowed to be used if that would have been like you know another
02:47:17 running company that that came out with it i’m sure the the regulations would have been slapped
02:47:22 down on it immediately and they would have probably just thrown it out all together would
02:47:25 have been this politics yeah oh yeah well and i mean it’s it you can go you can go super like
02:47:32 you know negative with that and say like hey like this is like this is terrible or this is like super
02:47:37 nefarious when in reality it’s like you know you have a company that has you know billions of
02:47:43 dollars and is interested enough in the sport that otherwise doesn’t generate a ton of revenue
02:47:48 to you know pick up a big tab and support like uh you know track and field and things like that but
02:47:55 you know with that you know you you want to be the guy who says yeah thanks for the millions
02:48:00 and millions of dollars but we’re gonna all those years and money you spent on that phone
02:48:06 yeah you wasted it we’re not gonna let you use it but you know if you’re another company who uh
02:48:11 you know revolutionizes the sport in potentially a negative way uh you know maybe maybe you say no
02:48:17 to them so it gets interesting that’s the way that’s how it always happens yeah yeah there’s
02:48:21 really no way around i think phil mephiton i think it’s him that he wrote a book about a
02:48:25 two hour marathon what are the limits how fast could we run and i think he puts it like an hour
02:48:30 and 42 minutes something like that or 40 something minutes it’s kind of interesting question uh of
02:48:35 what are the limits uh do you think do you think we’ll just keep pushing the limits of what humans
02:48:41 are capable of in the ultras in the marathon is this just like the way yeah the uh the way of
02:48:48 sport i think ultra for sure because that is a vastly growing sport and it’s there’s
02:48:56 there’s a lot of potential for much bigger popular much pool bigger pool of like talent to pull from
02:49:02 uh that could really push the needle down on some of these performances and things like that
02:49:07 uh especially as it becomes more popular if if people start realizing or i shouldn’t say realizing
02:49:13 but if a scenario happens where like oh i’m one of the best endurance athletes in the world i make
02:49:17 more money running ultra marathons than i do running the marathon then you know all of a
02:49:21 sudden we see every record get broken in a matter of a couple of years uh but the the for the marathon
02:49:29 i mean it’s gonna get faster i think but like to what degree is so hard to know it’s very hard to
02:49:35 know and the one hour and 40 minutes seems like that’s pretty fast yes that’s very fast i mean
02:49:40 for folks for some perspective there the current world record is like in the 440s per mile per mile
02:49:47 like just to add a little flavor to that you’re basically sprinting yeah i mean go out to a track
02:49:53 and run one lap as fast as you can and then reflect on what time you get and realize like
02:49:59 the world record for the marathon is that is that lap at just over 70 seconds per lap so a minute
02:50:07 and 10 just over that but you’re doing it 26.2 miles so so over a hundred times it’s mind boggling
02:50:15 but watching elliot kipchoge just first of all he was like smiling at the end of it so the there’s
02:50:20 an extreme efficiency here too so he’s not he’s able to just find the right way to maximize yeah
02:50:28 maximize efficiency it makes it look easy i mean that that’s true for basically every olympic
02:50:33 athlete when you watch gymnasts they kind of make it look easy yeah but there’s like tens if not
02:50:40 hundreds of thousands of hours behind that training yeah just to be comfortable enough to even attempt
02:50:45 some of the moves they do in gymnastics is mind boggling that one is super awesome because uh
02:50:50 how tragic it is like one little slip up yeah four years of work and your route it’s all gone
02:50:57 not just four years of work for many of them a lifetime a lifetime of work and they’re teenagers
02:51:02 and they’re teenagers and they get dedicated everything to it that’s that’s what makes the
02:51:08 pursuits of humans so fascinating we kind of talked about this a little bit already but
02:51:14 is there something that stands out to you as one of the hardest things you’ve had to overcome
02:51:19 in all the either training or the competing that you’ve done has there been moments that
02:51:23 kind of stand out where you’re proud of yourself that that you were truly tested and you overcame
02:51:30 it i think i’d be more inclined just because it stands out to me much bigger than any one like
02:51:36 hard decision or outcome i had from a particular race is just like the trajectory of like you know
02:51:43 doing what i’m doing now is so much different from what i would have ever expected uh you know
02:51:49 i mean i was a talented enough runner where i could make the state meet by my senior year at a
02:51:54 small division three school and you know compete at a division three college and be pretty modest
02:52:00 talent comparative to my to my peers at the top level of division three to think that like i’d be
02:52:06 doing anything that was revolved around running as as an occupation is is uh i still second guess
02:52:13 that that’s actually occurring makes me wonder about the whole simulation theory thing it’s like
02:52:18 who’s got my joystick and exactly uh but they got cheat codes yeah exactly yeah because i mean i
02:52:25 went to school to be a teacher and i really loved that profession i taught for about five years and
02:52:28 then i got to a point where you know some of it’s just perfect timing too like the sport gained
02:52:33 enough popularity where there’s enough money in it where like i could start a coaching business i
02:52:36 could get sponsorships and things like that and actually look at it and say financially i can make
02:52:41 a go of this or at least risk it but there’s such a fine line between like deciding to do that or
02:52:48 kind of staying comfortable because uh i mean i was at the perfect teaching spot for me i was at
02:52:53 this uh like project based learning school and just outside of madison wisconsin loved it um one
02:52:59 of the hardest decisions my life to make was to step away from that to pursue running and more
02:53:02 holistically um and i mean i almost didn’t i had a co teacher who was uh i was thinking myself i
02:53:08 knew that was like a decision i was gonna have to make the next few years but it was such an easy
02:53:12 decision to say well wait one more year and he was just like he was a little more of a free spirit
02:53:16 than i was certainly at the time he’s like dude what are you waiting for just go why are you here
02:53:21 like like after i told him that he like every time we’d we’d i’d come into i’d come into school the
02:53:26 next day and he’d be like why are you still here but i mean that was there’s a tongue in cheek for
02:53:31 sure but uh but it’s hard to know that you’re going to be successful right in that kind of
02:53:35 leap given your like you know because it’s easier when you’re like an ultra performer early on but
02:53:43 to have the faith that you can accomplish something in some regards it’s a blessing in the sense that
02:53:48 like uh you know failing would have been fairly predictable right whereas if like you know i always
02:53:56 wonder i mean i think of these like especially the big sports like baseball football and basketball
02:54:01 and you get you know guys who guys and girls who are like identified in like early high school as
02:54:08 being the next and it’s like what kind of pressure is that to think like well if i’m not like literally
02:54:16 one of the best players in the nba in 10 years i failed yeah it’s just mind boggling to think if
02:54:20 i’m not one of the best at one of the most competitive sports on the planet in what is an
02:54:25 athletic i think an athletic state of an nba basketball player is probably one of the most
02:54:30 athletic human beings on the planet and to know like at in a teenage year that your your your
02:54:36 your success bar is being the best one of the best in the league or the best ever and that
02:54:41 conversation is floating around everywhere you look and see versus being able to kind of quietly
02:54:46 fail and go back to teaching this makes it a little more digestible i think you have a little
02:54:51 bit of more freedom to be great right nobody’s expecting you to be right uh is there from that
02:54:57 is there advice you can give to young people today high schoolers college students taking on
02:55:04 trying to figure out their career trying to figure out their life advice on how to succeed in either
02:55:10 yeah i think uh you know one thing i was always interested when i was teaching was like you’d
02:55:14 have these you’d have students who had like interests they had what they were good at and
02:55:19 sometimes those ran in in unison with one another other times they didn’t and it was always
02:55:24 interesting to me when you’d have a student who’s like i’m really into like you know guitar or i’m
02:55:30 really into skateboarding or something like that where it’s like pretty small like success rate on
02:55:35 that avenue versus what you could maybe accomplish by focusing on just something like a little more
02:55:40 standard and i think like really like besides the likelihood of it becoming something you can turn
02:55:48 into a profession or not you should just ask yourself like is this something that i want to
02:55:52 spend my free time doing uh and because if it is then you want to keep that in your life because
02:55:59 that’s something that’s rewarding motivating it might be the catalyst that gets you out of
02:56:02 bed in the morning and you know go to another job in order to go do that thing afterwards and i think
02:56:06 nowadays we’re getting to a point where like the your reach ability from even a really small like
02:56:16 unmonetized thing previously is now an option where if like you live in a city where there’s
02:56:22 only two other people interested in your topic of area so you’re not gonna be able to turn into a
02:56:25 job now with the internet you have the world at your disposal so that two to three people in every
02:56:31 town can turn into thousands tens of thousands hundreds of millions of people and if you
02:56:35 really focus your time and energy into that thing then you know who knows where you can go and how
02:56:40 much more enjoyable your life can be if you’re able to turn your career into a passion of yours
02:56:43 so i think like that is something i would tell tell people um focus on that see the thing you’re
02:56:50 good at and you kind of sparks that flame and uh go with that even if society doesn’t really want
02:56:57 you to uh like it’s non traditional uh and the odds are low of like traditionally defined success
02:57:06 just do that thing i’ve struggled with that it’s like it was always clear especially like in school
02:57:11 there’s stuff i’m actually good at and stuff that the world wants me to do right yeah and i kept
02:57:16 doing the world wanted me to be a plumber when i took that test my sophomore year but even like
02:57:22 like academically just going to university and uh academia there’s certain ways even in in i would
02:57:29 say even in the thing you want to do the way you do that thing the world will want you to do in a
02:57:35 certain way and even just like finding your way of doing that thing is uh is really powerful like
02:57:41 for me the way i do research the way i learn is is different than colleagues of mine and i realized
02:57:50 i realized that that i really like to follow things i’m passionate about versus sort of the
02:57:55 rigor of studying every like the fundamentals all across the board and building up in castle
02:58:01 um on the fundamentals like layer upon layer just there’s a bunch of details in the way i
02:58:06 pursue the very thing that i currently do that’s different than others and it took me quite a long
02:58:11 time to accept like you don’t need to do it the way everyone else is doing it doesn’t not everyone
02:58:16 else but the majority of people are telling you to do it because one is beneficial to do it
02:58:20 different because then you’ll more likely stand out and two like why the hell are you doing it
02:58:26 the way it’s not working for you yeah yeah you know i saw that all the time when i was teaching
02:58:32 i was dual certified i was my my certifications were in history and broadfield social studies so
02:58:37 like econ uh psychology history all that stuff and then i also had a certification of special
02:58:44 education which was you know people think of special education a lot of times as like oh it’s
02:58:49 the you know the kid who is not smart enough to do the regular thing when reality it’s like
02:58:53 i mean there is some you know there’s obviously like you know like certain things like down
02:58:58 syndrome and stuff like that but like there’s also like a huge population of groups of both
02:59:03 like gifted and talented on one end of the spectrum where they’re incredibly smart and
02:59:08 they’re like the geniuses but for whatever reason the standard method of learning does not click
02:59:13 with them does not work with them and then they just need a slightly different path or maybe
02:59:17 a drastically different path and they’re gonna just flourish and you have kids that end up
02:59:22 falling on the other end where you know maybe it’s really difficult for them to be able to read at
02:59:27 the speed of other students but if you give them this specific direction they can just thrive in
02:59:34 a certain area and just seeing that like the you know like that there’s multiple ways to do stuff
02:59:40 and there’s not necessarily one path to the end is i think such an eye opening thing to learn
02:59:45 especially if you learn maybe that’s what i should answer the question that you asked me with is you
02:59:49 know keep an open mind as to what paths are forward and know that you know maybe just because
02:59:55 even if you look to your left you know to the right and all your classmates are successful
02:59:58 doing it one way it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to be the way for you
03:00:01 yeah so that could lend you in eating a meat based diet running across the country
03:00:05 uh like the the incredible madman that you are zack i’m a huge fan as i told you many times you’re
03:00:10 an inspiration to many i’ll be there checking in every day if you somehow make it out the starting
03:00:16 line on september 1st i know i know joe rogan and millions of others will be as well so i’m excited
03:00:22 to see all the suffering that you’re going to go through i wish you the best of luck and
03:00:25 thank you so much for talking today i really really appreciate it well thanks a bunch of
03:00:29 likes it’s been a an honor to come on your podcast i’ve been a fan of it for uh 10 years
03:00:34 i’ve been a fan of it for uh for quite some time and um i thought about wearing a white suit but
03:00:40 michael malice already took care of that one so it was well and uh i think it’ll be really good
03:00:46 for the ratings of this conversation if you end up dying during that run so i’ll do my best so
03:00:51 the everything that could happen will be positive for for the world you’re saying i should try to
03:00:56 average 100 miles a day 100 miles well i think you’re going to push yourself to again it’s not
03:01:02 a priority but it’s trying to beat that record that’s probably going to take everything you have
03:01:07 and that that that’s truly inspiring i wish you the best of luck man thanks a bunch thanks for
03:01:13 listening to this conversation with zac bitter and thank you to ladder belcampo noom and better help
03:01:21 check them out in the description to support this podcast and now let me leave you with some words
03:01:26 steve prefontaine i’m going to work so that’s a pure guts race at the end and if it is i’m the
03:01:33 only one who can win it thank you for listening and hope to see you next time