Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running | Lex Fridman Podcast #205

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Zach Bitter, ultra marathon runner and coach who held multiple

00:00:05.680 | world records in the 100 mile run and other ultra endurance events. He is currently training for a

00:00:12.240 | run across America which for now is planned for September this year. Like many of the things

00:00:18.480 | Zach has done in the past, this is a big fascinating challenge. Quick mention of our sponsors

00:00:24.960 | Ladder, Valcampo, Noom and BetterHelp. Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

00:00:31.520 | As a side note, let me say that Zach has been advising and coaching me on my own

00:00:36.480 | running journey. I want to mention that Zach sent me some running shoes from Ultra which I think is

00:00:41.840 | a company that sponsors him. When I put those shoes on I feel like Zach is watching me and I get that

00:00:48.080 | extra motivation to make him proud. And by that I mean I want to put a lot of miles on those shoes.

00:00:54.480 | Running is something that has always been difficult for me but I love it because it is difficult.

00:00:59.920 | The hardest part is I'm left alone with my thoughts for one or two hours. Some thoughts

00:01:05.680 | are dark like thinking about mortality, my own and that of others. Some are self-critical like

00:01:12.400 | personal weaknesses or dreams not realized. Some are simply human feelings of loneliness, personal

00:01:20.160 | and existential. And yet there are the moments during a run when all that fades and I'm left

00:01:27.120 | empty of negative thoughts and full of appreciation for the beauty of experience, of nature, life,

00:01:33.120 | the whole thing. This is why I return to running. Not to get in shape but to face myself and to run

00:01:40.720 | through it. That's why I'm inspired by people like Zach and by David Goggins and others like them who

00:01:48.080 | seek to find the limits of their body and mind. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast and here is my

00:01:54.560 | conversation with Zach Bitter. Where does your mind go when you're running an ultra marathon?

00:02:01.840 | Are there a lot of positive thoughts, negative thoughts, demons, inspirational things, maybe

00:02:07.520 | no thoughts at all? - Yeah, that's the really interesting part of the sport I think 'cause

00:02:11.520 | you can, essentially what it is when we're looking at like the hundred mile distance or anything

00:02:15.680 | that's like all day long is you're gonna have the full range or the full spectrum of emotions,

00:02:21.760 | of mental processes, both kind of positive, negative and in between. So it almost feels like

00:02:26.800 | you've lived multiple lives or full life maybe is the way to say it in that one time period.

00:02:34.560 | It's almost like a simulation of what you may experience in a long period of time in a very

00:02:39.440 | condensed period of time. And I think that's just a weird mental process to reflect upon.

00:02:43.920 | And that's what kind of draws people back to it. But I mean, it's a battle too, because if you're

00:02:49.360 | looking at it from a performance standpoint versus an experience, you obviously wanna minimize the

00:02:53.760 | negative mindset stuff. You wanna try to keep those emotions and those thought processes at a

00:02:59.040 | low. And I think when you can keep yourself from letting those thoughts creep in, you end up having

00:03:07.520 | better races and it can spiral in either direction. I noticed like there's kind of like this scenario

00:03:13.440 | that occurs where in the beginning, like a negative thing creeps in your mind, it's like super easy

00:03:17.840 | just to slap it down and say like, "Get out of here. I've did the training, I'm fit, I'm feeling

00:03:22.240 | fresh still. Everything's going well at this point in time." You get a little further along in the

00:03:28.320 | race and you're starting to feel a bit of the fatigue. I mean, a little bit of self-doubt

00:03:32.400 | creeps in. You start asking yourself, "Well, maybe I should have done one more long run or

00:03:36.320 | did I not quite taper long enough?" And those things can kind of spiral into a negative way.

00:03:41.120 | And if you let it keep going, it keeps going all the way to like, "Why am I here? Why am I doing

00:03:48.080 | this? This is stupid." All the way to like, "There's another one of these two weeks from now,

00:03:53.520 | I'm gonna drop out of this one and sign up for that one instead." And then you just find yourself

00:03:56.640 | in the exact same situation. So, you kind of have to go through the process, I think. It's why I

00:04:02.880 | think there's kind of a – I won't say it's a rule of thumb necessarily, but something I think is

00:04:08.560 | fairly valuable is if you do a hundred mile for the first time, make sure you get it done,

00:04:14.320 | even if it means like death marching is what they'll call it in the alternating community,

00:04:19.120 | the end of the race. Just to say like you got that full experience, you experienced the highs,

00:04:23.920 | the lows, the full thing, the starting, the crossing the finish line, that release of emotion

00:04:28.320 | when you're done and all that stuff. So that when you go back to do it again, you have like a

00:04:34.000 | template to build off of and you know – or you just have some data to pull from about how your

00:04:38.720 | mind is gonna work as well as your body so that you can start practicing, "Well, what do I have

00:04:42.400 | to do to kind of keep my mind from spiraling in a negative direction or how do I catch some

00:04:47.920 | positive momentum and kind of keep sending it that way?" And things like that. And that just,

00:04:51.840 | I think, you just add to that over a career of running them or a series of running them and

00:04:57.840 | it sharpens. It's kind of like any sport with that where you always have this balance between

00:05:03.360 | the youthfulness that you may have early in your career versus the wise intelligence that you have

00:05:07.920 | maybe near the end of your career. - So in terms of wisdom, is there mechanisms by which you kind

00:05:13.840 | of observe the negative thoughts and let them go? So you have people like the David Gogginses who

00:05:21.360 | kind of, he seems to almost like separate his mind into, there's the weak David that he hates

00:05:30.480 | and then there's the strong one. I mean, there's like a very contentious relationship there.

00:05:35.040 | So he basically says like, "I refuse to be that person." And he's almost like angry at that

00:05:40.720 | person. It's almost like sometimes literally yelling at that person, the weak version of

00:05:45.120 | themselves. And then there's another more sort of Sam Harris-y approach, which is like just observe

00:05:52.320 | the thought and let it go. Maybe knowing that this too shall pass, like no matter what, this moment

00:06:01.040 | will not last forever and kind of sort of accepting the natural flow of things and taking one step at

00:06:05.440 | a time and allowing whatever the negativity, whatever the pain you're experiencing just to pass,

00:06:10.960 | even if it means a death march. Which one is more effective for you? Which one, like would you say

00:06:17.360 | generally speaking to the population is more effective? Yeah, that's a really good question.

00:06:21.920 | It's probably unique to the individual. I wouldn't argue that David is finding success with his

00:06:28.800 | approach. Some may argue it's an extreme version. Sam has obviously thought about these things and

00:06:35.520 | really probably, I see those guys as kind of two ends of the spectrum in just the way that they

00:06:43.760 | come across in general, where David's really at you, kind of high energy, and Sam's kind of this

00:06:49.040 | calming, soft presence, and he's just going to slowly, methodically lay it all out there.

00:06:53.920 | And I think there's value in both of those. I think most people are probably going to get a

00:06:59.200 | benefit from pulling some from each. I mean, there's times where I need a kick in the ass,

00:07:05.680 | and then it's like have the strong Zach, tell the weak Zach to get moving. But there's also times

00:07:10.720 | where it's just like a subtle voice entering my head about, "I don't know if I feel quite right

00:07:16.960 | now. Should I maybe pull back on the pace?" And I think that little subtle voice is best approached

00:07:24.000 | with a subtle positive voice where it's more like, "Okay, well, let's think this through here for a

00:07:28.240 | second. You're 40 miles into a 100-mile race. You spent four months preparing for it. You know from

00:07:34.960 | the workouts you did that you're ready for this. There really isn't any real reason for you to slow

00:07:40.720 | down or to fall off your goal or your pace or reassess what you're doing. Let's just give this

00:07:47.360 | another mile or two, and then we can reassess if we need to in order to kind of figure out if I'm

00:07:53.120 | doing the right things or not." And I think in that situation, you definitely probably want to

00:07:59.040 | lean more towards the Sam Harris approach with that because there's really no reason to. It's

00:08:02.960 | almost like the same thing you see with just training and even nutrition to a degree where

00:08:08.960 | some folks, they just want to be kind of drilled. They want to be yelled at and said, "Get going.

00:08:15.520 | Get doing this." And that helps and that motivates and that helps them stay accountable.

00:08:19.120 | Other people need some softer love with it where it's like, "This isn't necessarily your fault.

00:08:25.440 | You were put in this environment that kind of created an atmosphere of lethargy and maybe poor

00:08:30.560 | nutritional choices and things like that." But it's correctable. So we need to step away from

00:08:37.680 | that and we need to kind of start heading in the direction that we know is going to bear fruit down

00:08:41.520 | the road. And that person may respond better to that. So I think both those guys have great value

00:08:47.760 | with their approaches. They're just probably polar ends of the spectrum. And I think most

00:08:52.080 | people are probably going to benefit, like anything, right? You get the polarizing ones,

00:08:55.520 | and those are going to work great for the polarizing people. But then most people are

00:08:58.560 | going to fit somewhere in the middle. So they're probably going to be able to kind of pull from

00:09:02.560 | both of those if they're able to sit down and kind of assess which one's going to work better

00:09:06.400 | in which situation. - So the quitting thing that you mentioned,

00:09:09.200 | like the final stage, which actually I get to much quicker than you seem to, which is like,

00:09:15.120 | why am I doing this? I get there with basically anything I do. It's like, this is probably the

00:09:23.120 | stupidest thing I've ever done is the feeling I get often. And then immediately you have these

00:09:27.520 | excuses that are like, there's all these other better things you should be doing.

00:09:31.520 | Or the other alternative of that, like you said, I'm not prepared enough for this moment. I'll be

00:09:38.960 | much more prepared in two weeks for the next event. So like, why? Let's try this again. Let's

00:09:44.800 | start over. Let's start over in two weeks. How do you deal with that quit? Like, so maybe do you

00:09:52.880 | still go through that process and by way of advice for people that are more sort of amateurish like

00:09:59.520 | me, how to deal with that quitting voice? - I think a lot of times when the quitting voice

00:10:05.280 | kind of comes in, what it does is it kind of just, it comes in with the added disadvantage,

00:10:13.120 | I guess, in this situation of being kind of a narrow scoped view where you're looking at like

00:10:19.680 | what it's doing to you in the moment or how you're feeling in the moment versus how

00:10:23.840 | are you feeling about the whole process? So one thing that I started doing in 2019,

00:10:30.080 | and I don't think it's necessarily, I think this was a big reason why I had one of my best racing

00:10:38.160 | seasons in 2019 that I'd had to that date. It was part of it was I started, I think,

00:10:44.320 | putting a little more emphasis on the big picture versus putting emphasis on like,

00:10:49.040 | this is one opportunity or one day of work and this is one emotional kind of flare up.

00:10:56.320 | But how does that actually relate to my general broader picture? So when I decide to do a race

00:11:03.120 | or an event or something like that, it's often four or six months out ahead of time,

00:11:08.000 | you're planning to like kind of do a series of workouts and a flow of things where you're going

00:11:12.640 | through the process of getting fit, getting ready, preparing for the specifics of the day and all

00:11:16.240 | that stuff. And then you get to the race itself or the event itself. And it's very easy to look at

00:11:21.920 | that and think that's an isolation. Like I'm going to run 12 hours today or I'm going to run 100

00:11:27.600 | miles today or whatever it ends up being. And it's a lot easier to quit when you think to yourself,

00:11:34.160 | I'm 40 miles into 100 mile race. That's just a 40 mile run, which sounds kind of silly to most

00:11:41.360 | people. But in perspective, and we're talking about the ultra marathon running community,

00:11:45.680 | it's a lot easier just to say like, well, I'll scrap this 40 miles and try again.

00:11:49.440 | It's a lot harder to say, I'm going to scrap the entire last four months, the entire reason why I

00:11:55.440 | was doing it, the countless hours I spent in there. So I think I just try to reposition it of like,

00:12:00.720 | I'm in a bad place right now, maybe in my head or I'm hitting a low point here,

00:12:04.960 | but I'm 99% of the way towards the goal I set out four months ago when I add in all the work I did

00:12:11.280 | leading up to that. So I think it's important to ask yourself why, because I mean, there are times

00:12:18.400 | when you're doing something and you ask yourself why and you don't have a good reason. And then

00:12:22.240 | maybe it is advantageous to step back and really reflect on that and decide, is this something I

00:12:27.440 | actually want to invest time and energy into? Because someone like yourself who is very much

00:12:34.000 | into a variety of different things, it can be easy probably to overextend and get... I mean,

00:12:40.320 | I'm a very curious person. So there's like a hundred things I would love to do if I wasn't

00:12:44.160 | doing what I'm doing. And I know I would enjoy all of them. So at a certain point though, you

00:12:49.440 | have to say, okay, which one is going to be the most meaningful for me? And if the answer keeps

00:12:53.600 | coming back to saying, I guess this is still the most meaningful to me out of that hundred things

00:12:57.600 | that I could otherwise be doing, then I know that I'm in it for the right reason. Then I just need

00:13:02.640 | to identify some of those things. Like, well, why did this one take the top spot out of the

00:13:07.200 | hundred things that I could have picked from? And keeping like a list of those in your head,

00:13:12.080 | so that when you get to that point where you start saying, why am I doing this? Why am I here?

00:13:16.640 | You just have those kind of ready loaded in your head to say, well, I already took inventory on

00:13:20.640 | that before I started this. And I knew this voice was going to come at some point, whether it's

00:13:23.840 | early, middle or late. And then you just remind yourself kind of what you were thinking when you

00:13:28.800 | had a little more of a level head. - Well, there's something about the thing

00:13:31.520 | you mentioned when you mentioned the death march. It seems extremely valuable to just never quitting.

00:13:38.240 | Like in the moment, if you decide to do something, like never quitting, even if it, you do go through

00:13:46.800 | the process and realize that it's not the wisest thing to be doing within the full context of your

00:13:52.480 | life. Like once you decide to do it, it seems like never quitting prevents you from sort of having

00:13:59.840 | that escape clause from other things in your life. So I've quit on a few things in my life. And I

00:14:06.560 | think I still, I deeply regret that because it opened that door. It's almost like a muscle.

00:14:14.160 | 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.

00:14:20.800 | You know what I mean? Like, like I'm really good at coming up with reasons to quit.

00:14:28.560 | My mind is really good at that. And I, it feels like I have to come up with,

00:14:33.120 | like really work hard to make sure that there's no quit, that I never allow myself to quit,

00:14:39.840 | no matter how stupid the thing I'm doing is. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but

00:14:44.320 | it just, maybe to rephrase this whole thing, do you think it's good to live life by the ethos of

00:14:52.400 | never quit? - Yeah, that's a really interesting thing.

00:14:56.640 | And I think it actually resonates with a lot of ultra marathon runners, because there seems to be

00:15:01.920 | a trend when you have someone who's been in the sport for a long time, where there's a point where

00:15:08.640 | they start the sport, right? And they're like super excited about everything. Everything's new.

00:15:12.720 | It's very easy not to quit. Cause you're like, oh, this is the first time I've ever run a 50

00:15:17.280 | Ks. The first time I've ever run a 50 miles. The first time I've ever run a hundred Ks. The first

00:15:20.560 | time I've ever run a hundred miles and so on and so forth. And when you're doing that for the first

00:15:25.920 | time, I think there's a heightened motivation to not quit. Cause you don't want your first

00:15:30.800 | attempt to be a failure. And then you get a little further along and you start reflecting on the

00:15:38.400 | landscape and all the opportunities that are out there and you find yourself quitting on an event.

00:15:42.320 | And there does seem to be a trend where once you do that once, now all of a sudden, like you

00:15:50.080 | described perfectly, that quit pops up in your head maybe a little sooner the next time. Or

00:15:55.680 | maybe a little bit before. And I've certainly had these experiences in my career as well. And

00:15:59.440 | what happens I think if you stick with it, again, I think it is important to assess whether you

00:16:06.400 | really want to be doing what you're doing. But if you start recognizing that about yourself in a

00:16:10.800 | certain activity where it's like, I think I might be pulling the plug early on some of this stuff.

00:16:14.320 | I think you just need to kind of get into a position where you just, at that point,

00:16:20.080 | you need to make a decision. Do I want to keep doing this? If the answer is yes,

00:16:23.360 | you hold yourself accountable to not quitting. And eventually what will happen is you'll find

00:16:27.840 | yourself in a position where, I'll use ultra marathons for example, where you're just clicking

00:16:31.600 | on all cylinders for that day. And you still get those scenarios where doubt creeps in your mind.

00:16:37.120 | You have these low points. But for whatever reason, when those low points come, you're able

00:16:41.920 | to push through them better than you would have in the past. And then you push through maybe two or

00:16:45.840 | three more than you did after you had quit the time before. Then it's accountability time, right?

00:16:51.760 | Because then you have to look back at that and say, well, why did this time was I able to be

00:16:56.880 | mentally more strong and kind of push through those extra opportunities to quit when I wasn't

00:17:04.240 | before? And it can be easy to look back and say and live kind of like retroactively in the sense

00:17:10.240 | where you're like regretting, well, why did I drop out of those races? Why did I do this wrong there

00:17:15.040 | and that? And I just think that's where you have to kind of catch yourself and say, no, those things

00:17:19.520 | happened to me in order to put me in a position where I decided, well, this time I'm not going

00:17:23.760 | to quit no matter what, minus my leg falling off. I'm not going to quit. And then you put yourself

00:17:30.320 | in a position to have that day where you push through more times than you ever have before.

00:17:33.760 | And you just redefine what you're capable of. And then once I think you do that, you start looking

00:17:37.840 | at those earlier lessons as lessons. Were they failures on paper at the time? Probably. But

00:17:45.680 | can you pull things from them to learn as to like, well, where is your actual threshold? Where is the

00:17:50.000 | limit actually for you? And then kind of start redefining that stuff. So I think the never quit

00:17:57.920 | mentality can be good in certain situations. But I don't think it's necessarily a holistic thing

00:18:04.960 | where you need to be in something where it's never quit, always do more. Because then you end up in

00:18:09.440 | a situation where you find this margin of diminishing returns, especially when it comes

00:18:13.040 | to training and workouts and things like that, where there are times where often there are times

00:18:18.000 | where you want to actually quit a little bit before you would have to, because the stress

00:18:21.840 | that was required to elicit a growth response has already occurred. And just to do more is just going

00:18:27.120 | to require more recovery time to get back and do it again. Yeah, this is the tricky tradeoff.

00:18:31.520 | Living by the never quit mentality, you're not going to achieve optimal performance.

00:18:36.560 | In your head, you might.

00:18:40.240 | It seems like when you look at the full arc of human history, the people who do great things

00:18:48.960 | are more leaning towards the never quit. Like, I feel like at any one moment,

00:18:54.800 | you're more in danger of quitting than you are being suboptimal. So like, in terms of advice,

00:19:02.400 | it just feels like never quitting is always the right advice. Unless you deeply know the person,

00:19:10.560 | maybe this is like wrestling mentality. I've seen too many, and because I'm annoyed with the

00:19:15.680 | current culture telling me to relax and have a work life balance and all those kinds of things,

00:19:20.560 | which all have a deep, deep truth to them. But the reality is like, there's not enough people

00:19:29.680 | that walk up to me and like slap me and say, "Get your shit together." Like, "Don't quit.

00:19:35.920 | Work harder." I think we need to hear that more. And I can remember that from the wrestling rooms,

00:19:43.360 | like that when you're pushed that way, when you're forced to the very limit and you don't quit,

00:19:49.920 | that makes better humans. I think people need to get that in their life. I think they need to have

00:19:56.160 | situations where that becomes kind of the reality for them so they can see that avenue,

00:20:01.280 | experience that avenue, where I think it's maybe to the extreme as if it becomes like your entire

00:20:08.480 | life philosophy where like every little thing you do is never quit.

00:20:13.200 | But life is short, Zach. I mean, this is the problem I have. This is probably the programming

00:20:19.520 | thing too is over-optimization is dangerous. It's like every once in a while, I mean, you're,

00:20:26.480 | you do this kind of stuff. You're not, for example, with a hundred mile run. I mean,

00:20:31.440 | you could just be doing that for the rest of your life and do like the most optimal hundred mile run

00:20:35.760 | ever, but you keep taking on like new challenges and there's a lot more chaos in that. And there,

00:20:42.320 | it feels like the muscle of never quit will be much more important than the optimality of your

00:20:46.880 | training. Yeah. So there's probably a couple sides to me with that kind of a thing where

00:20:52.240 | for one, I think when we talked about the why, so like, I think the why can kind of shift a bit

00:20:59.600 | and it probably will if you do something long enough or evolve maybe is a better way to call,

00:21:04.560 | let's put it. And for me, like one of my big drives and one of my big passions within ultra

00:21:11.680 | running is to first of all, find an event that I really, really love to train for and participate

00:21:17.760 | in. So for me, I feel like I've kind of identified that to a degree and that's kind of runnable

00:21:21.760 | hundred milers. So once I found that it became more of a driver for me to see like, well, how

00:21:29.120 | fast can I run a hundred miles in a very controlled environment? So let's eliminate weather, let's

00:21:34.080 | eliminate, you know, elevation, let's eliminate like having to wait extra long to get crew or

00:21:40.320 | support and that sort of thing. And that's how you find yourself on a 400 meter track running

00:21:44.240 | a hundred miles. But for me, like that, the important part of that is that I can control

00:21:49.280 | the environment enough where if I come back year after year, I can retest myself and have a decent

00:21:55.680 | ability to kind of say I improved or I regressed or I stayed stagnant. And I think that's a big

00:22:00.400 | driver for me. But one thing I've recognized within that is if you just keep doing that,

00:22:07.440 | like if I could probably pick three flat runnable hundred milers a year and optimally prepare,

00:22:14.080 | race, recover and repeat without like burning myself out. But one thing I think I learned

00:22:20.160 | also in 2019 was that sometimes you kind of need to step away from some of these really,

00:22:27.680 | really kind of important markers in your like your performance or in whatever you're trying to do and

00:22:33.680 | take a step away from it and try to do something a little different in order to kind of hit the

00:22:38.400 | reset button on just like what I would call just like your mental energy to be able to continue to

00:22:44.160 | do it at a high level. So- - Almost like happiness.

00:22:47.280 | - Exactly. Well, and here's the example. Like, I mean, I love running in trails too. Most people

00:22:51.520 | would consider me a flat road track runner, runnable ultra runner, but I like to do trail

00:22:56.720 | runs too. So at the end of 2018, I recognized that I had been kind of pushing the gas pedal on trying

00:23:06.080 | to run fast hundred milers for quite a while without really a break in that where it was like,

00:23:10.480 | okay, I did one. Now I'm gonna take a brief off season, but then I'm gonna ultimately build up

00:23:15.360 | and peak for another one. I might introduce some fun trail races in the context, but they're gonna

00:23:19.440 | be B races, they're gonna be training races, time on feet type of stuff that are gonna kind of

00:23:23.200 | mimic like a long run essentially. But the main focus, always in the back of my mind was like

00:23:28.960 | getting on the track and seeing how much faster I can run a hundred miles. And that just kind of,

00:23:33.120 | that energy that it takes to continually think by that, I think the motivation to keep that stope

00:23:39.200 | high enough to really meet your full potential fades if you don't step away from it for a little

00:23:44.400 | bit. So I took essentially half a year away from runnable stuff and just decided I'm gonna prepare

00:23:50.240 | for the San Diego hundred mile, which is like a much more elevation, technical trail type of

00:23:57.360 | an event. Is that trail run or no? Yeah. It's a trail hundred miler actually just technically

00:24:03.040 | just outside of San Diego. And yeah, it goes through, it goes over part of the Pacific Crest

00:24:09.360 | trail and stuff. So it's very different than running on a runnable surface. So to give you

00:24:13.600 | some context, like I ran, what was it? I think just under 17 hours for that race. Whereas on a

00:24:18.560 | flat surface, I can run 11 hours and 19 minutes. So just the environment alone added an extra,

00:24:24.800 | you know, five plus hours to the day. So it's just a different experience, different skill set.

00:24:31.200 | And what it did is it allowed me to kind of step away from kind of focusing on like splits on a

00:24:37.360 | track, running flat stuff, like preparing for things specifically for a flat environment and

00:24:42.960 | start training for something that's more climbing and descending, more technical running skill sets

00:24:47.600 | and things like that. And the cool part about it was, uh, first of all, you know, when you step

00:24:53.200 | away from something and enter something a lot different, I mean, it's still running. There's

00:24:56.560 | still a huge advantage I had from the running I'd done in the past. It was going to put me in a good

00:25:00.800 | position to be successful, but there was a much higher, uh, or a much bigger range of potential

00:25:07.360 | improvement for me. So through the like, you know, four plus months I spent preparing for that race,

00:25:13.280 | you know, I noticed, oh wow, I'm getting faster on this climb or I'm getting better at descending

00:25:17.840 | this technical trail. It was one of the most fun races I've run actually. So it was kind of a cool

00:25:21.680 | experience. I ended up, uh, taking the lead at like 93 miles. So you were racing, racing, like

00:25:27.200 | you were trying to get first. So it's still a race. Yeah. So what was the enjoyable aspect of it?

00:25:32.320 | I don't think I recognized it so much while I was doing it. Actually it surfaced afterwards. I mean,

00:25:36.960 | the enjoyment of the race itself is like when you find yourself in a position where you're sitting

00:25:40.160 | in basically second place all day long, and then you take the lead at 90, I think it was like 91

00:25:44.800 | or 92 miles. It's like, yeah, that's kind of a cool way to race. Um, it, but afterwards I recognized

00:25:51.920 | a few things just about kind of pacing and you know, how to maybe pace the first half of a hundred

00:25:57.840 | miler versus the second half. I also recognized shortly thereafter, uh, once I finished recovering

00:26:04.400 | and decided my next event was going to be a flat runnable race that, wow, I really was way more

00:26:10.480 | excited to do the workouts that I needed to do to get ready to run a fast, flat hundred miler.

00:26:15.200 | And I don't think that would have been the case had I just tried to do another flat, fast hundred

00:26:19.040 | miler earlier or during that year and end up in a situation where like I maybe had like normalized a

00:26:26.320 | suboptimal like a outlook on like something that I had just done so many times already.

00:26:32.880 | And I recognize that it was just every workout I did. I was like, I did this workout a year ago

00:26:37.360 | and it was not nearly this much fun or, you know, you, then the interesting thing about these track

00:26:42.080 | hundreds too, is like, you find yourself doing like your peaking phase where you're running

00:26:46.160 | your long runs, which for me are usually like, you know, around 30 miles or so. And I'll do them

00:26:50.240 | on back to back days. And, you know, I try to replicate the environment that I'm going to race

00:26:54.480 | on. So I'm finding myself on a 400 meter track. And it's like, when I started doing that again,

00:26:59.520 | I just felt like I was super motivated to go out there Saturday and Sunday and do those back to

00:27:02.720 | back long runs and see the progress and then head out again the next week and do it again.

00:27:06.800 | So I had some of my more enjoyable long runs, which are going to be the most specific to race

00:27:11.120 | day environment that I had in quite some time. And I think that was really beneficial and kind

00:27:15.920 | of putting me in a right spot to be able to push through barriers on race day and put me in a

00:27:19.680 | position where quitting was going to be much less of a likelihood given the enjoyment I had in the

00:27:25.120 | months leading into the race itself. Yeah. Even the thought of quitting. Yeah.

00:27:28.720 | Yeah. So you mentioned the track. You've also ran 100 miles on the treadmill

00:27:33.520 | and the trail 100 mile broadly. If we zoom out, what does it take to run 100 miles for most of

00:27:42.480 | the world? That seems like a crazy distance to run. So maybe it's interesting to ask,

00:27:48.720 | not only is just setting the world record, but purely running. What does it take to run that far?

00:27:55.360 | Yeah. I mean, I think people probably overestimate what it takes in terms of just

00:27:59.360 | getting it done. I think this is consistent in just running in general. I think the marathon

00:28:05.680 | was always a big one with that where people thought like, well, you have to do this training

00:28:10.240 | or you just literally won't physically be able to complete a marathon. And then we got into an

00:28:14.240 | era of kind of like running as more of an enjoyment thing versus a performance thing.

00:28:19.120 | And then you'd have people running, granted much slower. I think if you look at the Boston

00:28:22.720 | marathon, average finishing times, it goes from like, or maybe it wasn't the Boston marathon. It

00:28:27.040 | might've just been marathons in general went from like three hours to five hours or something like

00:28:30.880 | that. So it's like people, I think, got past the fact that you can only do it if you're optimally

00:28:36.800 | prepared to, well, I can do it and maybe not meet my full potential if I'm going to like

00:28:41.120 | not do much training, which I wouldn't necessarily advise. But I mean, I've talked to people who

00:28:46.880 | basically run 100 miles sometimes almost off the couch. And it's like, to me, what that says is

00:28:52.080 | just the human body's incredible and what it can tolerate above and beyond what it's been exposed

00:28:56.160 | to if it has to, or if it feels like it has to. - So that's the basic sort of getting from point

00:29:00.960 | A from the start to the finish is the human body and the human mind is capable of doing it without

00:29:06.720 | much preparation. But then you start to increase the goal of performance and you try to get actually

00:29:14.160 | a good, like the most out of your body that you can. How does that start to change then?

00:29:20.080 | Going from fun to performance. - Yeah, I think once you start putting marks or goals on outside

00:29:25.680 | of just finishing, that's where it starts getting interesting because now you can maybe go on with

00:29:28.960 | multiple goals where like if one falls off due to something that you didn't expect, then you have

00:29:33.600 | another one to target. But you can always build those up and try to think like, well, I want to

00:29:37.440 | run faster than last time or I want to break a course record or an age group record or something

00:29:42.560 | like that. And that I think is just going to be a little bit of a different mindset because now

00:29:48.720 | you're looking at every little thing from what do I need to do to prepare as well as what do I need

00:29:54.400 | to do to be efficient on the day itself. So like transitioning aid stations and things like that

00:29:59.040 | or do I want to pace or not or does this race allow someone to like hand me a bottle at a

00:30:05.840 | certain spot or do I have to be in specific areas to get that type of stuff. And what it ends up

00:30:10.640 | doing is it ends up bringing a lot more variables to the table. And I think it's interesting because

00:30:16.560 | there's always going to be more variables on the day than you are able to account for.

00:30:22.160 | So at a certain degree, you have to kind of find yourself in a position where I'm going to make

00:30:26.480 | sure I take care of the big ones or the ones that are like obviously I need to be ready for like

00:30:31.440 | my fueling strategy, my hydration strategy, my pacing strategy, what workouts are going to put

00:30:36.480 | me in a position to physiologically have this process go as well as possible. How am I going

00:30:41.840 | to like hold myself accountable in aid station transition so I'm not like having a ton of non

00:30:47.040 | moving time versus moving time and things like that. - This is so cool. So there's these like

00:30:51.920 | big variables that you're aware of and you're trying to optimize over the space of variables.

00:30:56.080 | - Yep. - So you get to start to play with that

00:30:58.000 | when you're looking for performance. - It's almost like moving from checkers to

00:31:01.440 | chass, right? You have like, or maybe even like connect forward chass or something like that,

00:31:06.800 | where it goes from just kind of like, well, one foot in front of the other. And when I get to the

00:31:10.160 | next aid station, I'll just eat whatever looks good, drink whatever, you know, quenches my thirst

00:31:13.760 | and then move on to the next one to like, well, which one of these food products is actually going

00:31:18.320 | to make me move a little faster to the next aid station or, you know, which one of these pacing

00:31:23.120 | strategies is going to get me to the finish line faster than the other one and that sort of stuff.

00:31:27.600 | So it gets more complicated, more interesting and in my opinion anyway, also there's, I mean,

00:31:34.800 | but there's a breaking point with that too, because like I said, there's an endless number

00:31:38.480 | of variables you could account for. And as the distance gets longer, that list gets longer too.

00:31:43.360 | So you find yourself in this position where you have to at some point say, okay, I've accounted

00:31:48.720 | for everything I can reasonably account for. Now I need to be in a mental space where when something

00:31:53.520 | happens that I wasn't able to account for, I'm able to respond to it with the right decision

00:31:58.400 | and keep going and not dwell on it. Because that's another thing, I mean, you're running slow enough

00:32:02.160 | when you're doing a hundred miles, where if you make a mistake, you can sit there and just fixate

00:32:06.800 | on that mistake and say, why did I do that? That cost me 10 minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah. When

00:32:11.120 | in reality, what you need to do is that happened. Everyone else out here is going to have a

00:32:14.000 | situation like that at some point. Mine happened now. I need to figure out how I can move forward

00:32:19.680 | at the fastest sustainable pace and not think about what happened back there. And that's where

00:32:24.480 | I think it gets really interesting. - What would you say it takes to set a world record in the

00:32:30.560 | hundred miler? - Well, first of all, I think you probably have to focus on that specific event.

00:32:36.400 | I mean, the interesting about ultra running where it maybe deviates a bit from just other endurance

00:32:41.920 | sports is there's such a wide range. I mean, we talked about a little bit when I talked about the

00:32:46.000 | San Diego hundred versus kind of the flat runnable stuff. - Can you maybe paint a picture of what are,

00:32:52.160 | there's a huge range of different kinds of ultra marathon events. What are like the big ones

00:32:57.440 | in your mind? So marathon, we know the distance for a marathon, there's 50K, what are different

00:33:03.840 | kinds, there's a hundred mile that in your mind, like kind of these islands where people gather

00:33:10.240 | often. - Yeah. So there's a few that really stand out. I would say the three biggest ultra

00:33:15.120 | marathons right now, even from a historic, maybe not necessarily a historical standpoint, but

00:33:19.280 | in modern day ultra running is going to be the Western States 100. That's the biggest,

00:33:24.960 | most competitive hundred miler. It's on the trail side of things in the United States. Then there's

00:33:30.400 | ultra trail Mount Blanc, which is probably the most competitive hundred miler on the planet right

00:33:34.240 | now. In previous years, it's been debatable as whether Western States or ultra trail Mount

00:33:38.080 | Blanc is more competitive. I think in the most recent few years, you're just seeing a lot more

00:33:41.840 | of the bulk of international talent on the trail side of the sport heading over that way.

00:33:46.880 | And then you have the road running side of things where the comrades marathon, which is technically

00:33:53.120 | 56 miles, but they call it the comrades marathon is going to generally be the most competitive

00:33:59.200 | ultra marathon. The weird thing is the distance thing, right? Because most people when they think

00:34:03.120 | of endurance sports, they're thinking about precise distances, like five kilometers, 10

00:34:06.400 | kilometers and all that stuff. And then you get into the ultra running world and it's like,

00:34:10.640 | sometimes it's the event. So like the Western- - The course itself is much more important than

00:34:14.080 | the distance. - Right. Yeah. So the Western States 100 is actually a hundred point two miles,

00:34:18.320 | which isn't that big of a deviation when you think about it, especially when you figure like

00:34:21.520 | tangents are going to probably account for more than point two miles on a hundred mile race.

00:34:25.280 | But the ultra trail Mont Blanc, that's listed as a hundred miler, but it's actually, I think like

00:34:30.160 | 104, 105 miles. So, it's more, there's different cultures too. So the United States is definitely

00:34:36.640 | more motivated, I think, to try to get as close to the exact distance. You're going to hear maybe

00:34:41.040 | a little more grumbling if someone says, I signed up for this a hundred miler and it turned out to

00:34:43.920 | be a hundred and three miles versus like over in Europe, they don't really care too much about the

00:34:49.040 | distance. They're more interested in like a specific route or a loop. - Is consistency important

00:34:53.360 | in terms of the exact length of the route? So like you can compare performances from previous years,

00:34:58.800 | or are they a little bit more flexible? Like they redefine the trail from year to year.

00:35:02.960 | - Yeah. I mean, it's definitely hard to compare. I mean, there's events that,

00:35:06.640 | take for example, I would say the best ultra marathoner in the world today on the men's side

00:35:14.480 | is Jim Walmsley. The reason I think Jim Walmsley is the best is because he is the most versatile

00:35:20.400 | and not only is he the most versatile, but he's arguably the best at almost everything up to a

00:35:25.200 | hundred miles. So there's a race called the Angeles Crest hundred miler. The trail has

00:35:31.200 | drastically changed from when they originally had that event. And it's a different time of year. So

00:35:35.840 | it's much warmer on that course. And Jim's not the kind of guy who would sit back and say like,

00:35:42.000 | I can't chase that record. But I think Angela Crest, when he looks at the segments and the

00:35:45.600 | pacing for that one, he's like, that one is maybe not even the same event anymore.

00:35:50.080 | So you have that, you have some that are a little more controlled and a little more kind of like

00:35:53.840 | preserved, I guess you would say, but I think it gets really rare on the trail side. I mean,

00:35:58.400 | Comrades is going to be very comparable from one year to the next, because that's a road race.

00:36:02.320 | And that's where you get, you maybe get like the split in the sport from people who really want

00:36:06.640 | that kind of like, I want to compare myself to someone who ran this course in 1970 versus like

00:36:13.120 | someone who just says, I want to be competitive today. And maybe the weather is going to be 30

00:36:19.600 | degrees different from one year to the next on this course. But if I beat everyone on this day,

00:36:23.040 | then I'm the champion of that big name race, like ultra trail Mont Blanc or Western States 100. And

00:36:27.520 | my legacy will be cemented because I won that big race. And it doesn't matter when or how the

00:36:31.680 | course was or what the time even was to some degree. - When you were optimizing for trying

00:36:35.920 | to set the world record in the 100 miler, were you doing like analysis of maybe like, what were

00:36:44.320 | the variables you were looking at? Is it more in the realm of the actual race day, the track,

00:36:51.440 | what it looks like versus like the variables of the training leading up to the race?

00:36:57.680 | - I mean, it evolved a bit. Like I think the, as I learned more about just like what is required

00:37:02.800 | to kind of really do that stuff. So there's some variables you can control for. I try to control

00:37:08.960 | for as many as I can. The big one that kind of stands out that you can't necessarily control for

00:37:13.200 | is it's pretty rare where you get an event where they're just doing 100 miles on a track. It's

00:37:17.680 | usually like an event of like a series of different events where they might be like,

00:37:22.880 | some people out there doing 50K, some people out there doing 24, some day, like the event I did,

00:37:27.840 | there's six day folks out there. They're trying to see how far they can get in six days. So you

00:37:30.640 | have like this much wider range of pacing just due to like the distance. So, track protocol is always

00:37:38.880 | like you pass on the outside. So if you're running one of the faster paces of the day,

00:37:44.320 | which when you go on up to six days, you're gonna, and you're doing 100 miles, you're probably gonna

00:37:49.760 | be running faster than most people out there. Then you just end up running more because you end up

00:37:54.480 | running in lane two around the turns, unless sometimes lane three around the turns.

00:37:57.280 | - So it's down to those little details that have a big impact.

00:38:00.080 | - Yep. So I had to build that into my pacing strategy. I also have to build into the pacing

00:38:03.440 | strategy, like relative non-moving time. I did a race just recently, it was the US track and field

00:38:10.720 | 100 mile road championships. And I did not stop once other than like, I guess I technically stopped

00:38:15.440 | like in the aid station for like a few seconds to like grab bottles and get myself wet. Cause it was

00:38:20.480 | like 94 degrees that day. But I didn't like stop at all during that race from like, what I would

00:38:26.640 | say is like a long period of time where we're getting up to like a minute, but that's pretty

00:38:31.360 | rare. Even on the track, like when I ran 11 hours and 19 minutes, I think I stopped three times for

00:38:37.280 | maybe a total of like, I believe I have to look back for sure, but I think it was like three to

00:38:40.640 | four minutes or something like that. So you gotta figure that into your pacing strategy, especially

00:38:45.280 | if you're chasing a specific time. Cause if I'm pacing for, at the time the world record was 1128.

00:38:51.360 | So if I'm pacing for say 1127.30 or something like that, and I don't account for that three minutes

00:38:59.040 | of stoppage, then I might run the exact pace I had planned on, but then I'm a minute off of the world

00:39:03.280 | record. So. - 1128, we're talking about 11 hours. We're talking about a hundred miles. Can you

00:39:08.880 | mention what the world record was? What kind of world record you set? Can you tell your own story

00:39:14.960 | here of what you were able to accomplish? - That world record that I broke actually just recently

00:39:19.840 | got rebroke by a guy over in Lithuania, Alex Sorkin. Phenomenal race. I mean, he's won the

00:39:28.800 | 24 hour world championships. He's won the Spartathlon, which is another big historic

00:39:32.240 | ultra marathon race. It's 153 miles. So it's getting a little more lengthy than some of the

00:39:36.080 | stuff that I've traditionally done. He ran 1114, I believe it was 56 or 57. So his pace was 645 per

00:39:44.160 | mile. Mine was 647 and a half in terms of just like the pacing strategy. I mean, it's just really

00:39:50.000 | cool because for me, the motivation with chasing the world record was, it was multifaceted. I think

00:39:58.400 | there was, as I kind of moved through, because I mean, it took me almost six years from the day I

00:40:02.720 | decided I wanted to chase that time to the day I actually did it. And through that five to six

00:40:09.760 | years, I think I merged from just like my number one goal was to try to break the world record to

00:40:16.080 | my number one goal is how fast can I run this thing? And then ultimately what needs to be done

00:40:22.160 | for a human to break 11 hours in a hundred miles? Because I think that's going to happen soon. I

00:40:27.760 | think it's going to happen in the next few years. What pace would that be? Sub 11 would be, I think

00:40:32.880 | it's like 635 right about per mile. You're moving quick, but not so quick that you're

00:40:39.760 | void of being able to think about everything as it's happening. So what's the pace in terms of,

00:40:45.520 | if you look for each of the one mile segments for the hundred miles, is it pretty steady?

00:40:53.840 | In order to break 11 hours, would it be pretty steady? 635? Does it go up and down?

00:40:59.760 | Do you speed up at the very end? What's the pacing? Maybe how much variability is there in the pacing

00:41:07.520 | for an optimal performance here? Yeah. So if you're talking about someone, let's say that

00:41:11.360 | there's someone, well, let's just take me for example. Let's say that we could just,

00:41:14.160 | we had this infinite knowledge and we knew for a fact a perfect performance for me would produce

00:41:20.320 | to 1059, but I'm not going a second faster and I need to do everything right in order to run a 1059.

00:41:25.680 | I would definitely want to either have a slight negative or a slight positive split.

00:41:33.520 | And I think there's a range in there where like being a little bit faster the first half and the

00:41:41.840 | second half isn't going to necessarily change your outcome or being a little bit slower the first

00:41:47.680 | half and a little bit faster the second half isn't going to drastically change your outcome.

00:41:52.000 | So that's what you're referring to the split is you're looking at the first 50 miles and the

00:41:56.000 | second 50 miles. And you can break it down as tiny as you want. Like I think when you take out the

00:42:00.960 | outlier laps where I stopped to use the bathroom, which would have been that like three to four

00:42:04.640 | minute non-moving time that I talked about before, my splits were really tight. I had a couple that

00:42:09.840 | were, it was weird because that track that I did that on was actually like 400 and some weird

00:42:16.800 | number like 438 meters or something like that. So I actually like ran like my numbers based on that.

00:42:22.400 | So normally I'm dealing with 400 meters and then it's a little more like clean as to like what my

00:42:27.200 | lap splits are going to range from one event to the next. - So we're talking about running 100

00:42:31.280 | miles on a track. - Yeah. - And so then you can be really scientific about getting the pacing right.

00:42:40.640 | And you're running on the inside lane or is there some kind of tricks to this? Like are you

00:42:46.640 | alternating directions? - Yeah, they'll switch directions at most events every four hours.

00:42:52.800 | So you'll do four hours one way and then they usually put a cone out. And once it hits like,

00:42:58.080 | like let's say it hits four hours, you finish the lap you're on and then you do a loop around and

00:43:03.280 | then you start the next, your next lap. - Would you say you take the exact same number of steps?

00:43:07.360 | Like when you're really in the groove, when you're taking the pacing, are we talking about that level

00:43:13.200 | of precision or is it a little bit more feel? - You mean like foot strike frequency? - Yeah,

00:43:18.080 | like frequency then over the distance of the lap, would you say it's so precise that you're like,

00:43:23.920 | you get in this groove where it's like perfect. - Yeah, gosh, you're making me wish I would have

00:43:28.000 | strapped more like a foot pod to my, but like, yeah, so I think like my guess is it's pretty

00:43:33.600 | precise. - Is there a video of this? Sorry, I keep interrupting. Is there a video of this?

00:43:38.320 | I've actually, this is now three years ago, build a computer vision algorithm that counts foot

00:43:44.640 | strikes. - Oh really? - Yeah, for fun. - Yeah. - I was trying to understand, we'll talk about

00:43:50.720 | this later on. - We have the same definition of fun when I find myself on a track for all day and

00:43:56.080 | you find yourself counting foot strikes. - I was trying to understand if there's how much

00:44:00.800 | variability there's in extreme like elite performers within a particular race, but also

00:44:08.240 | across races. It was just interesting to me from a robotics perspective, if like how much

00:44:14.240 | variability there is in the human body in the way they use legs to move quickly. - I think my guess

00:44:20.240 | would be that at the individual level, it's gonna be pretty precise, assuming the pacing is

00:44:26.160 | consistent. So you get, so my pacing on that day, I ran two minutes faster the second 50 miles than

00:44:32.720 | I did the first 50 miles. So my splits were very even most of the day. I actually ran some of my

00:44:36.720 | fastest miles at the end. So there's gonna be probably a slight variance from my fastest mile

00:44:42.560 | to my slowest mile in like your cadence or your foot strike, but probably not by a huge margin,

00:44:48.240 | but you might have a pretty big variance from one person to the next. So you get someone whose

00:44:53.040 | gait is just a little bit different. So like for me, I supinate, which means I kind of come down

00:44:57.920 | on the outside of my foot and I'm kind of more of a mid forefoot striker. So that's gonna kind

00:45:02.400 | of impact my cadence to a degree. Whereas you might have someone who is kind of more mid to

00:45:08.720 | rear their foot or heel striker, and they might pronate where their foot kind of rolls in.

00:45:12.480 | So that person may have a little bit of a different cadence as well. So you get someone,

00:45:17.680 | and I think you see this in elite marathoning too, which is gonna probably just be a much larger data

00:45:22.160 | pool, much more probably precise from just like a number of opportunities to study this. And I

00:45:29.440 | think even their ranges from one person to the next can be, I wouldn't say drastic, but to the

00:45:34.640 | degree of like 10 to maybe even 20 steps per minute or something like that from one person to the next.

00:45:39.920 | But most people, the faster they go, the higher their cadence is gonna be, the slower they go,

00:45:44.080 | the lower their cadence is gonna be. But there's gonna be probably a range of optimal lowness and

00:45:49.760 | I don't know, probably optimal highness too. - If you can just linger on 11 hours,

00:45:56.560 | the person, first of all, would you like to be the person that breaks 11 hours? And second of all,

00:46:01.680 | the person that does break 11 hours, like what would it take? And third question is,

00:46:08.480 | is it even possible in your intuition? - Yeah. I mean, I would be lying to you if I said I didn't

00:46:14.320 | wanna be the first person to break 11 hours in 100 miles. I think that would be a cool barrier

00:46:20.560 | to be the one to usher that in. But with that said, I think I'm much more motivated in seeing

00:46:25.840 | it done from the sense that like, I think when we're talking about records, it's something that

00:46:33.680 | is inevitable that it's gonna get broken. So I mean, we were talking about happiness before this,

00:46:37.840 | right? So I've contemplated this in the past where I was thinking to myself like,

00:46:43.360 | if my motivation is to break a world record or any record for that matter, course record,

00:46:49.600 | and have that be my defining reason or my defining motivator, I probably need to do

00:46:55.920 | an assessment of where my mind is at and where my focus is at and just reflect on how I'm behaving

00:47:06.720 | in life because it's gonna get broken, right? I mean, I could run 10.50 tomorrow and in 10 years,

00:47:15.840 | chances are that's no longer gonna be the world record anymore. Someone's gonna run faster than

00:47:19.760 | that. So if you're living to hold on to a record versus living to try to move the sport forward,

00:47:27.760 | which anytime you break a world record, you're moving the sport forward, then you have to look

00:47:32.720 | at that as like, that was my contribution. And whether I contribute again or not is kind of

00:47:37.840 | besides the point. What you want is that your performance or your contribution brings new

00:47:43.600 | people into the sport who are excited, motivated, and they can make their contribution. And then we

00:47:48.640 | can ultimately see, well, how fast can someone run a controlled environment 100 miler?

00:47:52.560 | And that's what I really wanna see 'cause I think I've gotten so much enjoyment from the sport. I

00:47:57.680 | mean, I've gotten so much enjoyment from the sport, I've been able to turn it into a career.

00:48:00.320 | And I think there's other people who can do the same thing, and it's not necessarily gonna come

00:48:06.080 | at the expense of my career, but it's gonna bring more attention to the sport. It's gonna bring more

00:48:11.280 | interest in the sport. It's gonna open the sport up to people who maybe otherwise would have never

00:48:14.400 | thought about it, seen it, considered it. And to me, I think that's a much more rewarding goal

00:48:20.800 | than saying, I wanna break this record and I wanna hold it for decades, or I wanna die with

00:48:26.400 | this record so I never have to see someone go faster than me. - Well, that's the progress of

00:48:30.400 | human civilization. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we keep creating cool stuff.

00:48:34.400 | - Well, and it's the other thing is just like, if you're honest with yourself too, it's,

00:48:38.720 | I mean, we're seeing this right now in the running world where new innovations come in,

00:48:42.640 | new technologies come in, new nutritional approaches come in. And then we see the new

00:48:47.600 | crop of folks have advantages that the old crop didn't have. And it can be easy to look back on

00:48:52.000 | that and say like, hey, well, if I would have had that product or if I would have done that,

00:48:57.120 | I would have run this. But then you're getting into that negative thought process again, which I

00:49:01.680 | generally try to stay out of. - I think the caveman, if I had fire,

00:49:05.840 | I would have done way better with this. - Look at these idiots up there with their

00:49:09.440 | cars. If I would have had a car back then, I would have been ruled the world.

00:49:12.400 | - Let me just zoom up just briefly and ask you about kind of beauty and love.

00:49:20.480 | What's the most beautiful thing about running to you? Why do you love it?

00:49:24.720 | - I think there's kind of a couple directions to look at it through, or lenses look at it through.

00:49:30.080 | There's like the in the moment, right? There's always gonna be that run where

00:49:34.320 | you're clicking along and things just feel great. You get some endorphins and you get

00:49:38.640 | the quote unquote runner's high and that sort of stuff. And that's just like this great feeling

00:49:44.320 | that you can kind of tap into on the real in the moment type of level. My wife and I talk about

00:49:52.720 | this because she's a competitive ultra runner as well. And we'll have a day where we'll take a

00:49:59.360 | forced day off or something like that. And it's necessary, right? It's gonna allow the enjoyment

00:50:04.000 | to continue. But you get into this routine of I wake up in the morning, I do this run and that

00:50:09.440 | kind of gets my day started. That gets my energies up. I get that runner's high afterwards. You

00:50:14.400 | remove that from the equation for a rest day and you just sort of like, "Oh man, I feel like I

00:50:19.120 | never got started today." It's just this weird thing. I think it's funny because non-runners

00:50:25.040 | don't always necessarily recognize it because for them it's the complete opposite. They're like,

00:50:29.280 | "If I can get away from not having to run today, that's gonna be a good day."

00:50:32.080 | [laughter]

00:50:33.840 | Yeah.

00:50:34.080 | But it's one of those things that I think gets more addictive the more you do it.

00:50:37.280 | So that's purely from the running perspective, there's this joy of the runner's high,

00:50:43.120 | of the post after the run you feel like you can take on the world, that kind of thing.

00:50:46.960 | Yes. And I think that's one of the drivers from just a quality of life standpoint,

00:50:51.040 | and in the moment immediate gratification standpoint. But then there's like, I think,

00:50:56.960 | the bigger picture stuff or the longer term stuff. For me, that enjoyment is just the process of,

00:51:04.880 | "Okay, I'm starting at this fitness level and I'm gonna do these workouts. By doing these workouts,

00:51:12.000 | I'm gonna see incremental progress from them." Then that's another kind of short-term gratification

00:51:17.120 | that's maybe a little longer than the day-to-day, but still shorter than a career or a buildup for

00:51:23.680 | a particular race where you're seeing yourself like, "Okay, maybe I'm focusing on short intervals

00:51:28.320 | right now. And on week one, I covered this much distance in three minutes, but by week four,

00:51:33.920 | I'm covering this much distance." And you can just see that progress.

00:51:36.720 | It's almost like in elementary school when you get the gold star for reading a book, it's like,

00:51:41.600 | "Did that gold star really mean anything? I don't know, but I felt great when they gave it to me."

00:51:45.760 | Yeah.

00:51:45.920 | [laughter]

00:51:47.200 | Yeah.

00:51:47.440 | Something about just finding improvement. And people love to see improvement, I think. So

00:51:51.920 | that's where I think you can also get some value in it. We were saying, "I started here and I got

00:51:56.560 | there." And then I think there's also just like... I would call this maybe more the cherry on top,

00:52:02.960 | which is where you express your work, which is the race itself, where that's gonna be the thing

00:52:07.840 | that shows up on the end result and where it identifies whether you did things right or wrong.

00:52:14.960 | Yeah. So there's a sense in which training is a kind of preparation towards race day,

00:52:22.320 | and race day being the thing where you get to be the artist. You get to create this piece of art,

00:52:28.560 | and it might suck, it might be beautiful. I mean, in the grappling world, I see competition in that

00:52:34.880 | same way, when I feel the best about it, which is like... Sounds pretentious to say, but I'm

00:52:41.760 | trying to be the best version of myself in this particular day of competition and to do something

00:52:46.960 | that I'll be proud of in an artist way, not in some kind of numerical way, but as a holistic

00:52:58.000 | sense, like do something cool. In grappling, that means for me, that means not stalling,

00:53:03.840 | taking big risks and trying to dominate another person in the context of grappling,

00:53:10.880 | and do it, like push myself to the limit, both cardio wise and technique wise, and just play

00:53:18.560 | beautifully. I mean, you see this in kind of chess, there's systematic chess players,

00:53:22.400 | and there's people that allow themselves to have those moments of genius, where they take the big

00:53:27.600 | risk that eventually pays off or doesn't. And that to me is art. I mean, there's art within running,

00:53:34.000 | there's art within chess, there's art within grappling, and you get a chance. Like all the

00:53:38.400 | training is more like science, and then it feels like the competition day is art.

00:53:43.680 | Yeah, I think that's a really cool way to look at it. And I think it's when you really open up the

00:53:49.200 | perspective of that too, it's like, even obviously, having a great day, winning the tournament or

00:53:55.600 | getting further than you were expected to, or beating someone who you've never beaten before,

00:53:58.880 | something like that. Or in the running perspective, achieving that goal time,

00:54:03.120 | that sort of stuff. Obviously, those are kind of like the ones you, when you're honest with yourself,

00:54:07.840 | you really want, and you're going to probably get the most satisfaction out of. But even when they

00:54:12.640 | don't go wrong, like maybe with your grappling tournament analogy, maybe the guy you're grappling

00:54:18.800 | against does a move on you, and you're like, "I was not prepared for that move." So now the

00:54:22.800 | enjoyment becomes, "Okay, back to the drawing board. Now I need to find out what do I do when

00:54:28.240 | that happens to me next time." And that's where I think the why comes in again. Same thing with

00:54:33.040 | running. Maybe I make a mistake and eat something I didn't really want to eat or thought was going

00:54:40.080 | to work, but didn't work, and it costs me more time than I gained by having it or something like

00:54:43.760 | that. And then I go back to the drawing board and say, "Okay, well, I can't do that. That didn't

00:54:47.920 | work." Or if I'm going to do that, I need to be more prepared to be able to do it. And I love that

00:54:52.800 | part of the sport, just the rearranging of things and adjusting and tinkering.

00:54:58.320 | There's some sense in which the mistakes and the flaws give us meaning. Because if everything,

00:55:03.920 | if you weren't able to find mistakes in something you've done, it feels like the life would be void

00:55:12.320 | of meaning.

00:55:13.760 | It's a lost opportunity too. When I look at even my 100-mile race of 11-19, I can find spots in

00:55:24.080 | there where I was like, "Oh, you know what? I could clean that up a little bit. Maybe if I do

00:55:27.440 | this differently." And that's going to get me a little bit faster. If I sat back and said, "Hey,

00:55:34.320 | well, things weren't great that day. Cool. Let's see if we can replicate it." Then I'd probably

00:55:38.160 | run 11-19 again.

00:55:39.200 | So can we talk about training a little bit?

00:55:42.800 | Yeah.

00:55:43.300 | What does your training look like year-round, day-to-day, hour-to-hour, like optimal? Maybe

00:55:52.800 | you want to pick a race in the context of what you want to discuss that. And also people should

00:55:57.600 | follow you on Instagram. You have a lot of interesting little glances into your training

00:56:05.280 | process and into your training thinking, which is quite fascinating. But if you look at an optimal

00:56:09.920 | training process, what does that look like?

00:56:11.760 | Yeah. So I think if we were looking at it from a philosophical level or an approach level,

00:56:18.720 | I think there's some things that carry over from regardless of the distance.

00:56:22.320 | So I think working on your weaknesses and things that are least specific to what you're going to

00:56:29.600 | do on race day, but are still going to be important things in terms of improving your ability to

00:56:35.360 | perform on race day or maximizing your potential with the things that are specific, you do first.

00:56:41.520 | I say that, but there's a caveat with endurance sport. I think maybe even more specifically with

00:56:48.160 | things like our ultra marathons or 100 milers where you want a really strong aerobic foundation

00:56:53.600 | or a base before you really start, I think, structuring things towards a specific one.

00:57:00.000 | So for me, I think a target for me is oftentimes getting really fit at what my pace would be at,

00:57:09.840 | my aerobic threshold or what a lot of people will maybe call a maximum aerobic function.

00:57:13.440 | The running world is weird where we have these terminologies where there's sometimes

00:57:17.760 | multiple words that essentially mean the same thing, but one is from an actual physiological

00:57:23.040 | reaction and one is just a feeling and stuff like that.

00:57:25.600 | - You mentioned time on feet versus time in optimal physiological state. How important is it

00:57:32.880 | just to get running done versus running in a particular pace?

00:57:37.920 | - That would depend on the event, I would say to a degree. And there's conflicting ideas about

00:57:45.200 | how to structure it. I think a lot of times, time on feet in most cases is just going to be like,

00:57:52.320 | "I'm running easy, whatever feels easy that day." And that can be different from one day to the

00:57:56.400 | next. I might feel great and that produces a much faster pace than if I feel really miserable or

00:58:02.400 | something like that. So that's why I think a lot of times running, they'll do the whole perceived

00:58:09.200 | effort or perceived exertion. And you're looking at understanding the response your body has to a

00:58:17.360 | certain effort level and you're supposed to target a certain effort level in order to get a certain

00:58:22.560 | response. So to maybe simplify that a little bit or make it a little clearer, I think I focus on

00:58:28.880 | essentially short intervals. I focus on longer intervals or tempo runs. I focus on race pace

00:58:38.160 | intensity, which is a lot of times what I'll build my long run around. But I'll also, those are the

00:58:44.640 | small pieces to the puzzle. - Those are the options you're working with?

00:58:47.280 | - Yeah, but I'm going to always try to work with those options on top of a massive aerobic base,

00:58:52.160 | which is going to probably be like 80% of the work. - So how do you build that massive aerobic

00:58:55.840 | base? What are we talking about? Just distance? - Distance and essentially, so I like to call it

00:59:00.880 | micro-stressing because you're going to always start at a different spot depending on where

00:59:03.680 | your fitness level's at and depending on where you're at as an individual. I'm going to be

00:59:07.440 | targeting my aerobic threshold. I'm going to get right up to it, but not necessarily cross over it.

00:59:12.000 | It's been popularized as maximum aerobic function as kind of a training philosophy.

00:59:18.080 | That philosophy in itself, I think maybe is a little more holistic where they're saying,

00:59:24.000 | "Do this basically all the time." And by doing so, you're going to raise your aerobic potential by

00:59:31.200 | so much that you can kind of race yourself into shape at that point. And this would be maybe more

00:59:36.560 | specific for shorter distance or endurance runs where you're not going to really race yourself

00:59:40.640 | in the shape of 100 milers, but for 5Ks, you might. You might do a huge base building phase

00:59:45.920 | where you're going up to that maximum aerobic function or that aerobic threshold and you're

00:59:52.080 | watching your pace come down at that. So the rule there is basically if you're seeing improvement,

00:59:58.160 | that's the sign you're looking for or which would just be your pace dropping at that heart rate or

01:00:02.080 | at that intensity. And if you're seeing that continually go down, you're heading in the right

01:00:06.880 | direction. If you start seeing it go the opposite way, you're probably overreaching or you're trying

01:00:11.920 | to do too much of it. So that's kind of dictates how much, the dose, I guess you'd say.

01:00:16.000 | - When we talk about max aerobic function, are we talking about heart rate as the ultimate,

01:00:20.080 | as the really important metric here? So maintaining a particular heart rate during the run?

01:00:24.240 | Is that the measure that, like how do you know you're in the right place?

01:00:28.560 | - Yeah, yeah. And then that's where it gets a little tricky because like unless you go into

01:00:31.440 | a lab and get your aerobic threshold tested, it's really hard to have like an exact number on it.

01:00:35.920 | You know, Dr. Phil Maffetone with the maximum function process, he'll say 180 minus your age

01:00:41.760 | is gonna give you your- - Yeah, that's the math 180 formula

01:00:44.320 | that I thought was fascinating. It's like in the same way E equals MC squared is fascinating,

01:00:50.400 | that there could be a formula that captures like optimal running. So that for people who don't

01:00:55.120 | know that's 180 minus your age, if you train at that heart rate, if you run at that heart rate,

01:01:00.640 | you're going to progress a lot. - And here's the advantage of that.

01:01:02.960 | I think like with any of these things, you wanna look at it through where are the advantages here,

01:01:08.320 | and I need to account for those. And then where are the potential disadvantages and then decide

01:01:12.640 | for me as an individual, do these advantages outweigh the disadvantages? And what's the

01:01:17.040 | alternative approach? And is that gonna produce more advantages or less? So with maximum aerobic

01:01:21.520 | function, here's some advantages. Like it is low enough intensity where you can train pretty

01:01:29.360 | consistently at a fairly high volume with a very low injury risk, with very low like things that

01:01:36.800 | are gonna maybe lower your quality of life, like muscle damage and things like that. It's a more

01:01:41.120 | efficient way in the sense that you're gonna be like prioritizing like fat metabolization, which,

01:01:46.480 | I mean, if you're looking at like Jeff Folek and, or Dr. Jeff Folek and Dr. Dominic D'Agostino,

01:01:51.920 | some of their research and things like that, like they're gonna show that, that's gonna be a little

01:01:56.560 | cleaner way to go about things from just a recovery standpoint, a breakdown standpoint.

01:02:00.880 | - So they could be like a, what they call like a fat adapted athlete. So you can

01:02:05.040 | go to your fat stores for energy if you're applying this. What is it called by the way? MAF 180?

01:02:12.000 | - Yeah.

01:02:12.640 | - Is that a good, is it good? What are your thoughts about in general for yourself and

01:02:17.840 | for the broader population?

01:02:19.040 | - I think the MAF 180 formula is about as good of a formula as you're gonna find in terms of

01:02:25.280 | capturing as many people as you can get away with capturing with a kind of a universal thing.

01:02:29.440 | Like any of these things, I mean, it's more likely kind of on a bell curve where like the bulk of

01:02:35.840 | that 180 minus your age is probably gonna be a pretty good, at least starting point to kind of

01:02:40.000 | figure out where that is. There's some other things you can like maybe use to kind of check it

01:02:44.720 | that I like to do. If I'm, let's say I did 180 minus my age and I went out and I started running

01:02:49.760 | and it was like, I'm running along and I'm just like, my breathing is labored. I'm, you know,

01:02:55.600 | I'm struggling to get a sentence out without gasping for breath. Well, that's my body telling

01:03:00.320 | me I'm probably not actually at my true like MAF number or my true, like underneath my true aerobic

01:03:06.000 | threshold, like aerobic threshold and maximum function. You should be able to do that for hours

01:03:09.840 | and you should be able to breathe pretty efficiently.

01:03:12.000 | - And talk.

01:03:12.640 | - Yep. Carry a conversation. Other people will say like you, another way to kind of gauge it,

01:03:17.200 | if you can breathe in your nose and out your mouth, that's not necessarily the best way to do

01:03:21.360 | on a, from a performance standpoint, but it can be a good kind of governor that will allow you to,

01:03:26.720 | like, if you can, if you can no longer breathe in your nose and out your mouth, you're probably

01:03:29.840 | going too fast to actually technically be at your MAF pace or under your MAF pace.

01:03:33.040 | - Yeah. I had a, actually when I was in better shape, I had trouble getting to that MAF number.

01:03:39.520 | I found myself like, I would be doing way too much work. Like-

01:03:44.640 | - It was too hard to do it?

01:03:45.760 | - It was too hard to get to that number. I was running a much lower heart rate, like 10 to 20,

01:03:51.600 | what do you call that? Beats lower. And that's, I was still for myself, happy with the pace. It

01:03:56.800 | was a good pace and I felt good. I was smiling and enjoying life. And the moment I take myself to that

01:04:04.960 | level of like the MAF 180 level, that's like, that felt like a real work. And it felt like I can't do

01:04:12.320 | that for five, 10, 15 miles. Like I started feeling it like this is a one or two mile thing.

01:04:17.760 | But I think his answer to that, I feel Mephitone's answer is maybe you're supposed to like,

01:04:26.320 | what, maybe do some more sprints or something like that, or build up your,

01:04:31.840 | maybe like I'm too weak, musculature wise to like, yeah. Like that's a sign that you need to work on

01:04:38.720 | some stuff. You can't just keep enjoying life. - There's two ways to look at that, I think.

01:04:42.160 | And I think you're right on. I think that what the advice from that kind of a process would say is

01:04:49.440 | either you're doing too much of it. So it's getting too hard for where your skeletal muscle

01:04:54.640 | system is currently at for that particular activity. So like, it can be different too.

01:04:59.520 | Like if you're cycling versus running, that's a little bit of different mechanic where it can be

01:05:03.680 | different where you could take a super fit cyclist and then put them on, the amount of volume they're

01:05:09.760 | gonna be able to tolerate relative to what you're gonna do when you remove like impact forces and

01:05:13.680 | things like that is gonna be lower if they haven't been practicing that activity. So for you, like,

01:05:17.920 | you know, you're prioritizing like wrestling and mixed martial arts, or not mixed martial arts,

01:05:23.200 | but jujitsu type stuff. So, you know, running is maybe kind of that secondary activity versus the

01:05:31.040 | primary activity. But yeah, so what they would say is probably like maybe instead of doing that,

01:05:36.720 | let's say you were doing that for like 30 miles a week or something like that, and it was getting

01:05:40.720 | too hard to continue, they'd say, you know, come back to 20, get used to 20, get comfortable with

01:05:46.160 | 20, then let's get you up to 25 and 30 and kind of just like inch you along.

01:05:50.480 | One of the intuitions I had about the ways I was failing at running is the form was probably not

01:05:57.600 | great. Like the way to get to those 30, 40 miles is to get the form right. Maybe I was doing too

01:06:05.520 | big of steps, not the, so like playing with a different gate, playing with a different kind of

01:06:10.160 | the form. - Economy of your form.

01:06:12.320 | - The economy, the efficiency, yeah. So that was the intuition, like I was doing something wrong,

01:06:17.040 | but I suppose that's the benefit of these kind of formulas. It challenges you to think like,

01:06:21.280 | how can I improve this kind of stuff? - Well, and it also, it simplifies it so much

01:06:26.240 | that you're forced to, right? You're forced to optimize within that real strict parameter versus,

01:06:32.160 | am I doing my short intervals right, but my long runs wrong? Or am I doing my like long intervals

01:06:37.760 | right, but my short intervals, and then you just, it kind of complicates things when you start

01:06:41.040 | throwing a lot of stuff there. And for most people, especially when they're first getting started,

01:06:45.040 | you know, you can't overcomplicate it, or you're just gonna like, you're gonna do like a bunch of

01:06:50.320 | half right, half wrong things, and then not really know where your progress or your deficits are

01:06:55.200 | necessarily at. So I do think this is an amazing approach, especially for people who are just

01:07:00.800 | getting into it and building that foundation, where I think maybe you want to deviate from that a

01:07:07.600 | little bit, especially when you start to get into these events that are operating well outside that

01:07:11.760 | intensity. So you take something like, you know, let's say it's a race that takes you in the

01:07:18.160 | neighborhood of around like 12 minutes or something like that, then you're gonna be running significantly

01:07:22.960 | faster than your maximum function pace. So most of the research is gonna say at some point in time,

01:07:29.520 | you need to get around to practicing the pace at which you're going to perform at, and really

01:07:33.520 | fine tuning the mechanics, the efficiencies, how it feels, how to judge it, how to pace it at the pace

01:07:40.880 | you're going to try to compete at. So there's obviously like a large range of targets there

01:07:44.560 | when we talk about the endurance world in general, where, you know, you have these shorter events,

01:07:48.160 | like five kilometers, and then you also have 100 mile races, which are going to typically be quite

01:07:52.160 | a bit below your maximum aerobic function in especially on these trail races. I need to admit

01:07:56.640 | something. So I don't measure the runs at all in terms of time. I get competitive with myself. So I

01:08:04.960 | kind of decided that running for me is going to be this thing where I just go by feel. Is it possible

01:08:09.840 | to be that kind of runner and, you know, still have running as part of your life and be a good

01:08:15.520 | performer in running? - I actually think that's where you want to get to. The problem is most

01:08:21.040 | people have a hard time getting to that because they'll go out and they'll run with a friend and

01:08:26.000 | match their pace, or they'll go out and they'll say, well, I want to run this pace. So they'll

01:08:29.680 | target that pace or target a specific heart rate, which is, you know, not necessarily how they maybe

01:08:35.920 | feel good doing it. So I think like once you, I mean, obviously I think when you put a race on

01:08:41.360 | the calendar, if your goal is performance, it's a little harder to just say like, well, I'm going

01:08:45.760 | to run whatever feels good today. Because eventually you have to get around to doing what's

01:08:48.720 | specific. But from just a fitness standpoint, health standpoint, enjoyment standpoint,

01:08:54.240 | I think it's totally fine to go out and say, I'm going to run what feels good today. And, you know,

01:08:57.760 | maybe someday you will feel like at the end of the run, I'm going to do a couple of sprints just to

01:09:01.040 | get some, you know, that, because it does, that one's a hard one to kind of jumpstart. But once

01:09:05.200 | you do it and you realize how kind of good it feels maybe to throw in a few accelerations at

01:09:08.560 | the end of a run, and then you, you say, oh, wow, that feels pretty good to do that. I feel a little

01:09:12.320 | more accomplished. - That's right. That's a forcing function. But I like to finish runs with sprints

01:09:16.720 | anyway. - Okay. Because you're already there. - Without, right. You don't need to, the timing,

01:09:20.640 | I'm afraid of the time of becoming a drug, but the flip side of that, it's a useful tool to get you

01:09:26.720 | to learn the right form, the right feel, like what it feels like to have, to be in good shape. And

01:09:32.720 | then you can throw out the time. - Well, I think too, with, with feel running and what I mean by

01:09:36.640 | that is that it's kind of back to that perceived effort thing where like you do enough of it and

01:09:39.920 | you start being able to recognize, like I can go out and if you said, okay, run, you know,

01:09:45.840 | 60 minutes at your aerobic threshold, I could go, I could know where that is on my heart rate.

01:09:52.000 | And I could go up there and just say like, okay, I know what that feels like and go out and run

01:09:55.120 | that feel. And I'm going to hit that spot. Like I bet you if we'd looked at my heart rate data

01:09:59.760 | after that, it'd be right in there. And I wouldn't have to look at it. Some of that's just experience.

01:10:02.800 | - Yeah. - Some of it's just understanding, like,

01:10:04.480 | when, like noticing the physiological responses when you cross over versus step a little bit too

01:10:10.080 | below it. You can catch yourself daydreaming and forget. I'll do this sometimes too where

01:10:14.320 | I'll be tired. Cause I'm kind of like you too, where when I'm getting really fit, especially

01:10:18.480 | with my foundation, like I got to, you know, I'm moving pretty quick at my aerobic threshold. So

01:10:23.600 | like if I start daydreaming too much, I can notice, oh, I'm drifting back a little bit.

01:10:26.560 | I look down at my heart rate, my, oh yeah, I'm 10 beats under. You know, so you do it,

01:10:30.080 | it does take a little bit of, I think just awareness. But it's also not necessarily

01:10:35.760 | something where you have to be so exact that you're hitting, you know, an exact heart rate

01:10:40.720 | all the time. There's usually a range. And there's even like some fluctuations where like,

01:10:44.560 | if you've been healthy for a year or two without any injuries and you've been fit,

01:10:48.720 | that you can probably add five beats to your maximum aerobic function if you're using that

01:10:52.320 | as kind of your target from the 180 minus your age formula.

01:10:55.440 | - So let's try this, lay this out for yourself, but for others, you offer ready-made plans for

01:11:01.440 | people, you know, depending on their, I think the key thing there is the distance. Maybe you can

01:11:07.600 | elaborate, but what does that plan look like usually? What are the key options as you've

01:11:14.560 | already kind of mentioned, and how does your week look like? How do a lot of people's week look like

01:11:21.600 | in terms of splits? Are we talking about, you know, in terms of rest days, in terms of how often do you

01:11:28.480 | speed work versus longer distance? You mentioned long runs. Like, is there something you could say

01:11:34.960 | that's generally applicable about the structure of these plans?

01:11:39.920 | - The ready-made plans, I definitely follow like a philosophy, and it's going to be like kind of

01:11:44.640 | like lockstep in that. So for those, like, there's just always going to be a sacrifice when you do

01:11:49.600 | like a ready-made plan because you're removing the individual context there. So for folks who

01:11:54.240 | are like really want to get into the weeds, I usually do like a personalized coaching plan

01:11:57.440 | with them where we sit down and we actually look at their strengths, their weaknesses,

01:12:00.880 | and really kind of go in from that perspective and fine tune it. And it also like, it avoids a

01:12:07.440 | situation where, oh, my ready-made plan says I'm supposed to do this run today, but I don't feel

01:12:13.360 | great today. So what do I do? I mean, some people are fine with that because they're aware enough of

01:12:17.840 | like the process that they can adjust it themselves. Other folks just need a little

01:12:22.000 | more support. So that's kind of the difference there. But in terms of the structure of it,

01:12:26.800 | it kind of goes with an approach where we're saying you build this foundation,

01:12:31.280 | you're going to spend, you know, usually anywhere between 8 to 12 weeks just building up

01:12:36.000 | your aerobic foundation. You're going to be doing a lot of stuff that are kind of at,

01:12:39.760 | I call them base runs, but they're basically your maximum aerobic function or you're up to

01:12:43.680 | your aerobic threshold type stuff. And they're really going to get really fit with that. And

01:12:47.840 | once they kind of have that foundation laid, then it's time to get into the specifics of whatever

01:12:51.840 | distance they're doing. So if it were, it will differ will be like if they're doing right now

01:12:56.960 | on those plans, I think I've got 5k half marathon, marathon, 50k, 80 to 100k and then 100 miles.

01:13:02.720 | So if they pick a 5k plan, the order of operations is going to be different than if they pick the

01:13:06.400 | 100 mile plan, you're going to see some of the same workouts show up in that plan. It just can

01:13:11.440 | be different areas of it. So once they're really fit at that, you know, that foundational level,

01:13:18.720 | then, you know, if they're doing say 100 mile plan, they might start doing some short intervals,

01:13:22.640 | which I would on my plans, I usually range between 30 seconds up to four minutes. It's kind of that

01:13:27.440 | short interval range. Can you describe what you mean by short interval? It's like a sprint and

01:13:32.160 | then a rest? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll use basically like I'll use like a basically a 12 minute time

01:13:38.640 | trial. And that's going to kind of like dictate for them what the intensity and the pace is going

01:13:43.200 | to be for some of those when they're under a minute, they'll push past that a little bit.

01:13:48.160 | But usually when we're up to like above a minute, and certainly up to four minutes,

01:13:51.680 | like whatever pace or intensity that they get for that kind of 12 minute time trial,

01:13:56.160 | where they're just seeing how far they can go in 12 minutes is going to be kind of like about where

01:14:01.920 | they're going to target for those intervals. So then those intervals are going to be structured.

01:14:05.120 | Let's say they're doing two minute intervals, they're gonna do two minutes at that intensity

01:14:09.200 | that they could do for 12 minutes at a time trial, then they're gonna do a two minute real easy jog,

01:14:13.200 | or maybe even walk just to kind of bounce back. And they're going to repeat it. How do you figure

01:14:16.960 | out how far you can go in 12 minutes? Is that just a trial and error you build up to it? There's

01:14:22.160 | formulas? What? Yeah, there's some newer formulas that are probably a little less brutal.

01:14:27.680 | Where you kind of, I haven't really dove into these that that in depth yet, I know like,

01:14:34.640 | that you can kind of replicate it by doing like a short, a very short interval,

01:14:40.000 | and then a slightly longer one. And then like another one where like at the end one,

01:14:44.960 | that last one will kind of indicate what it is. And so you're doing less of it to get the same

01:14:49.440 | answer to the question. But sometimes I think when it's someone who's new, I'd rather than just do a

01:14:55.680 | 12 minute time trial, because it's easy for them to execute in the sense that it's pretty clear,

01:15:01.440 | you do a warm up, you do some strides, maybe some dynamic stretches, and you just run as hard as you

01:15:05.840 | can for 12 minutes as evenly paced as you can manage. And I mean, if it's going to produce

01:15:11.840 | the data I'm looking for. And I mean, it's also- No matter what happens, it'll produce the data.

01:15:17.760 | Yeah. I mean, you can you can screw it up, I guess you can go way too fast. And then you have

01:15:21.840 | this scenario where like, oh, it looks like your, you know, your first two minutes were drastically

01:15:25.520 | faster than your last two. And then it's like, oh, we maybe screwed that one up. But I mean,

01:15:30.160 | really, like, you don't even need to do the time trial, technically. A lot of times you can go off

01:15:36.080 | of feel like what we described with the threshold stuff. And, and, you know, it's a high enough

01:15:42.800 | intensity where, where like, you can start to kind of like, your body's going to kind of limit you to

01:15:49.120 | a degree where if I said we didn't do the time trial, and just started doing the intervals,

01:15:53.920 | we could figure out that, you know, if they're doing them right or not, if we see a scenario

01:15:58.720 | where oh, it looks like these first two intervals were significantly slower than the last two,

01:16:02.720 | chances are we're still not quite dialed in in terms of what the intensity is that you should

01:16:06.560 | be targeting for those. And as you do a few, you just get to know the pacing of it a little better.

01:16:11.360 | And then you start seeing more even splits. So like, you know, their first two minute intervals

01:16:14.720 | pretty close within a couple seconds of their second, or, you know, I guess we'd be looking

01:16:18.000 | at distance if we're doing time. So like you went approximately the same distance on that last one

01:16:22.320 | as you did the first one. And then we're just looking for improvement over time. So you know,

01:16:26.640 | we might spend four, six weeks kind of focusing on improving that we're going to still include

01:16:32.480 | kind of foundational running volume where you're going to be running like an easy pace and

01:16:35.920 | enjoyable pace kind of in the interim, and then there's gonna be some rest days. And that's gonna

01:16:40.160 | be where the levels come in my like level one plans are gonna be like four day a week training

01:16:43.840 | plans level two are gonna be five day level three are gonna be six day with one day off.

01:16:48.320 | And you can obviously operate outside of those, those those are just the ones that I put up for

01:16:53.040 | the ready made when I'm coaching people kind of personalized, we just we look at like what their

01:16:56.720 | history is with running their schedule, all sorts of stuff, because oftentimes people get hung up on

01:17:01.600 | like, well, what are the elites doing? What are the professionals doing? What are the Olympians

01:17:04.400 | doing? It's like, well, it's like, what the Olympians are doing is they're waking up and

01:17:08.000 | they're living and breathing everything around this one race that they're gonna do in four years,

01:17:12.400 | or so it's like, we need to step away from that if you're working, you know, 10 hours a day,

01:17:16.400 | and you got kids and all this other stuff, too. So there's a lot of variables that make it more

01:17:21.520 | interesting to coach someone who's actually like not an elite athlete, or someone who's a

01:17:25.920 | professional athlete, I should say. The but but yeah, so they're, they're gonna do that stuff,

01:17:31.440 | those those shorter intervals for probably about like four to six weeks, if they're doing if they're

01:17:37.600 | doing a longer race, like 100 miles, if they were doing, say a 5k, we'd start bringing those workouts

01:17:42.560 | in near the end of their plan, because that's gonna be specific to their race pace, that can be

01:17:45.840 | the intensity that maybe they're doing for, you know, like a 3k or 5k or something like that.

01:17:50.000 | So it's gonna be more relative to what they're going to use. So it follows that philosophy,

01:17:54.480 | the plans follow that philosophy of weaknesses and least specific stuff early. And then we start

01:17:59.680 | phasing closer to most specific stuff and strengths as you get kind of near to the end of the plan.

01:18:06.480 | And then the distance of or the time that you're going to spend out doing whatever event is going

01:18:10.560 | to dictate how those kind of get ordered in there. I wonder if I could ask you for some sort of

01:18:15.360 | advice, maybe almost maybe look at me as a case study of a particular runner, and then

01:18:23.760 | see how we can plan stuff out. So which context to give? Okay, so I have been first, let me say

01:18:31.040 | how much we're currently in Austin, I want to say how much I love Austin for many reasons.

01:18:35.360 | First and foremost, people are super kind and just like, there's so much love that I've experienced

01:18:42.960 | immediately when I came to the city versus many of the other cities I've been in. It's, it's not

01:18:48.960 | quite as welcoming and full of kindness immediately. I mean, I really love it here in Austin.

01:18:55.440 | And because I've been going through a bunch of stressful stuff, I just kind of gave myself a

01:19:00.160 | chance to say, okay, I'm going to stick to a diet of carnivore keto, but I'm going to eat as much

01:19:06.560 | as I want. Because primarily because just barbecue was part of the love I was getting here. And I was

01:19:15.280 | like, either I resist or just give in, I decided to give in and actually use this as an opportunity

01:19:19.760 | to relax and have fun for the past three, four months, plus whiskey, and so on. And then the

01:19:25.440 | training kind of all I also let go of the training a little bit, just to relax to really focus on the

01:19:30.240 | work, focus on the love I've been getting all those kinds of things. But now, I just kind of

01:19:35.360 | want to set a goal for myself to get back into both competing and grappling, but also doing a

01:19:42.560 | hanging out with David Goggins and doing a conversation with him. But almost this is my

01:19:47.200 | own personal kind of race that I'm looking forward to. And in terms of distance, that means running

01:19:53.360 | with David, something like a marathon plus plus. It's like, it's unclear what plus so my goal would

01:20:02.240 | be to continue eating carnivore, which is a whole nother topic I'd love to talk to you about. I feel

01:20:07.840 | great psychologically, sort of in terms of mental performance in my work when I eat carnivore,

01:20:13.920 | and physically, I love it. I've never felt any kind of need for carbs to improve performance in

01:20:22.080 | my running or anything else. Combine that with fasting, intermittent fasting, or eating once a

01:20:26.400 | day. I just, that's when I feel the best. What else? I also feel best, and this is something

01:20:33.600 | you can push back on. I feel best when I just run every day, like no breaks ever, and usually the

01:20:42.080 | same way every day. So like, I know this is suboptimal. It'd be interesting to hear your

01:20:49.040 | opinion of just how suboptimal that is. So I think that actually lays out like where my mind is. I'm

01:20:55.120 | happy eating carnivore once a day. I like running every day. The goal is to run a marathon in two

01:21:02.720 | months-ish, two months plus, and then about three months to do a bunch of competitions and grappling.

01:21:09.120 | - Okay. With those parameters, I think like you actually probably would be a great candidate for

01:21:14.640 | a maximum aerobic function training strategy. Like you want that consistency where I'm going

01:21:18.640 | to do the same thing each day. You don't want to beat yourself up so much any one day that you

01:21:24.160 | can't get out and do it the next one. That's the sweet spot with maximum aerobic function

01:21:27.680 | is the trademark there is that you can keep going and keep doing it again and again and again,

01:21:35.120 | because as long as you're not going out one day and trying to do twice as much as what you're

01:21:39.200 | ready for, for that one specific... The key for you is going to be picking the right starting point

01:21:43.520 | and then building from there on what that day kind of entails in terms of how much running you do.

01:21:49.520 | So where you could maybe get creative would be if you decided that it's a hard, fast rule

01:21:57.040 | that you run an hour every day, seven days a week, but we find out that to run your maximum

01:22:02.800 | aerobic function means you probably are better off sticking to 30 minutes. Then what you would

01:22:07.600 | maybe do is you would run underneath your maximum aerobic function for the first 15 minutes and the

01:22:13.760 | last 15 minutes. Maybe throw some of those strides in there if you want to do that at the very end.

01:22:17.920 | And then that middle 30 minutes is going to be maximum aerobic function target.

01:22:21.680 | - Got it. - And then maybe after

01:22:24.960 | four weeks, you start noticing, you know what? This 30 minutes isn't wearing me out near as much

01:22:28.720 | as it used to. I feel like I could easily push past that. Well, let's up that to 40 minutes.

01:22:32.960 | So that's 60. You're always staying within that 60 minute parameter that keeps your schedule

01:22:37.360 | consistent, your routine consistent. - I'm wearing a heart rate monitor

01:22:40.960 | as I run to monitor it. - Sure, yeah.

01:22:43.680 | - Actually. - You could do that.

01:22:44.960 | You could go perceived effort. I like to use them in tandem in the sense that early on, I'll

01:22:50.880 | maybe look at my heart rate a little more often, especially for shorter length. Heart rate can get

01:22:56.000 | messy the longer you go. So I end up kind of maybe stepping away from heart rate a little more

01:23:02.000 | than some will at a certain point because ultimately I'm going to be usually training

01:23:06.800 | or working with someone to run a race that's really long and they have cardiac drift, dehydration,

01:23:11.760 | heat, and things that are going to make the heart rate super messy.

01:23:14.640 | - Yeah, but probably your ability to measure perceived effort is exceptionally good. Mine

01:23:20.000 | is actually really weak. - Okay, heart rate then.

01:23:21.840 | - I need to do the still the work of connecting heart rate to the perceived effort.

01:23:25.440 | - Yep, and that's exactly what I would use heart rate for then. And you'll get to a point

01:23:29.360 | probably by like in the first couple of months where you can still lean on heart rate if you

01:23:34.800 | want, but it'll be kind of one of those things where you keep looking at it, you're like, "Oh,

01:23:38.880 | wow, I can guess it." And you play a game with yourself too. And you say, "Well,

01:23:41.600 | how close can I guess?" - Yeah.

01:23:43.040 | - You'll get it. So like for me, what I'll do is I'll go, I'll do the run and then I'll look at

01:23:46.880 | the heart rate afterwards and be like, "Oh, cool. I was right there." Or I remember feeling like I

01:23:50.720 | was speeding up a little bit there and the show is right there on the heart rate.

01:23:53.440 | - I also love sort of something we haven't talked about. I love pushups and pull-ups,

01:23:58.800 | so like bodyweight workouts. Again, it's mostly mental. I just enjoy the mental challenge of it.

01:24:04.160 | I also like, it makes me feel like if all I'm doing is running, it makes me feel I'm not like-

01:24:11.040 | - One dimensional. - Yeah, one dimensional. I mean,

01:24:14.320 | there's some aspect to running that's not to be like hippie about it, but like, you know,

01:24:19.280 | you're with nature, you're running. It's like we're born to do this thing. And that same way,

01:24:24.800 | I feel like when I'm doing pushups and pull-ups, I feel like I was born to do that kind of stuff.

01:24:29.520 | Like it's like this bodyweight exercises have that way about them. It doesn't have that dumbbell

01:24:35.920 | feel or doing bench press or squats, squats with weight. When you're just doing squats,

01:24:42.720 | bodyweight, when doing pushups and pull-ups, bodyweight, even just basic ab stuff, core stuff,

01:24:47.840 | bodyweight. I don't know. I just love the way I feel doing that. So it's usually,

01:24:52.240 | I forgot to mention that part. I combine that with the running afterwards,

01:24:55.520 | doing some basic bodyweight stuff. - Yeah, and I think like you're gonna get

01:24:58.960 | from, if we're not looking at it from like specifically like training a pace in order to get

01:25:05.280 | both the skeletal muscle adaptations as well as the cardiovascular benefits, you're probably

01:25:11.600 | tapping into some of the higher intensity stuff with that bodyweight stuff. Unless you're doing,

01:25:15.680 | I guess. - No rest. It's very quick.

01:25:17.920 | - Okay. So you're getting pretty high heart rate from that?

01:25:20.560 | - Yeah, yeah. Very hard. - Okay.

01:25:21.760 | - Higher than running. Yep. - So you're checking that box there

01:25:24.720 | from just like a lifestyle, enjoyment, fitness, overall fitness standpoint. I think you wanna

01:25:32.080 | keep your running more aerobic then because you're getting that, and you're probably getting it from

01:25:36.080 | like your grappling workouts too, I would guess. So there's just not as big of a need for you from

01:25:42.080 | a big picture standpoint to be doubling down on that stuff with your runs as well. And it sounds

01:25:49.440 | like you prefer not to. - That's right. So I mean,

01:25:53.360 | what about the distance of marathon versus a hundred miles? Is that a big difference? What's

01:25:58.960 | a good goal to work towards? Is it marathon and the rest of it just takes care of itself?

01:26:05.600 | - Yeah. So you wanna do a marathon and then ultimately do a hundred mile after that? Is

01:26:09.920 | that what you're saying? - I have no idea what the guy-

01:26:12.480 | - Oh, so he's gonna tell you spot on what you're doing. So you have to be ready for anything.

01:26:16.480 | - For anything. My own personal goal is to feel somewhat challenged, but comfortable running a

01:26:23.520 | marathon. The longest I've ever run is 22 miles, but there's been many stretches in my life where

01:26:30.080 | I would regularly run, like the long run would be close to 20 miles. And then I was comfortably

01:26:36.480 | running 10 miles four months ago. It was like forever ago until I injured myself a little bit

01:26:44.160 | by running in the snow and stubbing my toe to where it was like, you don't realize how much

01:26:49.040 | you appreciate your toes until you stub them. - That big toes where all that power comes off.

01:26:53.760 | - Yeah. And so it was surprising how long it took to heal and how essential it was and how

01:27:01.520 | unpleasant running, how much I hated running with it. And then I kept like coming, trying to get

01:27:06.240 | back out there to run to think, I think it's okay. And no, it's not okay. You really need to let it

01:27:12.000 | fully heal. At least that was my experience. I couldn't like just suck it up. It was making it

01:27:16.400 | worse every time. It was one of those injuries that could really feel, even though it's so small,

01:27:21.760 | but it's essential. So is there any difference between the goal of marathon or a hundred miles,

01:27:27.120 | would you say? Should I be prepping for a hundred miles if that's at all a possibility?

01:27:30.720 | - The big difference is going to be like you're dropping intensity significantly by going up to

01:27:36.240 | a hundred miles versus the marathon. So the maximum aerobic function, I think is actually

01:27:40.640 | going to feed into that maybe a little bit better. It's probably gonna be a little closer

01:27:43.680 | depending on where, I mean, it all varies a bit. Cause like people will focus on specific distances

01:27:50.400 | and they'll get very efficient and very adapted to that. So like the, it kind of like, it's what

01:27:57.440 | makes running kind of messy where like you'll get, for example, like the average person can hit their

01:28:03.360 | like lactate threshold for probably about like 60 minutes or something like that. Whereas you get

01:28:07.280 | these elite marathoners who've been basically spending their entire life preparing for a

01:28:11.280 | marathon race. They can push almost up to their lactate threshold and at their lactate threshold

01:28:16.480 | for almost like two hours. So it gets a little messy when you start looking at it from that lens,

01:28:23.120 | but you don't really have to worry about that too much because you're not really focusing on

01:28:26.880 | being the best possible hundred miler or the best possible marathoner you could be. You want

01:28:31.280 | enough overall fitness that you can just do either one of them without absolute misery because you did

01:28:36.640 | the couch to a hundred miles. So I think like for a hundred miles, the biggest difference, I think,

01:28:42.400 | given your context is just like the more physical things you are doing, the better prepared you're

01:28:47.040 | going to be for the hundred mile. So it's almost given your context, I wouldn't say irrelevant.

01:28:53.200 | You want to be doing running, but you're going to be doing that once you put it in your program.

01:28:56.320 | It sounds like it's going to be pretty locked in. You're going to want to also like, like

01:29:02.080 | if you view it this way, it's probably going to be more mentally beneficial to where, hey,

01:29:07.520 | today I did my run. I did my body weight exercises. I did some grappling practice. I spent

01:29:13.680 | three hours working out today. If you think of it like that, then you're moving your body,

01:29:18.800 | you're doing things that are active for a good chunk of the day, especially relative to most

01:29:24.720 | people. So that's going to actually be very helpful for you. The problem or the battle to

01:29:30.800 | get over is going to just be like, you're going to break down physically running a hundred miles.

01:29:36.720 | And you're gonna break down physically running a marathon too. So like the, you might just have

01:29:42.240 | to push through a little more discomfort, like from a physical standpoint, compared to be if

01:29:46.080 | you decided I'm gonna do everything I can in these next like 24 weeks to be able to run a full hundred

01:29:53.440 | miler. Would you say it's physical or is it mental discomfort? Like, I mean, isn't everything

01:30:01.120 | physically uncomfortable? Like what do you train for if you're training for the chaos of, so it's

01:30:08.240 | not necessarily the hundred miles, it's the chaos of the unexpected, which might include a hundred

01:30:12.240 | miles, but it might also include a thousand pushups in my case. So like- - You need a big

01:30:16.640 | jack of all trades is what you need to be. - Yeah. But also like building up the confidence

01:30:20.240 | or maybe not, I don't know. How do you survive a thousand pushups? It's a combination of

01:30:27.200 | confidence that you have to know that you can do that kind of thing. Not necessarily the actual

01:30:32.240 | number, but like doing crazy stuff. And the second is probably, well, okay, the base strength and

01:30:41.600 | endurance and also just the practicing that process of not quitting. I feel like that's one

01:30:48.880 | of the things I really need to do in the running space is like doing slightly unpleasant things

01:30:53.520 | where I'm practicing that, like bringing my mind back and saying, nope, I'm going to keep doing it.

01:30:59.840 | And part of the running every day has that benefit because some days you really don't

01:31:04.000 | feel like running and doing that, then you're practicing that muscle of doing it anyway.

01:31:10.880 | I don't know if there's something you can say in terms of advice, how to practice

01:31:15.200 | like doing something unpleasant every day, frequently. - Yeah. What I would do with that

01:31:22.560 | is I would try to make the unpleasant thing be different from one day to the next, if you can. So

01:31:29.600 | the fear I would have with making running unpleasant every time would be it becomes like

01:31:36.400 | a negative feedback loop in your physiologically, potentially, as well as mentally, where if the

01:31:42.640 | entire running process is miserable, you're going to be miserable when you step on that starting

01:31:48.240 | line, whether it's a marathon or a hundred miles. - You've trained yourself that running equals

01:31:52.720 | miserable. - Well, and here's the thing, if you look at just like, here's where the literature

01:31:57.360 | says on paper are like the dozen workouts you should do in a training plan. And this is how

01:32:03.040 | you should structure them right down to the minute. And you just say like, I'm going to give

01:32:07.120 | everyone this schedule and they're going to do this every time, rinse and repeat. My biggest concern

01:32:12.880 | with that approach is you are potentially putting them in a position where the training is so boring

01:32:18.480 | and so monotonous that like if they hit a roadblock mentally, they're going to fall apart very quick

01:32:25.280 | because they've already exhausted themselves mentally just trying to do the same old interval

01:32:28.960 | every time, doing the same old workout. And it doesn't necessarily have to be like one specific

01:32:35.040 | plan in its entirety. It could just be like the mix of things within it. So like rather than like,

01:32:41.040 | if I just said, oh, we're going to do three minute intervals, this entire short interval process or

01:32:45.680 | two minute intervals or four minute intervals or 60 second intervals, by that sixth week,

01:32:51.360 | they might be so sick of that, that they're not actually maximizing their potential within that

01:32:54.960 | because there's no flavor there. And then they're also actually getting less out of themselves than

01:32:59.840 | they would if we just got a little more creative and said, okay, let's mix this up and let's do

01:33:04.080 | four one minute intervals, then take a little bit of a break and then we'll do three minute intervals

01:33:10.400 | or at least changing it up from week to week so that they have something different showing up,

01:33:13.600 | even though we're addressing the same kind of physiological adaptation.

01:33:16.320 | So like, I think what you want to do is you want to introduce the misery, you want to be able to

01:33:22.640 | test yourself to the degree where like when you can recognize these points of I don't want to be

01:33:26.480 | here, but I can do it, push through it, but recognize that like, there's not necessarily

01:33:33.360 | going to be one event that you want to lean on to get that from because you won't want to make

01:33:37.200 | that one event so miserable that you don't want to do it when it comes time for the challenge.

01:33:40.880 | So if you can possibly say like, okay, on Tuesdays, the pushup workout, I'm going to go

01:33:46.960 | 10 pushups more than I want to, I'm going to get to that point where I'm like, there's no more,

01:33:51.360 | and then I'm gonna do 10 more. And you're going to make that one miserable. And then maybe on,

01:33:55.600 | you know, Thursdays, you decide to do like some of those sprints or something at the end where

01:34:01.120 | you do a few of them, and you're like, okay, this is where I'd be comfortable to stop like,

01:34:04.880 | well, I'm going to do two more of them because I know I don't want to do two more of them,

01:34:07.280 | but mix that up. So you're not, so at least you're getting enjoyment from some of it and not

01:34:12.800 | just getting complete disgust from the entire process.

01:34:14.960 | - Yeah, there's actually quite a lot of ways that I can introduce misery into the pushups

01:34:20.000 | and the running, get creative, including, you know, even just like stuff outside of the running,

01:34:24.880 | like taking a freezing cold showers, those kinds of things, just introducing random kind of chaos

01:34:30.320 | into the system or having conversations with people as an introvert, it's terrifying.

01:34:35.760 | - More podcasts.

01:34:37.280 | - More podcasts. So I'm now starting the training and Zach, you've been kind enough to also kind of

01:34:46.240 | be willing to help me out throughout this process. So I look forward to where that goes. It's kind of

01:34:51.920 | fascinating. On the diet side, you're one of the many things that make you fascinating

01:35:00.160 | is you've played with diet as well, and you're somewhat famous, I would say, for doing low carb

01:35:05.920 | or playing with low carb or meat-based diets. Can you describe the potential, like how you're

01:35:11.280 | thinking about that has evolved and the potential beneficial role of a carnivore diet or a keto

01:35:17.440 | diet or a meat-based diet in training as an ultra marathon runner?

01:35:20.800 | - Yeah, and I think like where a lot of times things get confusing for people here is the

01:35:24.800 | context of it too, where it's like they want an answer as to what do I eat for endurance sport?

01:35:31.520 | And it's like, well, endurance sport is quite wide ranging as we've talked about many times here.

01:35:35.920 | So there's going to be differences, I think, in just like what you want to maybe necessarily

01:35:39.440 | prioritize both for the event you're doing and the intensity that's required for it,

01:35:45.280 | the training that's required for that event. And then also the individual component too,

01:35:48.800 | where I think this one often gets overlooked, where we tend to say like, well, we've got all

01:35:54.080 | these Olympic medalists at the marathon and below distance who are eating a moderate to high

01:36:00.960 | carbohydrate diet. So everyone needs to do that if they want to reach their potential in say the 3K

01:36:07.120 | to the marathon. And in a perfect world, maybe that would be true, but there's a lot of other

01:36:13.600 | variables that often get forgotten then that could positively or negatively impact that decision

01:36:18.960 | choice. So I think Dr. Jeff Volk has done a great job of kind of highlighting this in the sense

01:36:23.920 | that when he works with people, he works with people in the health sphere as well as the

01:36:27.600 | performance sphere. And he's one of the main guys at Virta Health who's, they've got like a 60%

01:36:32.960 | success rate with working with folks with type 2 diabetes to reverse their type 2 diabetes.

01:36:40.160 | And I mean, that's an astounding, when you think of just any nutritional protocol,

01:36:45.440 | it's success rate, they're all incredibly low. They're very, very low. And the big difference

01:36:50.080 | with his is the coaching aspect of it. Like they give support. So these people like have someone

01:36:54.400 | to turn to when they make a mistake, or if they're thinking about doing something differently, or

01:36:57.840 | they don't know what to do, rather than just kind of throwing, throwing it all up in the air and

01:37:02.320 | quitting, they have a resource there. And that's probably a big reason why that's the success rate

01:37:06.800 | that they have with that is they put those support mechanisms in place. That picture needs to be

01:37:11.840 | carried into the performance world or the running world to where, you know, we may have just been

01:37:17.040 | identifying that, you know, Olympic distance athletes that can tolerate a very large portion

01:37:26.320 | of their diet coming from carbohydrate is gonna just, it's gonna filter those ones towards the

01:37:31.840 | Olympics, filter those towards the Olympics. Yeah. And that doesn't mean that like,

01:37:36.160 | if we would have taken, say, the gold medals in the 5k and put them on a low carb diet,

01:37:41.520 | they'd run faster, they probably wouldn't, because we may have already selected that that person's

01:37:45.280 | thriving on carbohydrate. What I would be interested in is like, you have, let's say we

01:37:50.240 | have someone with equal talent, but got weeded out along the way, potentially because for whatever

01:37:56.640 | reason, they just weren't able to tolerate like the both the training and the nutrition requirements

01:38:00.480 | that they're being told to do. So the coaches can, there's a culture where the coaches would

01:38:03.840 | really push a carb heavy diet, and that that would in itself would do the filtering process of people

01:38:10.080 | that are not, it would filter out to people that are not able to tolerate carbs as part of their

01:38:16.240 | training. I mean, I might be an example of this actually, where, you know, you take someone where

01:38:20.400 | they, for whatever reason, the carbs aren't working for them, like it's unsustainable for

01:38:24.960 | them to continue that path, or if they do, they might have a shortened career. So they might be

01:38:28.320 | able to eke out a few really good years, but then, you know, they're not gonna be the person

01:38:30.880 | they're like, wow, that person's 38 and they're still competing at the Olympics type of a person.

01:38:36.160 | And, you know, you put them on a low carb diet. If you can control everything else,

01:38:41.440 | like their entire lifestyle is based around training and racing, then, you know, they may

01:38:47.200 | still have better potential by introducing carbohydrates at a higher level. But if that's

01:38:54.960 | not gonna be sustainable for them as a person, then, you know, what's the point kind of at that,

01:39:01.440 | unless they wanna be like a kind of a spark in the pan, so to speak.

01:39:05.280 | - I just feel good eating meat performance-wise.

01:39:08.320 | - Well, I think there's that group too. They may just not be the Olympians.

01:39:12.400 | - Yeah, and so we're not talking, I guess this conversation has several layers. One is for the

01:39:18.000 | Olympics and one is for like, what is it? Active athletes, they're like amateurs, whatever category

01:39:27.920 | I put myself into, like people that exercise regularly. And then maybe people, and then

01:39:34.000 | there's people who like exercise rarely. So on all of those fronts, I mean, do you think it's

01:39:41.120 | possible to live a happy, active life eating meat only or mostly meat?

01:39:47.840 | - Yeah.

01:39:48.640 | - What have you learned about this?

01:39:50.000 | - Yeah, I think so for some context, like I followed what I would call a low carbohydrate

01:39:55.040 | diet for the last 10 years. And just like kind of the training, I'd periodize it to a degree where

01:40:00.720 | there are parts of my training where I do bring back a little more carbohydrate. And there's

01:40:04.640 | periods of my training, especially like the off season where I'm like very low and I might be like

01:40:08.160 | kind of in that ballpark of like ketogenic, strict ketogenic or no carbohydrates for periods of time.

01:40:14.400 | - And what kind of food are we talking about? What's a strict low carb diet?

01:40:18.640 | - I've ranged everywhere from like mostly plant-based low carb keto to like mostly animal

01:40:23.280 | based. I've very rarely gone much more than like two weeks strict where it's like I'm strict

01:40:29.520 | carnivore or strict plant-based or anything like that. Like we're talking probably more like 95%

01:40:34.640 | at the peak in terms of any type of like longer lasting. From my personal experience of like being

01:40:43.440 | like either in like the animal food camp or like the plant-based camp kind of a process. So I've

01:40:50.000 | tried all of them, things have stayed consistent over the 10 years as a kind of the macronutrient

01:40:53.760 | profile that I've done throughout the course of-

01:40:55.920 | - So one didn't win over the other in terms of meat-based versus plant-based?

01:40:58.960 | - Oh, for me, meat-based definitely. I mean, I was my highest meat consumption in 2019 and that

01:41:04.560 | was by far my best racing season.

01:41:05.840 | - Yeah, we keep coming back to that year. That was a good year for many reasons,

01:41:10.000 | philosophically and nutritionally.

01:41:11.520 | - Yeah, only 2020 happened and now I haven't had a really good chance to replicate it.

01:41:15.440 | - To improve, yeah.

01:41:16.400 | - We'll see, hopefully I've got some more in the tank.

01:41:20.000 | - That's strange, most athletes that compete at your level have more carbs integrated into their

01:41:27.040 | diets. So what have you learned about using meat in a high performance?

01:41:31.520 | - I think it's maybe less about the meat and it's more about like, what is it replacing?

01:41:37.280 | So if we step away from like me specifically and just like the people that, 'cause I mean,

01:41:45.120 | we're getting to the point where I get it's anecdotes, but like that's what we have at

01:41:48.880 | the moment 'cause there's, I mean, there is actually a study being done on like, I think,

01:41:52.800 | I guess they call it hyper carnivore where they're like, I think above 80% of their intake from meat.

01:41:57.360 | - Into meat.

01:41:58.160 | - And they're looking at a few different things there, but.

01:42:00.880 | - It's so weird and I keep interrupting, but it's so weird that it sounds unhealthy,

01:42:05.680 | hyper carnivore.

01:42:07.520 | - Yeah.

01:42:07.920 | - But it makes me feel really good.

01:42:09.440 | - It's the individual thing, right?

01:42:12.160 | - Yeah, it's the individual thing.

01:42:13.360 | - There's countless people now who like, and I'm not saying that they could not have found

01:42:19.040 | another route, myself included, like in 2011, when I switched from moderate to high carbohydrate to

01:42:23.760 | low carbohydrate and saw some very noticeable differences in the way I felt, the way I

01:42:29.200 | performed in all this stuff, that doesn't mean that there wasn't another path.

01:42:33.680 | I just did not find that path.

01:42:35.120 | And the fact that I found a path that was producing the results I was looking for is

01:42:42.240 | really all that matters in my mind.

01:42:43.680 | You know, like I don't really care if there was a parallel path that works just as well, or

01:42:48.160 | you know, something like that, because ultimately we only have one shot at everything we're doing.

01:42:53.680 | So like, it'd be great if I could go back and try four or five different things.

01:42:56.720 | - Well, the annoying thing is that the body adjusts to whatever the heck you're doing,

01:43:01.040 | so it's hard to do good science even on yourself.

01:43:03.520 | - Yeah, I've referenced my 2019 racing season a few times, and it's like, it'd be silly for me

01:43:07.600 | to put all of the emphasis on my nutrition plan for that, because it also comes with

01:43:11.840 | two decades of endurance training.

01:43:14.160 | So it's possible, and it's very likely that a huge portion of that success was just the

01:43:18.400 | culmination of a lot of work over time from the training side of things.

01:43:21.440 | I just think like, anytime you hyper focus on one area, or pick a couple variables and just

01:43:27.920 | target those, you find yourself in a position where you're putting other things in the most

01:43:33.040 | uncharitable light possible.

01:43:34.320 | So then you have this situation where like, it's actually a combination of a variety of

01:43:40.160 | different things, so where are the big movers?

01:43:42.400 | And for me, nutritional shift was pretty clear that that improved my sleep and my recovery.

01:43:48.080 | And I mean, people can say, well, there's the placebo effect, which is a very real concern.

01:43:53.920 | But for me personally, a 10-year placebo effect would be a quite lengthy placebo effect.

01:43:59.280 | And I do think it's individual, though I emphasize that a lot, because I mean, I've worked with tons

01:44:04.800 | of people with this, and I do see a range from person to person.

01:44:08.240 | I've worked with people who come to me, and they're like strict keto, and we raise up their

01:44:13.520 | carbohydrates a bit.

01:44:15.040 | And they're like, OK, I feel way better doing it this way.

01:44:17.680 | And I've worked with people who they come to me, moderate carbohydrate, but they're interested

01:44:21.680 | enough.

01:44:22.000 | They want to try a lower carb, so we titrate them down.

01:44:26.640 | And I've had clients where I'm like, OK, I'm going to give them this workout, and they're

01:44:30.880 | going to wish they brought back a little bit of carbohydrate.

01:44:33.200 | And then they go and they nail the workout, and I'm just like baffled.

01:44:36.400 | Because they're different from me.

01:44:37.600 | And every time when you have your own personal experience, the first guttural response is,

01:44:44.000 | oh, if I had done it, it would have gone this way.

01:44:45.440 | Why did it go the complete opposite way for them?

01:44:47.520 | And you have to just step out of your own perspective a bit and say, OK, well, they're

01:44:52.080 | different.

01:44:52.400 | For whatever reason, they're getting along like this.

01:44:56.000 | I've had several moments in my life where you realize the body is weird, and it's weirder

01:45:03.200 | than the average advice.

01:45:04.880 | One of them is how well I perform for my own standards when I fast.

01:45:10.080 | First of all, intellectually, but that's more known and understandable.

01:45:15.920 | But physically, the fact that I could train, not eat 20 hours, 24 hours, and then do a

01:45:22.480 | hard jiu-jitsu session for two hours, hard, it's incredible to me.

01:45:29.680 | This makes no sense.

01:45:30.800 | Because I used to eat many times a day.

01:45:33.280 | Of course, you have to eat.

01:45:35.440 | You don't want to eat too close to the training session, was my thinking.

01:45:38.320 | But you definitely need to load up on carbs three hours before in order to have enough

01:45:42.480 | energy.

01:45:43.120 | The fact that I could not eat and have incredible focus, but also athleticism, both endurance

01:45:51.200 | and explosive.

01:45:52.080 | Jiu-jitsu is a special thing.

01:45:54.240 | It's more like chess.

01:45:55.760 | It's not like powerlifting.

01:45:57.120 | No, not powerlifting.

01:45:58.160 | Olympic lifting, where it's like true explosiveness.

01:46:01.440 | But that's fascinating.

01:46:03.040 | And it makes you wonder, what other things are there to discover about yourself?

01:46:08.960 | The annoying thing about food is it's delicious.

01:46:11.600 | So it's hard to do good science on yourself.

01:46:14.960 | For two weeks or a month to do strict no carbs, and then maybe next month you add 20 grams

01:46:24.400 | or 40 grams of carbs and see how you actually feel.

01:46:27.120 | Not in that moment, but over a period of several weeks.

01:46:30.960 | And then doing everything else right based on best available science, like with electrolytes

01:46:36.800 | and the vitamins.

01:46:37.840 | But then also remove all the humans from your life that affect you positively or negatively,

01:46:42.880 | because you might feel amazing because you're hanging out with cool people.

01:46:46.080 | And then removing basically all the variables.

01:46:49.600 | It's fascinating.

01:46:51.280 | And you all of us land in a place where we find something that worked for us.

01:46:56.560 | And then we maybe use some of the placebo effect to help us out to stick in that place.

01:47:01.280 | And then I suppose that's the way to live life.

01:47:04.320 | It's possible to find the optimal for any of us.

01:47:07.760 | But carnivore is an interesting new kind of caveat, a new challenge to the nutritional

01:47:15.280 | community, because more and more people seem to be doing well under carnivore.

01:47:19.920 | Yeah.

01:47:20.560 | Well, the nutrition community is probably like, we just got done dealing with the vegans.

01:47:24.720 | Now we got this opposite end of the spectrum coming at us.

01:47:27.600 | But I think-- well, I mean, what this all tells me is there is, for one, in our food

01:47:35.920 | environment, the failure rate of any one approach at a population level is going to be incredibly

01:47:41.920 | high.

01:47:42.560 | It's why we have-- what is it, like 88% of the population has some sort of metabolic

01:47:47.680 | syndrome.

01:47:48.640 | And it's because there's an endless quantity of everything that you can get your hands

01:47:53.280 | on for relatively cheap.

01:47:54.320 | And I think that presents a problem if your mindset is going to be, we need this set of

01:48:02.480 | parameters for nutrition, and everyone needs to adhere to that, or you're wrong.

01:48:06.800 | And it's like, well, tell that to the person who went carnivore and cleared up some crazy

01:48:12.880 | skin ailment or something like that.

01:48:14.560 | That's a weird one.

01:48:15.520 | Yeah.

01:48:15.840 | Like where the carnivore seems to treat depression.

01:48:20.400 | Like mental stuff.

01:48:22.560 | It's fascinating.

01:48:23.200 | There's all these stories.

01:48:24.320 | Again, it's anecdotes, but it's like--

01:48:26.400 | The mental one, I think, may-- I'm stepping out a bit on a limb here.

01:48:31.360 | But I want to say some of the research of Dominic D'Agostino and Jeff Volokh was looking

01:48:36.640 | at the ketogenic diet, which a carnivore diet is basically going to be a part of a ketogenic--

01:48:43.440 | I mean, you could always go way too high on the protein, I guess.

01:48:46.880 | But most people that I see doing carnivore, they're cognizant enough that-- at least if

01:48:52.480 | they're doing it for therapeutic reasons, they're not going 50% protein, 50%-- they're

01:48:57.440 | more like 70/30, 80/20, something like that.

01:49:00.640 | And I think you do see some work with the brain and some of the mental stuff.

01:49:07.840 | I know some of the-- I'm not sure if this was part of the DARPA funding that Dr. Dominic

01:49:13.760 | D'Agostino had, where they were looking at things like mental stuff, like post-traumatic

01:49:18.320 | stress disorder, and that sort of stuff with a strict ketogenic diet.

01:49:22.000 | So I wonder if some of that, like the depression-related stuff, has to do with that, where now their

01:49:26.400 | body is just fueling their brain differently than maybe they were in the past.

01:49:29.440 | But that's just wild guesses on my part.

01:49:32.880 | And I'm deviating from the conversation.

01:49:35.200 | But--

01:49:35.360 | - No, that's brilliant.

01:49:36.800 | In terms of your own story on food, can you say something-- I think we were kind of referring

01:49:42.640 | to diet broadly.

01:49:44.160 | Can you say something about how you like to fuel your-- whether it's race or great training

01:49:51.520 | sessions, like maybe the day before, let's go even that far, during, and maybe a few

01:49:58.800 | hours after?

01:49:59.440 | - OK.

01:50:00.480 | It'll be a little different for racing than it will be for a big workout, just because

01:50:05.680 | the interesting thing about ultra running is just you never do the race even-- like

01:50:09.280 | most endurance races, you're going to cover the distance.

01:50:11.040 | You're going to replicate the race almost up to it in training, whereas with 100 miles--

01:50:15.280 | - You can't.

01:50:16.480 | - You might replicate a third of it.

01:50:18.800 | So I'll walk you through kind of my approach for a 100 mile race, and I can tell you maybe

01:50:23.360 | what I would do differently on a training day.

01:50:25.200 | But yeah, so where the community is in agreement is that you do want to be very good at burning

01:50:33.520 | fat for ultra marathons.

01:50:34.640 | I mean, the intensity is low.

01:50:36.240 | If your ratios are skewed very high towards carbohydrate metabolism, then you're going

01:50:44.880 | to have to defend your muscle glycogen through tons of carbohydrate consumption.

01:50:50.320 | And that's just going to be very hard to do over the course of an entire day, even at

01:50:54.320 | low intensities.

01:50:55.200 | So it's a fuel tank thing.

01:50:57.280 | I mean, it's like your leanest endurance athletes have way more fat than the new glycogen stores.

01:51:01.200 | When you're doing low intensity performance, you want to be burning high levels of fat

01:51:05.440 | and sparing that muscle glycogen.

01:51:07.120 | What I tend to do is I want to start the race burning really high levels of fat.

01:51:12.400 | So I'll maybe have some carbohydrate the night before for dinner, but then I'm going to lean

01:51:16.960 | into the overnight fast, breakfast the morning of.

01:51:19.840 | I'm going to stay away from carbohydrates for 100 mile or anyway, and I'm going to have

01:51:24.560 | something that's pretty high energy, low volume.

01:51:31.280 | So I'll do an S fuels life bar.

01:51:33.840 | They've got like--

01:51:35.360 | What's in an S fuel life bar?

01:51:37.440 | Are we talking about carbs?

01:51:38.560 | Are we talking about protein?

01:51:39.840 | It's basically fat and protein.

01:51:41.040 | Fat and protein.

01:51:41.600 | Yeah, fat protein bar.

01:51:43.040 | And then they make some--

01:51:43.760 | That's awesome.

01:51:44.480 | Yeah.

01:51:45.280 | So it's not as low carb.

01:51:47.120 | Yep.

01:51:47.680 | Yeah, they make-- S fuels makes a whole product line that's like kind of positioned for a

01:51:52.240 | low carb athlete.

01:51:53.600 | So they have some products on their lineup that offer some carbohydrate, which is perfect

01:51:58.080 | for me because I do introduce some carbohydrate on racing and some of my bigger training sessions

01:52:01.840 | and things.

01:52:02.560 | But the majority of their products are low carb.

01:52:05.840 | So like they have like, you know, how you get like the powders that you put into like

01:52:10.000 | your drinks that are like high carbohydrate, you know, sports products.

01:52:13.520 | They make a version of that that's like fat based.

01:52:16.640 | Oh, cool.

01:52:17.040 | Then you can mix in with water?

01:52:18.480 | Yep.

01:52:19.120 | Cool.

01:52:19.440 | Yeah.

01:52:19.680 | So they've got like a creamer version and then a fruity flavor version.

01:52:22.240 | So you can like replicate the taste and the feel of drinking like a, like, you know, a

01:52:25.520 | sports drink.

01:52:26.240 | Science is awesome.

01:52:27.200 | I know it is.

01:52:28.080 | Well, and that's so much of it too, because people are always like, "I don't know.

01:52:30.720 | I just like to have my Gatorade or whatever."

01:52:32.720 | Right, yeah.

01:52:33.680 | It's like, well, you can have it now.

01:52:34.800 | Just it won't have all the carbs.

01:52:35.920 | And you can see you can bring that kind of thing with you.

01:52:38.240 | Yeah.

01:52:38.480 | So I'm leaning on a lot of those like kind of liquid calories, like those low volume,

01:52:43.600 | high energy fat protein stuff the morning of so that when I start the race, my body

01:52:47.440 | is gonna be encouraged to start out burning high levels of fat.

01:52:50.160 | Once I get going, probably about 45 minutes in, I'll start introducing small amounts of

01:52:55.840 | carbohydrate.

01:52:56.640 | So at that point, my body's been revving pretty high fat metabolism.

01:53:00.720 | And by introducing some carbohydrate in the context of the, you know, let's say my 100

01:53:06.880 | mile personal record, you know, I'm running approximately nine miles every hour.

01:53:12.800 | So I'm probably going through about a thousand calories in an hour's time.

01:53:16.080 | I'm gonna start just like defending muscle glycogen by burning super high levels of fat.

01:53:22.960 | At the heart rate I would do for that, I'm probably burning somewhere between 80, 90%

01:53:26.320 | fat.

01:53:27.120 | You know, 12 hours of that, you can chip away at your muscle glycogen to the point where

01:53:31.760 | you don't necessarily want to go zero carb.

01:53:33.920 | So I'm basically just trying to defend what I know I'm gonna be burning from the carbohydrate

01:53:38.480 | side of that 80 to 90% fat, 10 to 20% carbohydrate by taking in like, usually, you know, I've

01:53:45.120 | gone as low as about 15 grams of carbohydrate per hour and as high as 40 grams.

01:53:49.120 | And the reality is somewhere in between is probably the sweet spot, but 40 I can get

01:53:53.840 | away without any digestion issues.

01:53:55.920 | So I'm not really concerned pushing up to that during a race since I'm only concerned

01:54:00.960 | about performance on that day.

01:54:01.920 | - Is it the carbs that's the problem or is it fiber?

01:54:04.080 | - Oh, from going above 40 grams?

01:54:06.800 | - Or just, 'cause you mentioned digestion issues.

01:54:09.120 | Like one of the things for me, like one of the cool things about fatty protein, protein

01:54:14.640 | and fat is like my stomach just feels way better.

01:54:17.360 | So like carbs introduce like bloating and just not feeling great.

01:54:22.640 | - Yeah, and I think the funny thing is like, if you look at the position paper for ultra

01:54:26.640 | marathon single day events and it's, you know, it's very limited in the sense that it's not

01:54:31.280 | anyone's fault, it's just that we don't have a lot of great research on 100 mile race.

01:54:34.320 | It's really hard to study what's going on when someone's running 100 miles, but they'll

01:54:38.320 | say moderate carbohydrate diet is recommended, but they'll also say that it's like something

01:54:43.760 | like 60% of participants are gonna report some sort of like digestion issue during the

01:54:47.440 | event.

01:54:47.760 | So then it kind of becomes an issue of do you wanna flip that coin?

01:54:51.200 | Do you wanna flip that coin?

01:54:52.160 | - Yeah, it'd be the 40%.

01:54:52.880 | - Right, exactly.

01:54:54.080 | So for me, what I found is like, I can push up to 40 grams without getting any digestion

01:55:00.960 | issues.

01:55:01.360 | Do I need 40 grams?

01:55:03.920 | Probably not, at least not based on kind of the numbers that would be like, that I would

01:55:10.640 | see on like, if I went and actually got like a metabolic heart test or something like that.

01:55:14.160 | But it's possible, I mean, if I had a really good race that I would get close to burning

01:55:18.160 | that per hour.

01:55:18.880 | Most folks that are following a moderate high carbohydrate diet are gonna be recommended

01:55:23.360 | to do like 50 to 70 grams during a single day ultra marathon events.

01:55:26.480 | And you'll see some, you know, some recommendations of up to like 100 grams, not so much for ultra

01:55:32.400 | marathons, but just in general for like a performance standpoint, which I mean, it's

01:55:36.720 | one of those things where it's like application versus like what you can do in a lab for one

01:55:41.360 | hour is gonna be a lot different, especially when you're stretching out distances well

01:55:44.880 | past that.

01:55:45.440 | And there's, I'm diverting a little here, but I mean, there's like an approach of like

01:55:50.800 | training your gut so you can like be able to tolerate that much carbohydrate, which

01:55:55.040 | you can do and you may have to if you're gonna follow a high carbohydrate diet.

01:55:58.800 | But again, we go back to that practicality standpoint of if you're a professional Olympian,

01:56:04.080 | who's living and breathing performance, and you're burning two to three times your

01:56:09.040 | resting metabolic rate on some days, like you, you may be able to actually consume 100

01:56:16.000 | grams of carbohydrate per hour during your training sessions and just, you know, barely

01:56:20.640 | stay on top of your nutritional needs.

01:56:22.560 | Most people who are running ultra marathons aren't gonna be, you know, probably training

01:56:26.320 | much past 10 hours per week.

01:56:27.680 | And they're probably not gonna have the, I'll call it their dietary budget to tolerate 100

01:56:35.200 | grams of carbohydrate consumption during their workouts and still be able to stay healthy.

01:56:39.760 | And, you know, so I think that's kind of like a bit of a, of a non, a non starter for the

01:56:45.520 | majority of people, unless we want to talk about like a tiny percentage of the 1% of

01:56:50.560 | top performers.

01:56:51.360 | So maybe you can talk about the training, like fueling yourself during training as well.

01:56:55.200 | Is there, and also as part of that, is it possible to train mostly fasted?

01:57:01.120 | Because as a side comment, let me just say, I like, again, not anywhere, not even like

01:57:09.920 | one 10th of your level of performance, but you know, I try to push myself and I just

01:57:14.880 | feel much better when I'm fasted.

01:57:16.320 | So water and maybe some salt for longer runs for anything over like 10, 15 miles, but no

01:57:22.560 | food.

01:57:22.880 | Yeah, I think, I mean, I like to train on an empty stomach.

01:57:25.680 | I do most of my, my biggest training session usually in the morning.

01:57:28.960 | And it usually, what will determine whether I eat something or not before that is like,

01:57:32.400 | how much do I need to eat that day in order to stay on top of it to be able to train again

01:57:35.040 | the next day.

01:57:35.520 | So I'll, I'll usually do something similar to what I do before a race if I need to kind

01:57:40.320 | of stay on top of calories for the day.

01:57:41.920 | So I'm not like at noon with like no calorie intake and like 5,000 calories to try to consume

01:57:48.080 | before I go to bed that night and get out and do the same thing the next day.

01:57:50.960 | But yeah, I think if I were, if I were doing what you're doing, like if that were my

01:57:57.840 | lifestyle, I think I would do almost all my runs fasted.

01:58:01.680 | I don't see why I would be eating a lot before it because it's like, I'm just introducing

01:58:07.120 | something that could, especially if you're noticing, like, here's what I'd say.

01:58:11.200 | If I was doing that and I was like, wow, this run sucks.

01:58:14.240 | And then I introduced something beforehand and now my run was feeling great and my progress

01:58:17.680 | was getting better.

01:58:18.720 | That's when I would maybe consider having something before.

01:58:20.720 | But if you're running both of those, those like self experiments, you're noticing, yeah,

01:58:25.040 | if I eat something before I go on this workout, the workout's less enjoyable.

01:58:28.720 | I'm not noticing any, any increased improvements on it.

01:58:32.000 | Again, it's a little messy.

01:58:33.040 | Like we said before, it's hard to really, you can't go back and try it a different way

01:58:36.160 | on that specific day.

01:58:37.840 | But I think, I think most people, if they're just like, they go at it with like no bias

01:58:42.880 | in the sense that they're like trying to make one work versus the other, you can get at

01:58:47.360 | least a good enough look at it.

01:58:48.720 | And if absolute peak performance in one activity, one very specific activity isn't your goal,

01:58:56.000 | then it's like, do you really care if one has a 2% performance increase that you won't

01:59:00.960 | even probably notice?

01:59:01.680 | Because there's other variables that will clearly overpower that 2% one way or the other.

01:59:06.320 | - And there's some benefit in terms of freedom and letting go of like having to think about

01:59:11.760 | some of these variables.

01:59:12.720 | I see sort of fasting is, even if it's like a hit on the performance, it's worth it to

01:59:18.400 | just not think about it.

01:59:19.680 | There's some really nice aspect to just putting on shoes, not caring, like what shorts you

01:59:26.160 | wear or like what your outfit is like, not being optimal in every way and just not caring

01:59:30.560 | and just enjoying the purity of just running no matter what.

01:59:35.200 | Just enjoying the natural aspect.

01:59:36.960 | - Yeah, there's a side to me that sometimes just like craves a lifestyle where it's like,

01:59:41.760 | I have like such a small house and only what I need and just like a handful of food products

01:59:48.720 | I know I enjoy and work well for me and I don't even have the distraction of the other

01:59:52.080 | stuff.

01:59:52.400 | There's almost like a weight that comes off your shoulders when you think, even just thinking

01:59:58.240 | about it, like it's so simple.

01:59:59.680 | - So the reason I'm mostly a minimalist like that, the reason I have stuff is I realized

02:00:04.320 | like you probably have to fit into society and if you want to have other people in your

02:00:09.200 | life, you should probably get used to having stuff.

02:00:11.040 | Because most people like stuff.

02:00:13.840 | - Right, yeah, well, yeah, there's that side of it too.

02:00:16.800 | And there's a whole, you don't want to ostracize yourself too much.

02:00:20.880 | And I think anything you can kind of like, you can manipulate that a little bit where

02:00:24.880 | there's things that are like not specific to, that's going to negatively impact the

02:00:30.720 | people around you or your experiences with them.

02:00:34.000 | So there's a balance like everything, I guess.

02:00:35.600 | - Yeah, I mean, that's why I drink, I think I mentioned to you offline, drink vodka, whiskey,

02:00:39.520 | sort of alcohol, because I don't feel good about it the day after or sometimes multiple

02:00:47.920 | days after.

02:00:48.560 | So I know it's not good for me.

02:00:50.560 | So I do a lot of stuff that's good for me, everything we talked about, exercise and diet

02:00:54.560 | and all those kinds of things.

02:00:55.840 | But the alcohol almost symbolizes embracing the chaos of life, the wild and the amazing

02:01:02.480 | things that could happen.

02:01:03.600 | And I think that's really important because if you optimize everything about life, then

02:01:08.480 | you're going to miss most of the fun stuff that happens in life.

02:01:12.080 | So it's not all about the optimization.

02:01:14.560 | It's some of it, like everyone has different things and how they introduce that chaos in

02:01:20.800 | a controlled way.

02:01:21.920 | For me, alcohol is that, because I'm okay drinking, not too much.

02:01:26.000 | So I can control that aspect, even though it's unhealthy, it introduces just the right

02:01:31.600 | amount of fun.

02:01:32.640 | Yeah.

02:01:33.140 | I embrace it.

02:01:34.720 | Yeah.

02:01:34.960 | And I mean, it is one of those things where it's like, I'm going to benefit now and pay

02:01:38.320 | later a little bit too, where like, and hey, if you go and you go out with some friends

02:01:43.280 | and drink and you have memories that last a lifetime from that experience and you paid

02:01:48.880 | for it for a couple of days after, then hey, maybe that's a fair trade off from a life

02:01:52.320 | experience.

02:01:52.800 | And part of the vodka thing is I need to honor my ancestors.

02:01:56.880 | It's like you have to, you know, you can't, you can't turn your back on your past.

02:02:03.600 | Let me ask about the hundred mile world record on the treadmill.

02:02:09.040 | So for most people running on a treadmill is really boring.

02:02:12.960 | So that's kind of their experience of it.

02:02:16.480 | That's probably the first thing that would say that seems like really boring to run a

02:02:19.440 | hundred miles on a treadmill.

02:02:20.640 | Would you say it's boring?

02:02:22.960 | Like what were some places your mind went to make that happen?

02:02:27.280 | So this one is interesting to me because I definitely recognized the boredom and the

02:02:33.920 | difference.

02:02:34.400 | The thing that the question I can't quite answer, I think with it is like, could I have

02:02:39.440 | remedied that with better preparation?

02:02:41.360 | Because the scenario that put me on a treadmill for a hundred miles was, you know, it was

02:02:46.240 | March, 2020, basically the cascade of every race on the planet got canceled.

02:02:51.680 | And I was in a position where I was going to be doing a runnable hundred miler on a

02:02:57.360 | track in mid to late April.

02:03:00.240 | So I had like the majority of my training under my belt.

02:03:02.560 | So I was like kind of putting the finishing touches on that.

02:03:05.280 | And I was like, oh, great, here we are.

02:03:06.960 | Like, you know, what do I do with this fitness?

02:03:09.360 | Do I just scale back and hope the events come back in the fall and then peak again?

02:03:14.080 | Or do I find something to use this fitness for?

02:03:16.720 | And the treadmill was the closest thing to what I had been training for in terms of just

02:03:20.800 | like a mechanical, like flat running, essentially, that I could think of.

02:03:24.880 | And my thought was, OK, well, I'll just live stream myself on a treadmill and see what

02:03:32.160 | happens.

02:03:32.480 | It ended up turning into like a quite a big event.

02:03:34.800 | But you don't usually incorporate treadmill running into your running into your training.

02:03:39.280 | I don't not incorporate it.

02:03:41.040 | I just don't incorporate it in the way that would be necessarily conducive to, you know,

02:03:46.320 | dealing with the mental aspects of being on a treadmill for a hundred miles.

02:03:49.760 | Was it that different than running on a track?

02:03:52.080 | It was from the sense that here's the way I describe it is when I'm on a track, it's

02:03:55.760 | a controlled environment and everything can be very uniform.

02:03:59.200 | But there are tiny little micro adjustments and pace that that I'm doing subconsciously

02:04:06.240 | that give me the sense of control.

02:04:07.920 | Right.

02:04:08.160 | You know, I might run the exact same split, but there's like a fraction of a second or,

02:04:13.280 | you know, a fraction of a second faster than a fraction of a second slower that equals

02:04:15.920 | the same outcome.

02:04:16.960 | It gives you that sense of control.

02:04:18.160 | You're determining how fast you're going on a treadmill.

02:04:21.040 | You're responding to the belt.

02:04:22.960 | So the advantage is you can set a pace and know you're hitting it.

02:04:25.680 | The disadvantage is you're being told what to do by that machine.

02:04:29.760 | And that gets very frustrating.

02:04:31.120 | I felt like I wanted to step off like you get to like certain points where you're just

02:04:35.760 | like, like even stepping off what I noticed.

02:04:38.640 | I learned this on the day of actually I noticed there's something where it didn't really

02:04:41.680 | matter how long I get off.

02:04:42.880 | Like I get off to use the bathroom and that was a little bit of a longer break.

02:04:45.920 | Then I had like a hiccup during my event where we ran so much power through one end of the

02:04:52.720 | house that the screen on the treadmill was blacking out.

02:04:55.520 | So we ended up, so I ended up jumping back and forth on treadmills for quite a bit in

02:05:00.320 | the beginning.

02:05:00.960 | And I noticed even turning it off, stepping on the other one and starting the other one

02:05:04.400 | up gave me like, you know, a handful of seconds between was enough of a mental break of just

02:05:09.280 | like that release of being told what to do to reset.

02:05:12.480 | So maybe if you were in the future, you would figure out what exactly how much is needed

02:05:16.960 | to have that method.

02:05:18.160 | I never actually thought about that, that, I mean, obviously for you, but also for people

02:05:22.400 | like me, like amateur runners, that that's a source of frustration with the treadmill,

02:05:26.960 | that there's sometimes a small adjustments in pace that we do running, not on the treadmill

02:05:33.360 | on the ground that feel like essential for that feel, just like you said, that experience

02:05:39.360 | of control, like feeling like you're in control somehow that's really, I don't know, that's

02:05:45.280 | somehow liberating in the way that a treadmill can be just the source of frustration.

02:05:48.960 | - The funny thing though, about the treadmill is I actually like to do faster workouts on

02:05:54.560 | the treadmill, like long intervals or something like that, or tempo runs, because for that,

02:06:00.240 | for that type of stuff, sometimes for those, I want to release the brain power required

02:06:04.720 | to hit that pace and say, you take care of that.

02:06:07.200 | And for that, it's fun, but those are over quick, so you don't really run into the times.

02:06:10.400 | - Yeah, that's fascinating for like precise control of pace.

02:06:14.560 | You've also during that stream got to interact with one of the greatest athletes of all time,

02:06:19.680 | Bert Kreischer.

02:06:20.400 | What's your, he's actually doing, I don't know if you're paying attention to this, but

02:06:24.320 | I guess he has a goal of running 2000 miles this year.

02:06:26.880 | - Yeah.

02:06:27.280 | - I've gotten a chance to talk to Joe Rogan yesterday about this, which is fascinating.

02:06:34.480 | I think he's a little bit doubtful of Bert's ability to be the ultra performer that he

02:06:40.720 | so naturally is.

02:06:41.600 | - Yeah.

02:06:42.000 | - What's your thoughts about Bert as a runner?

02:06:45.520 | What's your advice to him?

02:06:46.880 | And what was your interaction like as part of this treadmill challenge with him?

02:06:50.720 | - I love Bert because he's such a nice person.

02:06:54.800 | I mean, as a guy who's just accelerated in popularity over the last few years, he is

02:07:01.040 | super kind.

02:07:02.240 | So for folks who are curious, I've met Bert a couple of years earlier and I just randomly

02:07:08.240 | asked him, "Hey, I'm doing this live stream thing.

02:07:10.640 | We're doing it for Fight for the Forgotten.

02:07:12.080 | We're trying to raise some funds for them.

02:07:13.760 | Would you want to come on the live stream for a bit?"

02:07:16.160 | And I thought maybe he'd come off like five or 10 minutes.

02:07:18.880 | And I thought that'd be amazing if he did that.

02:07:20.480 | He ended up coming off like over an hour.

02:07:21.920 | He said he went past his slot, sat in the next slot and just started talking with some

02:07:25.680 | of the other guests.

02:07:27.920 | He's just-- Bert is definitely-- I feel like he's as unchanged from his popularity as one

02:07:34.720 | can get away with.

02:07:35.600 | And it's just like his lifestyle, I think, is very unpredictable in the sense that if

02:07:44.480 | he wants to run X time for a specific race, that's going to pull away from his lifestyle

02:07:50.480 | so much to focus on that.

02:07:52.000 | Luckily for him, he's actually a great athlete.

02:07:54.640 | It's under that layer of--

02:07:56.880 | Of fat, yeah.

02:07:58.240 | So for people who are not familiar, Bert Kresher is a comedian who takes off his shirt often,

02:08:02.880 | has a elegant layer of fat around him.

02:08:07.440 | He's also a party animal.

02:08:08.640 | So he's a weird balance of healthy and unhealthy.

02:08:12.640 | So he drinks a lot during-- I think there's some debate about that-- but certainly after

02:08:19.760 | his performances.

02:08:21.680 | But at the same time, he's into kind of the running thing.

02:08:25.520 | And he does quite a bit of treadmill running, I think.

02:08:27.680 | And like I said, has this challenge of running 2,000 miles this year.

02:08:32.400 | So it's fascinating to have somebody who so fully embraces life and the full joys of life

02:08:38.240 | as represented by the huge amounts of drinking and partying and just being a wild man.

02:08:43.440 | But also at the same time, being at least curious about this challenging yourself in

02:08:50.400 | the physical realm.

02:08:51.520 | It's kind of fascinating.

02:08:52.560 | It reminds me of one of my favorite comedians, like Eddie Izzard, who has been doing those

02:08:58.640 | challenges basically off the couch, just running a marathon a day kind of thing.

02:09:03.920 | It's fascinating to see the purity of those challenges when exercise hasn't necessarily

02:09:11.280 | been deeply ingrained in your life.

02:09:14.640 | And you kind of just embrace the challenge anyway and take it on.

02:09:18.240 | And that's another way of looking at it.

02:09:20.080 | Because we've been talking about running as a performance optimization thing where training

02:09:26.240 | is such a huge part of this process.

02:09:28.880 | Like race day is just the cherry on top.

02:09:30.720 | But there's for some people where the race is the cake.

02:09:34.400 | - Yeah.

02:09:34.960 | - It's like they just take it on as a pure challenge, as the thing you haven't really

02:09:40.240 | trained for, as the thing you don't understand the intricacies of, but you take it on anyway.

02:09:45.040 | And that reveals something about the human spirit as well.

02:09:47.760 | - Yeah.

02:09:48.560 | And there's definitely like a switch that flips when you in your mind decide I'm going

02:09:52.560 | to do this.

02:09:53.360 | Where then all of a sudden it goes from like you stop thinking about, oh, that's not possible

02:09:57.200 | to like, well, I'm just going to do it.

02:09:58.320 | And I think Bert highlights that perfectly in a lot of cases where like he's maybe not

02:10:03.760 | even thinking it through enough to get to the point where it's like he gets the point

02:10:07.040 | where he thinks this is not possible.

02:10:08.560 | Where most people would look at it and think, huh, I don't know if I can actually physically

02:10:11.920 | accomplish that task.

02:10:13.200 | Bert's just like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do it.

02:10:15.360 | And my thought with Bert was the 2000 mile thing is where are we going to find him at

02:10:19.520 | the end of the year with like 36 hours to go on a hundred miles?

02:10:22.720 | - That's right.

02:10:23.760 | That's right.

02:10:24.320 | That's what's going to happen.

02:10:25.360 | And it's going to be hilarious.

02:10:28.720 | So speaking of things that are insane and like taking on challenges that don't seem

02:10:34.640 | like you didn't think through, you're thinking about running across the country in a challenge

02:10:44.480 | you call the transcontinental run.

02:10:46.880 | Can you describe this challenge and what the heck you're thinking?

02:10:49.440 | - Yeah.

02:10:50.320 | Yeah.

02:10:50.560 | So this is, you know, one thing that is exciting about ultra marathons, I think in a lot of

02:10:55.680 | places, especially early in someone's ultra marathon adventure, if they decide to do that

02:11:00.080 | as a part of their life is you have like these early years where you're doing things for

02:11:04.640 | the first time and it's like so cool and scary at the same time to think today I'm going

02:11:09.760 | to run a hundred miles and the furthest I've ever run before is 50 or something like that.

02:11:13.600 | And you just know you're going to do something that you've never done before.

02:11:16.240 | You're going to experience things you would have never been able to predict.

02:11:18.560 | And it's like this really interesting, unique, like human experience, I think.

02:11:24.640 | So for me, I've spent most of my career at this point, like doing, I got through that

02:11:29.520 | phase and a lot of the events I'm really interested in.

02:11:31.440 | And then it was like, now let's repeat it and see if we can do it better.

02:11:34.960 | And you get into that mindset for a while, which is also a fun mindset, but there is

02:11:39.200 | that kind of like desire to kind of have that human experience again of like, you know,

02:11:44.720 | not knowing what could happen or is this doable type of a thing, but still doing it and figuring

02:11:49.360 | it out along the way.

02:11:50.320 | So I would describe the Transcontinental Project as something like that.

02:11:52.960 | It's not anything unique to me or anything new.

02:11:55.280 | There's been a lot of people who've done it before, but essentially it's a route.

02:11:58.960 | There's different routes.

02:11:59.760 | There's one kind of main one that's done for like, that is used as the record route,

02:12:03.920 | more or less, that you go from San Francisco to New York and essentially you live out of

02:12:08.400 | an RV while you're running.

02:12:10.480 | So you run as much as you can during the day, then you go to bed at night and then you get

02:12:14.160 | up and do it again.

02:12:14.880 | And you're handling all the logistics in the process of trying to make sure you can get

02:12:21.600 | up the next day and do again what you did the day before, which is going to be the biggest

02:12:24.560 | difference.

02:12:25.040 | So for me, I've done all single day ultra marathons where you're going to wring yourself

02:12:30.000 | dry at knowing the next day or week or however long you need, you're going to be able to

02:12:34.720 | just kind of like shut everything down and let everything catch back up.

02:12:37.040 | Whereas with this, you're doing it again and again, again.

02:12:40.560 | And the record is by a guy named Pete Kostelnik who averaged just over 72 miles a day,

02:12:45.280 | finished in 42 days, six hours and 30 minutes.

02:12:47.600 | And I mean, just like 72 miles, 73 miles.

02:12:50.960 | And then like next day again, next day again, just knowing every day when you finish, you

02:12:55.520 | spend a whole day running and then, okay, I'm going to go to bed.

02:12:57.600 | I'm going to wake up in the morning.

02:12:58.400 | I'm going to have to do this again.

02:12:59.360 | And then have that happen for six weeks.

02:13:02.480 | And that's if it goes very well.

02:13:04.000 | So luck, I assume, is a big part of this.

02:13:06.640 | Yeah, for sure.

02:13:07.200 | I mean, there's just so many variables that are uncontrollable on this type of an experience,

02:13:10.960 | just because I mean, you go over the Sierras, maybe you hit a storm.

02:13:13.840 | You know, you try to time it.

02:13:14.960 | Most people do it in September, start in September.

02:13:17.520 | So you can get over the mountain passes without a big storm coming through.

02:13:21.760 | But then also get to the East Coast before it's like the middle of winter.

02:13:26.160 | So like September, early September start is kind of ideal.

02:13:29.440 | But you can, you know, I mean, Pete was very fortunate from a weather standpoint.

02:13:32.960 | I think he made one big mistake.

02:13:34.320 | We got a little too aggressive in the beginning.

02:13:35.600 | I had to take a full day off.

02:13:36.640 | So he actually averaged from a moving day standpoint, closer to 75 miles per day.

02:13:40.800 | But yeah, I mean, there's going to be things that I can't prepare for, won't know it's

02:13:46.160 | going to happen.

02:13:46.640 | You know, a lot of that will get a lot of the logistical stuff will get leaned on with

02:13:50.800 | the crew.

02:13:51.680 | So that's I mean, that's the hardest part right now is just like getting all that put

02:13:55.600 | together where it's like, OK, I need to have the RV ready.

02:13:58.640 | I need to have all the stuff.

02:13:59.600 | I mean, we need to have the places figured out where we're going to stop.

02:14:02.240 | And and the people that can dedicate that much time to an activity like that, you know,

02:14:08.000 | there's a lot of moving parts even before you start the adventure itself.

02:14:11.040 | When are you?

02:14:11.600 | So you're taking the San Francisco to New York?

02:14:14.160 | Yeah.

02:14:14.640 | And when are you doing the run?

02:14:16.640 | September 1st is when, you know, barring anything like catastrophic between now and

02:14:20.640 | then.

02:14:20.800 | It's really exciting, but I mean, it's incredible.

02:14:22.960 | So you'll probably have a bunch of people just randomly running with you.

02:14:26.480 | Are people going to be tracking where you're located?

02:14:29.280 | Yeah, so I'll be documenting everything because I mean, my hope is that I'm doing it primarily

02:14:33.360 | to raise awareness for Fight for the Forgotten, Justin Wren's charity.

02:14:36.000 | But with that said, I think I am capable of if I have a good experience, you know, chasing

02:14:43.360 | the record or going after the record or at least getting close to it.

02:14:46.720 | So.

02:14:46.960 | Oh shit.

02:14:47.520 | So you're going to try to beat this record?

02:14:49.680 | Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to go out with the I'm going to structure the process in

02:14:53.840 | a way that leaves that door open is the way I would describe it.

02:14:56.560 | I'm going to try not to do anything that would potentially put it in a situation where

02:15:02.240 | that becomes the primary goal, just because I want to make sure that the reason I decided

02:15:06.240 | to do the first place was for Fight for the Forgotten.

02:15:08.400 | So I want to make sure that I don't end up two thirds way across the country with a broken

02:15:12.480 | leg and I'm like, hey guys, I guess the donation buttons turned off.

02:15:16.960 | So focus on like, don't sacrifice that.

02:15:20.800 | Right.

02:15:21.440 | That goal.

02:15:22.080 | But also there's a community aspect to it that I feel like are you going to I mean,

02:15:28.240 | so you're going to document and post.

02:15:30.400 | Yeah.

02:15:31.120 | But are you going to also is there a safety perspective here?

02:15:35.120 | It's like the Forrest Gump thing.

02:15:36.640 | You might have large numbers of crowds that run along with you for a while.

02:15:40.640 | Yeah.

02:15:41.440 | Worried about that kind of thing?

02:15:43.040 | I wouldn't say I'm worried about I mean, I think there's probably there's remote enough

02:15:46.400 | spots along the way where you'll get some alone time or more likely I don't necessarily

02:15:51.040 | mind if people want to jump in there'll be some people that will definitely want to do

02:15:55.280 | that and they can come in.

02:15:56.720 | And but the reality is like, it's probably not going to be a scenario where there's like,

02:16:01.200 | you know, 40 people following me at all times.

02:16:03.600 | You say that now.

02:16:05.200 | Yeah.

02:16:05.680 | You never know.

02:16:06.560 | Just wait for this podcast.

02:16:07.520 | Yeah.

02:16:08.320 | And then if Joe finds out you're doing this, then we're in trouble.

02:16:11.600 | All right.

02:16:13.120 | So I mean, what are the things that you think will be the hardest for you?

02:16:17.680 | And also like, how do you train for this kind of thing?

02:16:20.640 | And what are the hardest things you anticipate?

02:16:24.960 | How do you train for them?

02:16:26.320 | Yeah.

02:16:26.560 | So the way I'm looking at this is it's much less about performance from the traditional

02:16:30.880 | sense where I need to be able to be X fit.

02:16:34.880 | I think I need to be injury proof.

02:16:37.440 | That's what's going to be a detriment.

02:16:40.080 | If you think about it, like, if I managed to average nine minute mile pace for a day,

02:16:45.440 | that would be 80 miles in a 12 hour time frame.

02:16:49.360 | So I'll easily have 12 hours of moving time per day.

02:16:52.640 | Nine minute pace, I think, is slow enough that it's not an unreasonable clip.

02:16:57.760 | So like when you, I mean, obviously there's things that slow you down or I'll probably

02:17:02.640 | take walking breaks, you know, stopping breaks.

02:17:04.720 | You got to stay on top of nutrition.

02:17:06.400 | That's the other big thing too.

02:17:07.440 | I'm probably eating like anywhere between 10 to 15,000 calories a day, which is, you know,

02:17:11.760 | I could probably count on my hand a couple of occasions where I've eaten that much in my life.

02:17:15.280 | So now I got to do that for six plus weeks in a row.

02:17:17.600 | - And you don't want to have any stomach problems.

02:17:19.760 | - Right.

02:17:19.840 | - Or try to minimize the amount of stomach problems.

02:17:22.160 | So would you estimate about 12 to 13 to 14 hours of running every day?

02:17:26.720 | - Yeah, that's probably like from the first step to the last step, it'll probably be somewhere

02:17:31.600 | around like, say 14 hours, 13 hours or something like that would be a pretty good estimate.

02:17:36.240 | - And then getting rest.

02:17:38.000 | And so, and then minimizing the risk of injury, which could be as small as like,

02:17:41.680 | like literally uneven surfaces resulting to like stepping the wrong way.

02:17:46.640 | I mean, that's going to be a lot of steps.

02:17:48.400 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:17:49.200 | - So the probability of injury, are you worried about that kind of stuff?

02:17:52.480 | Can you strengthen the ankles or those kinds of things that prevent possibility of injury?

02:17:58.000 | - And that's where I'm putting a lot of my focus in is, I think like just being running fit is

02:18:04.080 | going to be like, generally speaking is going to be important.

02:18:07.760 | I'm going to, I think just from a lifetime of running is going to be a huge advantage.

02:18:12.720 | A lot of these like kind of like mechanical movements are going to be very established.

02:18:16.960 | It's just going to be about, can I tolerate that volume of it?

02:18:19.440 | I think that I'm doing more strength work.

02:18:22.320 | I think this is something where it's like, you know, maybe adding five pounds of lower body muscle

02:18:26.720 | is going to be an advantage versus a disadvantage when you're looking at power weight ratio.

02:18:30.160 | 'Cause I just really don't, I never need to be running a 648 mile for this adventure.

02:18:35.120 | And so I'm looking at, I'm doing a lot more of that stuff, focusing on that.

02:18:40.880 | The training is changing a fair bit where it's more polarizing versus kind of being,

02:18:46.480 | I mean, I've always had some polarization in my training, but this is even to an extreme where

02:18:50.400 | like I'm going to do some simulations where, you know, I go out and do two or three days

02:18:55.520 | where I target the exact thing I will be doing on the Transcon.

02:18:58.880 | - You were on Instagram posting about these simulated runs.

02:19:01.440 | So you legitimately like trying to perfectly copy what would happen in one,

02:19:06.160 | two or three day segment on that run.

02:19:08.080 | - Yeah, just to kind of start to weed out where are the potential problems.

02:19:12.720 | So let's say I do a two or three day simulation where I'm averaging 70 miles a day

02:19:18.240 | and I find out at the end of three days, there's a really weak spot here.

02:19:21.600 | I need to address that or I need to find a way to make that not a weak spot.

02:19:25.600 | I think that's the only way to really get as close as you can to avoiding injury.

02:19:29.680 | - Have you done that yet? Have you done a two day, 70 mile?

02:19:32.320 | Like even that's incredibly difficult.

02:19:34.320 | - I haven't yet, I'm going to build up to it.

02:19:36.160 | Because that's the other thing too is like, I don't think you want to be so aggressive

02:19:38.880 | with that where you get injured trying to figure out how not to get injured.

02:19:42.960 | So what I'm going to start, what I just started last week is I've,

02:19:47.920 | it looks really weird on my training schedule because like last week,

02:19:51.600 | I ran almost 150 miles, but I took two days off.

02:19:54.160 | So it's like usually for me to get to 150 miles, that's a seven day training week.

02:19:57.520 | So that's the way I'm doing it.

02:19:59.520 | Like I did a day where I did, you know, two like just over 20 milers

02:20:05.280 | separated with by just a couple hours.

02:20:07.360 | And within that couple hours, I did like a three mile walk.

02:20:10.400 | The following morning I woke up and ran.

02:20:12.320 | I think it was like just over 36 miles first thing in the morning

02:20:15.360 | just to get an idea of just like, kind of like, what is it like to be?

02:20:18.400 | I mean, this was in Phoenix too.

02:20:19.600 | So it was a hundred degrees for the majority of that.

02:20:21.520 | - So just suffer, then rest, suffer again.

02:20:24.320 | How that feels.

02:20:25.680 | - There's enough precedent with this sort of an activity where like everyone I've talked to so far

02:20:30.800 | has told me like, there is going to be like this kind of like gradual decline

02:20:34.640 | in the early stages where you're just like, okay, it's getting worse,

02:20:36.720 | it's getting worse, it's getting worse.

02:20:38.080 | And you hit a point where you're just like, it hits kind of rock bottom.

02:20:42.400 | And then like, it starts to kind of gradually improve.

02:20:45.360 | So you kind of have to let yourself get, it's weird.

02:20:48.560 | I think I can maybe eliminate, I'm trying to find a way to eliminate some of that

02:20:53.040 | by doing the simulations.

02:20:55.120 | Whereas I, from what I've seen, I haven't seen a lot of people do the simulation route yet.

02:20:59.040 | I've seen people just do like a lot of training and then say like, okay,

02:21:02.560 | I'll spend the first seven to 10 days adapting to this.

02:21:05.360 | And then I'll get comfortable within this environment and be fine.

02:21:09.680 | Whereas I'm going to try to get to a point where like some of that is already kind of

02:21:13.520 | cleared up before I start, but not so much that I'm like adding

02:21:16.400 | like an extra essential week to the trip worth of running.

02:21:19.360 | - What do you think will be the hardest simulator run leading up to it?

02:21:23.760 | Like, will you do three days?

02:21:25.600 | - Yeah, I think I'll probably try to do three days,

02:21:27.280 | somewhere between 70 and 80 miles each will be kind of like the goal.

02:21:31.360 | - Will that be in August?

02:21:32.800 | Do you think how close to?

02:21:34.000 | - Yeah, I would like it to be in August.

02:21:35.920 | Like early August would be ideal.

02:21:37.280 | I think like maybe the first week in August,

02:21:39.040 | 'cause that gives me kind of three weeks to let things kind of settle down from that.

02:21:41.840 | - This is crazy.

02:21:42.960 | This is incredible.

02:21:44.240 | - It's actually interesting 'cause like, if I did, let's say I did the simulation now,

02:21:48.640 | the problem with that is like the adaptations from just like the breakdown

02:21:53.600 | and the strengthening would likely be gone unless I did it again.

02:21:56.160 | So I wanna inch up to it so that like, and get close enough to the starting date

02:22:02.320 | so that I'm still kind of like, you know,

02:22:04.320 | holding onto that adaptation when I start it.

02:22:07.360 | So then those first few days maybe aren't quite as miserable.

02:22:09.600 | - And you said if everything goes amazing

02:22:13.680 | and you're challenging the record, it would be like a 42 day run?

02:22:16.800 | - Yeah, so that's what the record is, almost exactly six weeks.

02:22:19.760 | And that's at 72 and a half miles per day, so.

02:22:21.920 | - Will you be posting online and like--

02:22:23.920 | - Yeah, Instagram's gonna be a big one.

02:22:26.480 | I think I might do a few like YouTube stuff along the way too.

02:22:29.520 | Yeah, I'm still ironing out exactly how much.

02:22:33.280 | I think at minimum I'll do some Instagram stuff.

02:22:36.400 | I think I'll go live on Instagram a few times during the day

02:22:38.480 | when I take like walking breaks, partly just to kind of,

02:22:42.400 | I think keeping people in, I mean, it stays true to the goal of raising awareness,

02:22:46.320 | but it also, I find when you bring people in,

02:22:51.040 | there is an added pressure to that.

02:22:52.720 | But there's also this sense that I've learned

02:22:55.680 | from the treadmill experience,

02:22:56.800 | since we had like a pretty big production for that,

02:22:59.440 | in the sense that, I mean, as much as you can

02:23:01.120 | turn on a camera in your own house,

02:23:02.480 | but like I remember thinking we had like 30 people lined up

02:23:07.120 | to come in and guest speak during that.

02:23:08.880 | And there was points of that where I was like,

02:23:11.600 | you know, you get that voice we talked about at the beginning

02:23:13.360 | where it's like, you know, maybe you could quit.

02:23:15.360 | Like, do you really need to run 100 miles on a treadmill?

02:23:17.600 | Is this really going to be valuable for you?

02:23:19.280 | - Yeah.

02:23:19.680 | - And then you think about, oh, you know what?

02:23:21.200 | There's, you know, Courtney DeWalter,

02:23:23.200 | one of the best female ultra runners to ever exist,

02:23:25.520 | is taking 30 minutes to an hour out of her day

02:23:29.600 | to come on in two hours to, you know, help me,

02:23:33.680 | you know, amplify this event.

02:23:35.520 | And do I really want to be sending emails out to these people saying,

02:23:38.080 | hey guys, I know you were gracious enough to block out time of your day.

02:23:41.520 | You know, I think there's a little bit of that to do

02:23:42.960 | where you're like, you're jumping in with the community

02:23:45.680 | that is following along and saying,

02:23:47.200 | here's how things are going, show them the best,

02:23:49.280 | the worst and everything in between.

02:23:50.480 | And then ultimately have that hold you accountable a little bit too.

02:23:53.520 | It's like hard to get up in the morning and not go back out.

02:23:55.760 | - I don't know how you are, but I had to,

02:23:57.920 | whenever I did any kind of physical stuff,

02:24:01.040 | like the 48 hour challenge or just any kind of running,

02:24:04.320 | I hated turning on the camera.

02:24:06.640 | I hated it.

02:24:08.560 | Like, cause you have to like smile and be friendly and stuff.

02:24:11.680 | - Oh, I'm just gonna be super miserable if I'm-

02:24:13.920 | - Miserable.

02:24:14.420 | Well, that's it.

02:24:16.240 | So like, exactly.

02:24:17.360 | In some sense, that's what people-

02:24:19.440 | - Are we gonna get a happy Zach or an angry Zach?

02:24:22.560 | - Exactly.

02:24:23.120 | It's like you're making bets.

02:24:24.720 | And I'm sure there'll be some days, maybe not many,

02:24:28.800 | maybe very few where you're truly happy with yourself.

02:24:32.320 | Like for some weird ecstatic reason,

02:24:36.080 | maybe if you get over the hump, whatever that you mentioned, that this dip.

02:24:40.560 | I mean, it's fascinating how much suffering this actually entails, I wonder.

02:24:45.120 | - Well, and one thing I'm gonna definitely try to leverage to my advantage.

02:24:49.520 | And one of the reasons why I think Fight for the Forgotten

02:24:52.640 | was the charity that really triggered me to decide to do this.

02:24:55.600 | The transcontinental route was something I learned about

02:24:58.880 | early in my ultra running career.

02:25:00.400 | And I thought to myself, I wanna do that someday.

02:25:02.080 | But it was one of those kind of far off distance things

02:25:04.480 | that had never really like actualized in your mind

02:25:06.320 | until you put a date down or, you know,

02:25:08.320 | mention it on the Joe Rogan experience or something like that.

02:25:10.880 | - Yeah, exactly.

02:25:10.960 | - But then it's like people wanna know when is this happening.

02:25:13.920 | And, you know, what I try to think about is, you know,

02:25:19.040 | the reason Justin identified the Pygmy tribe

02:25:21.840 | was because they were super forgotten where, you know,

02:25:25.680 | we think about just like some of these third world countries

02:25:28.160 | where it's a scenario of like some people,

02:25:32.000 | it's easy for us here in the US to think to ourselves,

02:25:34.640 | well, why don't they just industrialize?

02:25:36.160 | Why don't they just like, you know, start to innovate a bit?

02:25:39.120 | Why are they so primitive?

02:25:40.800 | What's wrong with them?

02:25:41.920 | And in reality, like when you take,

02:25:43.680 | when you scale things down to the degree

02:25:46.400 | where you need the entire day

02:25:49.440 | because of the situation you're in

02:25:51.440 | just to take care of your basic needs of water and food,

02:25:54.560 | you never get the opportunity to even build a real,

02:25:57.760 | like establishment or, you know, a build on that.

02:26:01.440 | Like you need the free time

02:26:03.040 | or you need a portion of your population

02:26:04.960 | to have the free time available to innovate.

02:26:06.960 | And the Pygmy tribe just hadn't had that historically.

02:26:09.920 | In fact, they weren't even considered humans

02:26:11.600 | by like the local government for quite some time.

02:26:13.760 | And, you know, the people that really pay the price

02:26:16.080 | in some of these situations are the women

02:26:17.680 | because they're the ones that get saddled

02:26:19.120 | with like the water gathering and things like that.

02:26:21.680 | So the reason that Justin picked wells to build

02:26:24.720 | was 'cause he thought to himself,

02:26:25.840 | if we can get them wells,

02:26:27.520 | then now these women don't have to spend all day

02:26:29.840 | walking and carrying water.

02:26:31.600 | Now they can just get that water.

02:26:33.200 | And now we have half the population freed up

02:26:35.200 | for other things.

02:26:35.840 | Now maybe they can start farms.

02:26:37.360 | They can build some housing and stuff like that.

02:26:39.440 | And it just, it exponentially improves

02:26:42.000 | once you take care of some of those big key early things.

02:26:44.880 | So when I'm thinking about like, you know,

02:26:48.080 | do I really need to go out here

02:26:49.200 | and travel another 12 hours a day?

02:26:50.880 | My mind's gonna hopefully go to,

02:26:52.640 | well, if one of those women woke up in the Pygmy tribe

02:26:55.120 | one morning and decided, you know what,

02:26:56.240 | do I really need to go get water today?

02:26:57.840 | It's like, well, yeah, you do.

02:26:59.120 | You really do have to.

02:27:00.480 | - Yeah, you're running for that.

02:27:02.320 | Yeah, and that will give you fuel, hopefully.

02:27:04.480 | - Yeah, I mean, the reality is always there

02:27:08.080 | where I don't have to do it.

02:27:09.680 | Like they do have to do it.

02:27:11.520 | So, you know, but I think just keeping that perspective,

02:27:14.480 | it puts us back to the beginning

02:27:18.160 | where this is one of those situations

02:27:20.800 | where I think it's like a no quit situation.

02:27:24.480 | You have to put yourself in a no quit situation here

02:27:26.960 | because it's, you know, it's just bigger than you.

02:27:29.680 | - I can't wait to see like the dark places you go.

02:27:33.520 | I mean, there's some, yeah, the quit situations.

02:27:36.320 | And hopefully we get to have a glimpse of those

02:27:39.440 | 'cause I think those are really inspiring

02:27:41.280 | when somebody is, both gets broken by them

02:27:44.960 | 'cause you know how tough you are,

02:27:46.800 | but also is almost broken and overcomes it.

02:27:49.440 | I mean, that's just fascinating stories.

02:27:51.040 | I can't wait.

02:27:51.680 | I know, does Joe know you're doing this, by the way?

02:27:54.400 | - Yeah, I sent him a note a while back

02:27:57.440 | 'cause he was the first spot I mentioned it on.

02:27:59.440 | So I think he knows.

02:28:00.320 | I'm not sure if he's followed along

02:28:01.840 | about the exact starting date or not.

02:28:02.960 | - Well, he will know.

02:28:03.760 | This is great.

02:28:04.400 | (laughing)

02:28:05.520 | He'll probably think you're crazy MF-er for doing this,

02:28:10.000 | but I think he'll love it.

02:28:12.320 | And I think I love it.

02:28:13.600 | And I think the world will love it.

02:28:15.200 | A ridiculous question.

02:28:16.400 | Who's the greatest endurance runner

02:28:18.560 | or endurance athlete of all time?

02:28:20.800 | - Oh, that's a good question.

02:28:23.120 | I think I'd probably go maybe two directions here.

02:28:29.920 | I think Heli Gebrilassi is one of the best, in my opinion,

02:28:37.280 | because just, I mean, 27 world records.

02:28:42.640 | Like not all the different distance,

02:28:45.680 | but like breaking and re-breaking and that sort of stuff.

02:28:48.320 | I mean, he ran two, what was it?

02:28:52.320 | 203.59 before the shoe technology came in.

02:28:56.480 | That is estimated at anywhere between a two

02:28:58.480 | to 8% performance advantage.

02:28:59.920 | - You're talking about a two hour marathon, two, zero, three.

02:29:02.160 | - Yep.

02:29:02.560 | - Two hour, three minutes marathon.

02:29:03.840 | - Yep.

02:29:04.240 | Yeah.

02:29:04.400 | So he did that with the old shoe technology,

02:29:06.240 | which essentially dates back to anything.

02:29:09.200 | If you were a Nike athlete,

02:29:11.520 | it could date back to as early as, I think, early 2016

02:29:15.760 | is when the first prototype started showing up.

02:29:17.440 | So if you're before that in your career,

02:29:20.240 | you're guaranteed to be using the old shoe technology.

02:29:24.640 | And I mean, just the range of it too.

02:29:26.560 | And yeah, it's hard.

02:29:29.280 | I mean, there's, it's a-

02:29:30.240 | - Is he a marathon runner purely?

02:29:31.920 | - No, he did everything.

02:29:33.120 | That's why I pick him, I think,

02:29:34.160 | because he went everywhere,

02:29:36.000 | everything from the 800 and is like at a national level.

02:29:38.480 | - 800?

02:29:39.120 | - Yeah, at a national level.

02:29:40.400 | I don't, he wasn't competing at like Olympics

02:29:42.720 | or anything in the 800,

02:29:43.600 | but he was mostly like 5k to marathon.

02:29:46.560 | Yeah.

02:29:48.480 | Yeah.

02:29:49.280 | So just incredible.

02:29:50.000 | I mean, I could go a totally different direction too.

02:29:52.480 | I think like Steve Prefontaine stands out

02:29:54.400 | in as an American runner,

02:29:55.680 | just because if you look at it outside of just like

02:29:58.160 | performances and stuff like that,

02:30:00.800 | I think he based,

02:30:04.400 | like you can't find an American male runner

02:30:08.320 | who probably didn't get some motivation

02:30:12.480 | or some catalyst into their running journey

02:30:14.160 | from a Prefontaine story.

02:30:15.760 | - What would you say is inspiring about Prefontaine?

02:30:18.160 | Like from the philosophy, from the technique,

02:30:20.720 | from his story?

02:30:21.520 | - I think there's a few things.

02:30:24.240 | I mean, there's a lot of things,

02:30:25.200 | which is why he is who he is.

02:30:26.400 | It's one was just his attitude about it

02:30:28.800 | where he wasn't like this picture ask runner.

02:30:32.400 | I mean, he was obviously talented,

02:30:34.800 | but you have the perfect story of like,

02:30:37.120 | he wanted to be good at something.

02:30:38.480 | Most American kids tried football.

02:30:40.640 | No hard work was going to get Prefontaine

02:30:43.920 | starting in varsity for football.

02:30:45.920 | Starts running, fell in love with the mile.

02:30:48.400 | His college coach told him,

02:30:50.800 | no, you're not going to be a miler.

02:30:51.920 | You're going to be a 5K guy.

02:30:53.200 | And he popularized the 5K in the United States

02:30:55.840 | or three mile in some cases.

02:30:57.200 | And I mean, the way he would race,

02:31:00.640 | I think is what really made him interesting for folks

02:31:03.680 | where he was just like all guts runner,

02:31:06.320 | where he's like, I mean, one of his famous quotes

02:31:08.800 | was like, if you beat me,

02:31:11.040 | you're going to have to bleed to do it.

02:31:12.240 | 'Cause he's going to be an all guts race

02:31:13.760 | and in a sport where it gets very tactical at times,

02:31:16.240 | especially at the like,

02:31:17.200 | or I shouldn't say national,

02:31:19.120 | but at the like competition level,

02:31:21.680 | the championship level,

02:31:22.880 | where it's like kind of more of a sit and kick approach.

02:31:25.520 | A lot of times where everyone's kind of waiting

02:31:26.960 | for someone to make a move,

02:31:28.000 | like Pre was going to make a move really early.

02:31:30.080 | - Yeah, so this idea of leading from the front,

02:31:32.320 | which I guess is tactically really a bad idea.

02:31:35.280 | - Well, from a running a PR standpoint,

02:31:39.520 | it's a bad idea in most cases.

02:31:41.840 | - But so race, I guess, is not just about the PR.

02:31:45.520 | - It's about winning in a lot of cases.

02:31:48.480 | And that's what he thought was going to put him

02:31:49.840 | in the best advantage to win, I think.

02:31:51.120 | - It's just the run from the front.

02:31:52.480 | I mean, what do you, 'cause you mentioned this,

02:31:54.160 | the 100 mile you ran, you were in second place.

02:31:57.360 | And then in nineties,

02:31:58.800 | you were able to get to the first place.

02:32:01.760 | How hard is it to run when you're in first place?

02:32:05.120 | - You know, I think this is really different.

02:32:08.000 | Some people thrive under it,

02:32:09.440 | where it's like for them,

02:32:10.560 | I mean, like I talked about Jim Walms before,

02:32:12.080 | I think he loves being in the front.

02:32:13.760 | If he's in the front, he loves it.

02:32:15.280 | That's where he's excited.

02:32:16.320 | That's where he knows he's doing what he's doing,

02:32:18.880 | where he's pushing his limits and things like that.

02:32:21.120 | Pre was probably the same way.

02:32:23.360 | And then I think there's other folks

02:32:24.480 | who are much more comfortable kind of saying,

02:32:26.880 | let's let things settle down here a little bit.

02:32:29.040 | And then I'll make my move

02:32:30.800 | when it's time to make my move.

02:32:32.240 | Or they think of it as,

02:32:33.360 | and this is a very important, I think, lesson

02:32:36.000 | for the average ultra runner is just like,

02:32:38.000 | knowing what you're capable of

02:32:40.800 | is gonna be an important piece to the puzzle

02:32:42.720 | because you can try to say,

02:32:47.280 | I wanna run faster than I'm capable of

02:32:49.520 | in an early part of a hundred miler,

02:32:51.760 | but then you're gonna pay for it at the end.

02:32:53.840 | So really, unless you're trying to go for the win,

02:32:56.000 | and that's a tactic that you think is gonna produce a win

02:32:58.240 | versus trying to run your fastest time,

02:33:00.080 | you gotta run within yourself, within your parameters.

02:33:02.560 | Obviously, there's a big question mark

02:33:04.560 | about where those parameters are in a lot of cases,

02:33:06.320 | which makes ultra marathon even more interesting

02:33:08.400 | 'cause it's like, there's so much unknown about it.

02:33:10.480 | It's like, well, maybe you can go faster

02:33:12.160 | and we just don't know yet.

02:33:13.440 | - So there's, in the face of that uncertainty,

02:33:15.600 | there's something admirable, like it was with Prefontaine,

02:33:18.960 | where you take the risk and run faster than

02:33:21.520 | you think you might be able to run

02:33:25.280 | in terms of pace that you can hold.

02:33:28.400 | So push the pace that's possible.

02:33:30.960 | - Yeah, explore the unknown.

02:33:32.160 | - Explore the unknown.

02:33:32.720 | - It's like a pioneer spirit, right?

02:33:34.480 | - Yeah.

02:33:34.800 | - You know, the next frontier kind of a thing.

02:33:36.960 | And I mean, Prefontaine,

02:33:38.800 | also there's other angles with him too,

02:33:40.560 | where he was like in the amateur era,

02:33:42.240 | where to be an Olympian, you couldn't be pro.

02:33:44.560 | So he's turning down, I mean, the guy was on food stamps

02:33:47.200 | and living in a trailer

02:33:48.240 | because he wanted to run at the Olympics.

02:33:50.080 | And there was a lot of like politics involved

02:33:52.960 | with not being able to take sponsorship money

02:33:55.440 | and things like that, which has changed since then.

02:33:57.040 | So he was huge in the movement for that

02:34:00.960 | to kind of like, you know, have a situation

02:34:04.240 | where now as an athlete, you can finish,

02:34:06.880 | in most cases, finish college,

02:34:08.800 | sign a big contract with a sponsor,

02:34:11.280 | and then also still compete in the Olympic Games

02:34:13.440 | and go to the events that are actually ones

02:34:14.960 | that are gonna likely catapult your career

02:34:17.200 | in most of the Olympic distance endurance events.

02:34:19.200 | So he just revolutionized the sport.

02:34:21.280 | And then to add even more flavor to the whole thing,

02:34:23.440 | I mean, he died a very premature death.

02:34:25.440 | He got in a car accident and died before

02:34:28.400 | he would have likely probably medaled at the Olympics.

02:34:31.680 | So he--

02:34:32.480 | - And there is a tragedy of the fact that he didn't.

02:34:34.480 | - Yeah, well, he was fourth place at the Olympics,

02:34:38.320 | the prior, his first go of it.

02:34:40.640 | And it was kind of one of those things

02:34:41.920 | where it's like fourth place at the Olympics

02:34:43.520 | is the first man looking out

02:34:44.560 | or the first woman looking out.

02:34:45.680 | And for a guy that had as much hype as him,

02:34:47.920 | I think like a medal was something

02:34:49.440 | he really wanted to take home with him there.

02:34:51.280 | - And especially how that race went.

02:34:53.680 | I mean, I don't know, it's tragic, the whole thing,

02:34:57.360 | but that's one of the things that makes Olympics amazing

02:34:59.760 | is the tragedy of it.

02:35:00.800 | Like one race decides the story of a lifetime,

02:35:04.560 | which is like, that's why it's amazing.

02:35:08.160 | Even if a lot of people get hurt because of it.

02:35:10.960 | Tragedy makes the triumph special.

02:35:16.000 | - Right, yeah.

02:35:16.880 | And it makes life like a movie almost.

02:35:20.640 | - Yeah, exactly.

02:35:21.600 | - If everything's all sunshine and rainbows,

02:35:23.680 | then it's not as entertaining to watch.

02:35:25.120 | There's no adversity to overcome.

02:35:26.720 | - You mentioned shoe technology.

02:35:28.480 | How much has shoe technology advanced

02:35:31.920 | through the past few decades?

02:35:33.600 | How much has it changed running generally,

02:35:35.920 | but also running like ultra marathon running?

02:35:38.960 | - I would say in ultra running,

02:35:40.880 | it's had much of a less of an impact

02:35:44.000 | because ultra running is still heavily skewed

02:35:47.280 | towards the trails.

02:35:48.000 | So the technology, at least from what we know,

02:35:51.600 | isn't necessarily translating over

02:35:52.960 | to these like massive varied terrain,

02:35:54.960 | certainly not the technical terrain and things like that.

02:35:57.280 | Now on road races, flat stuff, like the track stuff,

02:35:59.840 | the roads, the run, I guess a runnable trail,

02:36:02.960 | where it's just like basically crushed limestone,

02:36:05.440 | more or less, you definitely get an advantage from it.

02:36:08.320 | And essentially what happened is in,

02:36:13.520 | this probably dated back actually before 2015,

02:36:16.320 | Nike decided their development team was ahead of the curve.

02:36:24.000 | They've developed this new foam,

02:36:25.680 | they call it like a Peebok foam.

02:36:26.880 | And they realized that,

02:36:29.760 | like when you step down into a shoe,

02:36:31.520 | the reason like racers a lot of times

02:36:34.320 | would wear these flats is 'cause they're trying to take out

02:36:36.720 | any of that lost energy into the foam in the shoe.

02:36:39.280 | Well, this foam that Nike came out with is so good

02:36:43.200 | that it actually returns way more energy

02:36:45.760 | than the average foam did.

02:36:47.280 | To the point where like when they test these things

02:36:49.520 | on like force plate treadmills and things like that,

02:36:51.280 | it's like depending on the person's gait

02:36:53.680 | and some of the things is like a two to 8%

02:36:55.600 | improvement in performance.

02:36:57.200 | I mean, we've seen records just across the board

02:36:59.840 | get broken since this came out.

02:37:01.200 | - All distances.

02:37:02.560 | - Basically, yeah, yeah.

02:37:03.760 | I think from at least from the 5K up through the marathon,

02:37:08.480 | and I mean, we've seen some insane improvements

02:37:11.040 | in the marathon.

02:37:11.840 | I think like the women's marathon went from

02:37:14.400 | what was considered relatively untouchable,

02:37:16.960 | like 216 to a 214.

02:37:19.440 | And I mean, like it was like 218 was like just world-class.

02:37:24.800 | Like if you could run a 218 marathon as a woman,

02:37:26.560 | that was like, I mean, it still is to a degree,

02:37:28.640 | but then now you have someone run a 214.

02:37:31.600 | Like that's a huge jump.

02:37:32.400 | - And you attribute a lot of that to the shoe.

02:37:34.640 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:37:36.160 | I think there's probably other things that come in mind too.

02:37:38.160 | Like now that people know there's a performance advantage

02:37:40.480 | from a mechanical standpoint,

02:37:42.000 | it's also a confidence thing where it's like,

02:37:43.600 | oh, now I can probably try going five seconds per mile faster

02:37:46.960 | and maybe they could have anyway.

02:37:48.160 | And they just, now they think they can, so they are.

02:37:50.080 | So there's probably a little bit of that

02:37:51.520 | that's just adding to it.

02:37:52.800 | - Do you think there's a lot of extra innovation

02:37:55.120 | that's still possible?

02:37:56.080 | Like what, if you could do this kind of big leap

02:38:00.000 | with a little innovation of foam,

02:38:01.520 | is there other stuff that you can do

02:38:02.880 | or further innovation of materials that make up the foam?

02:38:05.680 | - Yeah, so they can definitely go much more advantage.

02:38:09.120 | They put a cap on it essentially.

02:38:10.640 | So there's also a carbon plate element to this too,

02:38:14.160 | where they put like this carbon plate in there

02:38:16.000 | in between the foam.

02:38:16.880 | So like I believe when Kipchak Ghi broke,

02:38:21.120 | well, when they did that kind of the sub two hour project,

02:38:25.520 | he actually had on a shoe, if I'm not mistaken,

02:38:28.960 | that never got to market

02:38:30.320 | because they put down some parameters on it

02:38:32.080 | after, before that one came to market,

02:38:35.120 | where it was actually like stacked up to,

02:38:38.000 | I can't remember how many millimeters,

02:38:39.280 | it was an insane amount.

02:38:40.240 | And they had like, I think maybe even

02:38:41.520 | three layer plates in there.

02:38:42.720 | - And that was a Nike shoe he was wearing?

02:38:44.320 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:38:45.200 | So what makes it kind of controversial or difficult

02:38:48.400 | is Nike came out with these prototypes.

02:38:50.960 | So a prototype for people that don't understand shoes,

02:38:53.040 | like these companies, they'll develop a shoe

02:38:55.040 | and it usually takes like somewhere in the neighborhood

02:38:57.040 | of like probably 18 months to hit the market.

02:39:00.000 | So if you're like a sponsored athlete

02:39:03.200 | or work for the company,

02:39:04.320 | you can get your hands on these shoes

02:39:05.760 | before they actually come to market.

02:39:07.040 | So we had an issue, I think,

02:39:09.440 | this wasn't necessarily as big of an issue

02:39:11.040 | in the ultra running community,

02:39:12.320 | but in the track and field Olympic distance stuff

02:39:15.440 | was a big issue because you had Nike athletes

02:39:18.720 | having these prototype shoes

02:39:20.080 | before anyone could get them.

02:39:21.440 | And then you had athletes who were sponsored

02:39:22.880 | by these other brands who couldn't wear them

02:39:24.720 | even when they did come to market.

02:39:27.600 | So then we had this like chase to catch up

02:39:29.680 | where other companies are starting

02:39:32.000 | to make their own version of it.

02:39:33.200 | And now we're getting to a point

02:39:34.800 | where most companies have a version of that shoe.

02:39:37.680 | But we had a huge transition phase

02:39:41.600 | that impacted the Olympics big time.

02:39:44.800 | I mean, think of it, here's an example of it.

02:39:46.880 | There was an athlete, Kara Goucher.

02:39:50.320 | She was not, she was a Nike athlete,

02:39:53.520 | wasn't when they came out with this shoe.

02:39:56.240 | And she ran the Olympic trial marathon

02:39:59.760 | and got fourth place, first person out.

02:40:02.720 | And two of the people had her had that shoe on.

02:40:05.280 | And she was maybe a minute or two,

02:40:07.520 | like I'd have to look to see exactly,

02:40:08.560 | but it was within the performance advantage range.

02:40:11.840 | And so you could argue that she was the first person

02:40:14.800 | in modern running to lose an Olympic spot

02:40:17.440 | due to a technological disadvantage.

02:40:19.360 | - Wow.

02:40:20.000 | - And it's like, I mean, it's one of those--

02:40:22.480 | - It's kind of profound.

02:40:22.960 | - Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where like,

02:40:25.120 | it's a transition, right?

02:40:28.880 | So there's gonna be bumpy road

02:40:30.480 | and there's gonna be people that get caught

02:40:31.760 | in that transition that it's unfortunate for.

02:40:34.320 | But it's also like, once everything does catch up

02:40:38.560 | and every shoe company has a version of this,

02:40:41.200 | there's still problems.

02:40:42.160 | I mean, these are incredibly expensive shoes.

02:40:43.760 | It's like a $250 shoe.

02:40:45.440 | So it's like, at what point do you tell

02:40:46.720 | a wealthy family with a high school kid that,

02:40:50.240 | you can get that $250 shoe,

02:40:52.320 | but then you go and this kid's family

02:40:54.160 | can barely afford a pair of shoes for them,

02:40:55.520 | much less a $250 pair of shoes.

02:40:57.360 | Like, where do we draw that line?

02:40:58.640 | And that sort of stuff.

02:41:00.160 | Also just, here's the other big one.

02:41:03.680 | Like, let's, I mean, two to 8% is a massive range.

02:41:06.640 | What if you're on the 2% versus someone's on the 8%?

02:41:08.880 | You know, chances are, if you're, you know,

02:41:11.680 | blowing a record out of the water,

02:41:13.120 | you're probably closer to that high end percentage

02:41:16.000 | versus someone who's maybe getting incremental gains,

02:41:18.000 | you're probably closer to that lower end.

02:41:19.840 | So is it fair to have a piece of equipment

02:41:22.400 | that has that big of a range

02:41:23.760 | when we're talking about less than a percent

02:41:25.920 | determining these races when all is held constant?

02:41:28.080 | - Those are fascinating, like philosophical questions

02:41:30.640 | that I think it's nice to solve that for the shoe

02:41:33.600 | or to raise those questions for a shoe,

02:41:35.760 | because the more complicated place

02:41:37.600 | where they will be raised is probably like genetics,

02:41:40.160 | genetic engineering, all those kinds of things.

02:41:42.000 | - Yeah, you'll get a lot more complicated.

02:41:44.400 | - So it's nice when you have like

02:41:46.240 | a particular piece of technology

02:41:47.760 | that's just like right there, it's a shoe,

02:41:49.760 | we can understand it, we can study it.

02:41:51.440 | - Right, and we may be coming on the precipice

02:41:54.400 | of like human powered sport performances

02:41:57.360 | no longer being something that we like look at

02:41:59.440 | as this like pinnacle of, like, I don't know,

02:42:02.560 | maybe entertainment's the wrong word,

02:42:04.400 | but like, is that a pursuit?

02:42:06.160 | You know, do we end up just going a different direction?

02:42:09.280 | I mean, I think it's like, it's so hard for us

02:42:11.120 | to think about that right now,

02:42:12.320 | because it's so part of like the culture

02:42:14.000 | and the lifestyle of the average person,

02:42:16.560 | where like sport is a hobby of theirs,

02:42:18.960 | as well as a passion to follow.

02:42:20.800 | And it's like, how complicated does it need to get

02:42:24.320 | before people lose that interest?

02:42:26.240 | - And there could be a future

02:42:27.920 | where most of the Olympics is eSports.

02:42:29.840 | Somebody told me that eSports is in the Olympics.

02:42:32.800 | I've been meaning to look this up.

02:42:34.000 | - Oh. - Huh.

02:42:34.800 | Which is, you know, like what video,

02:42:36.880 | so video games are in the Olympics now.

02:42:38.640 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:42:39.200 | - It could be as like a trial that they're doing.

02:42:41.520 | - Mm-hmm.

02:42:42.160 | - But if this is true, I'm trying in real time to look it up,

02:42:47.840 | but if this eSports joining Olympics in 2024, wow.

02:42:52.160 | So that could be just a, that could be a fun side thing,

02:42:57.040 | but it could be a first step into a complete transformation

02:43:00.720 | of what sports mean.

02:43:01.600 | - Yeah.

02:43:01.920 | - 'Cause you can control video games better

02:43:03.520 | than you control for genetics in humans.

02:43:07.040 | - Well, and in reality, we've been dealing with this problem

02:43:09.680 | in other areas, just with the performance enhancing side

02:43:12.400 | of things with drugs and all that stuff too.

02:43:14.160 | And anyway, that conversation's flared back up

02:43:16.880 | with track and field too, where we are seeing a lot

02:43:19.040 | of records get broken.

02:43:19.840 | A lot of it probably is to shoot technology,

02:43:21.600 | but you know, in 2020 with the COVID stuff,

02:43:24.800 | you have all these out of competition testing protocols

02:43:27.520 | that a lot of these top tier Olympic athletes are getting

02:43:30.000 | to try to eliminate, like, is it, like,

02:43:33.440 | if you just do inter competition testing,

02:43:35.520 | like there's potential for people to do things

02:43:38.080 | that are gonna give them a performance advantage,

02:43:40.800 | but not gonna show up on that test on the day of

02:43:43.600 | or after their race, where now you have these,

02:43:46.240 | like, limitations of being able to test.

02:43:48.000 | So do we have a group of athletes now who decide,

02:43:51.600 | oh, I'm not gonna get tested in 2020 due to COVID restrictions.

02:43:54.400 | Is it the time to dope up and then, you know,

02:43:56.400 | hit some stride in some records and then taper back off

02:43:59.120 | when they get this thing fired back up again?

02:44:00.720 | And so there may be some of that as well.

02:44:02.720 | And I mean, that's always been an ongoing problem.

02:44:04.640 | - Yeah, but the boost you get from performance enhancing drugs

02:44:07.520 | could be tiny relative to the stuff we have in the future.

02:44:09.840 | - Right, yeah.

02:44:10.400 | - So you might be the last generation of, like,

02:44:13.920 | natural, unmodified humans that were running.

02:44:17.840 | - And who knows, maybe that's already over.

02:44:20.000 | Who knows who's modified.

02:44:22.000 | - That's true.

02:44:23.360 | You might, we might be living through that transition

02:44:26.480 | to the new Nike shoe, but broadly defined.

02:44:29.120 | - Uh-huh, yeah.

02:44:30.800 | - So you'll be, in some sense, in the history books

02:44:34.160 | as humans used to run without any modifications.

02:44:38.400 | - They used to destroy their body and let it recover

02:44:40.960 | and then do it again.

02:44:42.000 | - And they used to be impressed with an 11-hour,

02:44:46.000 | a hundred mile time where we could do it in under an hour now.

02:44:50.880 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:44:51.600 | - So, but nevertheless, it is incredible.

02:44:54.720 | The four mile, the four minute mile was incredibly impressive.

02:44:58.800 | I really love the 11-hour mark for the 100 miler.

02:45:04.400 | And the two hour marathon by most people

02:45:07.520 | for the longest time was thought to be impossible.

02:45:11.920 | There's still people that think it's impossible

02:45:14.320 | under certain constraints.

02:45:15.760 | So, Elliot Kipchoge of Kenya, as you mentioned,

02:45:21.120 | ran a one hour, 59 minute, 40 second marathon.

02:45:26.480 | But he had, like you said, the prototype shoes

02:45:29.200 | and he had the pace setters.

02:45:32.800 | - Yeah.

02:45:33.280 | - I don't know how essential that is,

02:45:35.200 | but it seems quite essential.

02:45:37.040 | Do you think it's possible?

02:45:38.560 | First of all, what do you think about that accomplishment?

02:45:41.120 | And he is one of the greatest,

02:45:43.120 | if not the greatest marathon runners of all time.

02:45:45.520 | What do you think about that accomplishment?

02:45:47.760 | And do you think it's possible to run a two hour marathon

02:45:50.400 | without any assistance?

02:45:51.840 | - Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question about it,

02:45:54.800 | regardless of technology, he's world-class,

02:45:57.440 | if not the best.

02:45:58.240 | I think he could go under two hours,

02:46:04.640 | someone equivalent to him could go under two hours

02:46:07.920 | with the shoe technology.

02:46:10.800 | Probably, what it'll take is it'll take a fast course,

02:46:14.480 | a course that has like very few tangents,

02:46:18.240 | because like turning on a course,

02:46:20.160 | they estimate it adds about a percent to the distance.

02:46:23.680 | So, when we're talking about a marathon,

02:46:26.240 | you're getting up to like a quarter mile extra running,

02:46:28.240 | you know, that alone could potentially put you down

02:46:30.400 | near two flat based on what we're seeing.

02:46:33.600 | 'Cause I mean, Kipchakee's got a, was it 20140, I believe,

02:46:39.200 | is his actual world record,

02:46:40.640 | where it's actually like certified.

02:46:42.720 | So, I mean, he's right on the door,

02:46:43.920 | knocking on the door there.

02:46:45.520 | We had the prototype he had,

02:46:48.720 | since then they put in a regulation

02:46:50.240 | where you can't stack a shoe for the roads

02:46:52.080 | more than 40 millimeters.

02:46:53.520 | So, you can only have so much of that energy returning foam,

02:46:56.240 | and you can only have, I think,

02:46:57.360 | one carbon plate in there now.

02:46:59.120 | So, that puts a little bit of a ceiling

02:47:02.480 | on that technological thing.

02:47:03.920 | But who knows what else will come out in that.

02:47:07.200 | And to be honest, who comes out with it?

02:47:09.920 | Because the fact that Nike came out with this technology

02:47:12.960 | is the reason why it's being allowed to be used.

02:47:16.080 | If it would have been like, you know,

02:47:17.440 | another running company that came out with it,

02:47:19.600 | I'm sure the regulations

02:47:21.840 | would have been slapped down on it immediately.

02:47:23.360 | And they would have probably just thrown it out altogether.

02:47:25.120 | - Also, there's politics.

02:47:26.480 | - Yeah, oh yeah.

02:47:27.600 | Well, and I mean, you can go super negative with that

02:47:33.680 | and say like, "Hey, this is terrible,

02:47:36.800 | or this is super nefarious."

02:47:38.400 | When in reality, it's like, you have a company

02:47:41.280 | that has billions of dollars

02:47:44.000 | and is interested enough in the sport

02:47:45.920 | that otherwise doesn't generate a ton of revenue

02:47:48.160 | to pick up a big tab

02:47:50.720 | and support track and field and things like that.

02:47:54.480 | But with that, you want to be the guy who says,

02:47:59.040 | "Yeah, thanks for the millions and millions of dollars,

02:48:02.000 | but we're gonna...

02:48:02.880 | All those years and money you spent on that phone,

02:48:06.480 | you wasted it.

02:48:07.200 | We're not gonna let you use it."

02:48:08.720 | But if you're another company who revolutionizes the sport

02:48:12.560 | in potentially a negative way,

02:48:14.000 | maybe you say no to them.

02:48:17.600 | So it gets interesting.

02:48:18.640 | - That's the way of humanity.

02:48:19.360 | - That's how it always happens.

02:48:20.560 | - Yeah.

02:48:20.880 | - Yeah, there's really no way around it.

02:48:22.480 | - I think Phil Mephetone, I think it's him,

02:48:24.640 | that he wrote a book about a two-hour marathon.

02:48:26.560 | What are the limits?

02:48:27.920 | How fast could we run?

02:48:28.800 | And I think he puts it like an hour and 42 minutes,

02:48:31.200 | something like that, or 40-something minutes.

02:48:33.360 | It's kind of an interesting question

02:48:34.640 | of what are the limits.

02:48:36.320 | Do you think we'll just keep pushing the limits

02:48:40.800 | of what humans are capable of in the ultras,

02:48:44.000 | in the marathon?

02:48:44.960 | Is this just like the way of sport?

02:48:48.400 | - I mean, I think ultra for sure,

02:48:50.080 | because that is a vastly growing sport.

02:48:53.440 | And there's a lot of potential

02:48:57.520 | for a much bigger pool of talent to pull from

02:49:02.000 | that could really push the needle down

02:49:05.120 | on some of these performances and things like that,

02:49:07.280 | especially as it becomes more popular.

02:49:09.760 | If people start realizing,

02:49:11.280 | or I shouldn't say realizing,

02:49:13.120 | but if a scenario happens where like,

02:49:15.120 | "Oh, I'm one of the best endurance athletes in the world.

02:49:17.520 | "I make more money running ultra marathons

02:49:19.280 | "than I do running the marathon."

02:49:20.720 | Then all of a sudden we see every record get broken

02:49:23.280 | in a matter of a couple of years.

02:49:24.480 | For the marathon, I mean, it's gonna get faster, I think,

02:49:32.240 | but to what degree is so hard to know.

02:49:35.200 | It's very hard to know.

02:49:36.160 | - The one hour and 40 minutes seems like--

02:49:38.240 | - That's pretty fast.

02:49:38.960 | - That's very fast.

02:49:40.560 | - I mean, for folks for some perspective there,

02:49:42.400 | the current world record is in the 440s per mile.

02:49:46.800 | - Per mile.

02:49:47.280 | - Like just to add a little flavor to that.

02:49:49.600 | - You're basically sprinting.

02:49:50.720 | - Yeah, I mean, go out to a track

02:49:52.320 | and run one lap as fast as you can

02:49:55.680 | and then reflect on what time you get

02:49:58.560 | and realize like the world record for the marathon

02:50:01.280 | is that lap at just over 70 seconds per lap.

02:50:07.440 | So a minute and 10, just over that,

02:50:08.880 | but you're doing it 26.2 miles.

02:50:11.600 | So over a hundred times, it's mind boggling.

02:50:15.280 | - But watching Elliot Kipchoge just,

02:50:17.920 | first of all, he was like smiling at the end of it.

02:50:20.000 | So there's an extreme efficiency here too.

02:50:22.720 | So he's able to just find the right way to maximize,

02:50:28.080 | yeah, maximize efficiency.

02:50:30.400 | It makes it look easy.

02:50:31.520 | I mean, that's true for basically every Olympic athlete.

02:50:34.560 | When you watch gymnasts, they kind of make it look easy.

02:50:36.720 | But there's like tens, if not hundreds of thousands of hours

02:50:42.320 | behind that training.

02:50:43.440 | - Yeah, just to be comfortable enough to even attempt

02:50:45.600 | some of the moves they do in gymnastics is mind boggling.

02:50:48.000 | - Well, that one is super awesome

02:50:49.760 | because how tragic it is, like one little slip up.

02:50:53.440 | - Yeah, four years of work.

02:50:54.880 | - And you're, it's all gone.

02:50:57.040 | Not just four years of work for many of them.

02:50:59.280 | - A lifetime.

02:50:59.840 | - It's like a lifetime of work.

02:51:01.120 | - And they're teenagers.

02:51:02.080 | - And they're teenagers and they get dedicated everything

02:51:05.600 | to it.

02:51:07.040 | That's what makes the pursuits of humans so fascinating.

02:51:11.040 | We kind of talked about this a little bit already,

02:51:12.960 | but is there something that stands out to you

02:51:15.600 | as one of the hardest things you've had to overcome

02:51:18.240 | in all the either training

02:51:20.960 | or the competing that you've done?

02:51:22.880 | Has there been moments that kind of stand out

02:51:24.800 | where you're proud of yourself

02:51:26.400 | that you were truly tested and you overcame it?

02:51:30.320 | - I think I'd be more inclined just 'cause it stands out to me

02:51:34.000 | much bigger than any one hard decision

02:51:38.320 | or outcome I had from a particular race

02:51:41.360 | is just like the trajectory of doing what I'm doing now

02:51:45.920 | is so much different from what I would have ever expected.

02:51:49.040 | I was a talented enough runner

02:51:52.960 | where I could make the state meet by my senior year

02:51:54.640 | at a small Division III school

02:51:56.240 | and compete at a Division III college

02:51:59.200 | and be pretty modest talent

02:52:01.280 | comparative to my peers at the top level of Division III.

02:52:05.200 | To think that I'd be doing anything

02:52:08.240 | that was revolved around running as an occupation

02:52:11.120 | is I still second guess that that's actually occurring.

02:52:15.120 | Makes me wonder about the whole simulation theory thing.

02:52:17.680 | (both laughing)

02:52:18.640 | It's like, who's got my joystick and what am I doing with it?

02:52:21.280 | - Exactly.

02:52:22.080 | (laughs)

02:52:22.960 | They got the cheat codes.

02:52:24.000 | - Yeah, exactly.

02:52:25.120 | Yeah, 'cause I mean, I went to school to be a teacher

02:52:26.800 | and I really loved that profession.

02:52:28.160 | I taught for about five years

02:52:29.360 | and then I got to a point where,

02:52:31.280 | you know, some of it's just perfect timing too,

02:52:32.960 | like the sport gained enough popularity

02:52:34.480 | where there's enough money in it,

02:52:35.440 | where like I could start a coaching business,

02:52:37.520 | I could get sponsorships and things like that

02:52:39.920 | and actually look at it and say,

02:52:41.360 | financially I can make a go of this or at least risk it.

02:52:43.680 | But there's such a fine line

02:52:46.160 | between like deciding to do that

02:52:48.720 | or kind of staying comfortable

02:52:50.560 | because I mean, I was at the perfect teaching spot for me.

02:52:53.760 | I was at this like project-based learning school

02:52:56.400 | and just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, loved it.

02:52:58.720 | One of the hardest decisions in my life to make

02:53:00.800 | was to step away from that

02:53:01.920 | to pursue running more holistically.

02:53:04.160 | And I mean, I almost didn't.

02:53:06.480 | I had a co-teacher who was, I was thinking to myself,

02:53:09.440 | I knew that it was like a decision

02:53:10.640 | I was gonna have to make the next few years,

02:53:11.920 | but it was such an easy decision to say,

02:53:13.360 | "Well, wait one more year."

02:53:15.360 | And he was just like,

02:53:16.320 | he was a little more of a free spirit than I was,

02:53:17.920 | certainly at the time.

02:53:18.560 | He's like, "Dude, what are you waiting for?

02:53:20.000 | "Just go.

02:53:20.500 | "Why are you here?"

02:53:22.320 | Like after I told him that,

02:53:23.760 | every time I'd come into school the next day

02:53:27.280 | and he'd be like, "Why are you still here?"

02:53:28.240 | But I mean, there's a tongue in cheek for sure.

02:53:32.080 | - But it's hard to know that you're gonna be successful

02:53:35.120 | in that kind of leap,

02:53:36.240 | given your, like, you know,

02:53:38.400 | 'cause it's easier when you're like an ultra performer

02:53:42.000 | early on, but to have the faith

02:53:44.400 | that you can accomplish something.

02:53:45.840 | - In some regards, it's a blessing in the sense that like,

02:53:49.760 | you know, failing would have been fairly predictable.

02:53:54.240 | - Right.

02:53:54.800 | - Whereas if like, you know, I always wonder,

02:53:57.600 | I mean, I think of these like,

02:53:58.960 | especially the big sports,

02:53:59.920 | like baseball, football, and basketball,

02:54:02.000 | and you get, you know, guys who,

02:54:05.040 | guys and girls who are like identified

02:54:06.960 | in like early high school as being the next.

02:54:10.240 | And it's like, what kind of pressure is that

02:54:13.440 | to think like, well, if I'm not like literally

02:54:16.480 | one of the best players in the NBA in 10 years,

02:54:18.640 | I failed.

02:54:19.200 | - Yeah.

02:54:19.680 | - It's just mind boggling to think

02:54:21.280 | if I'm not one of the best

02:54:22.640 | at one of the most competitive sports on the planet

02:54:25.440 | in what is an athletic,

02:54:26.480 | I think an athletic state of an NBA basketball player

02:54:29.840 | is probably one of the most athletic human beings

02:54:31.680 | on the planet.

02:54:33.440 | And to know like in a teenage year

02:54:35.680 | that your success bar is being the best,

02:54:39.520 | one of the best in the league or the best ever.

02:54:41.840 | And that conversation is floating around

02:54:43.760 | everywhere you look and see

02:54:45.200 | versus being able to kind of quietly fail

02:54:47.600 | and go back to teaching.

02:54:48.560 | (laughing)

02:54:48.880 | It makes it a little more digestible, I think.

02:54:51.120 | - You have a little bit more freedom to be great.

02:54:53.280 | - Right.

02:54:53.520 | - Because nobody's expecting you to be great.

02:54:55.280 | (laughing)

02:54:56.560 | Is there, from that, is there advice

02:54:58.720 | you can give to young people today,

02:55:00.720 | high schoolers, college students,

02:55:03.680 | taking on, trying to figure out their career,

02:55:06.000 | trying to figure out their life,

02:55:07.200 | advice on how to succeed in either?

02:55:10.560 | - Yeah, I think, you know,

02:55:12.000 | one thing I was always interested

02:55:13.680 | when I was teaching was like,

02:55:14.720 | you'd have these, you'd have students

02:55:16.480 | who had like interests,

02:55:18.560 | they had what they were good at.

02:55:19.600 | And sometimes those ran in unison with one another.

02:55:22.640 | Other times they didn't.

02:55:23.440 | And it was always interesting to me

02:55:25.600 | when you'd have a student who's like,

02:55:27.040 | I'm really into like, you know, guitar

02:55:30.000 | or I'm really into skateboarding

02:55:31.280 | or something like that,

02:55:32.000 | where it's like pretty small,

02:55:34.480 | like success rate on that avenue

02:55:36.240 | versus what you can maybe accomplish

02:55:38.240 | by focusing on just something

02:55:39.680 | like a little more standard.

02:55:40.880 | And I think like, really like,

02:55:43.680 | besides the likelihood of it becoming

02:55:46.640 | something you can turn into a profession or not,

02:55:49.600 | you should just ask yourself, like,

02:55:51.120 | is this something that I wanna spend

02:55:53.040 | my free time doing?

02:55:54.880 | And 'cause if it is,

02:55:57.200 | then you wanna keep that in your life

02:55:58.960 | 'cause that's something that's rewarding, motivating.

02:56:00.880 | It might be the catalyst

02:56:02.080 | that gets you out of bed in the morning

02:56:03.360 | and go to another job

02:56:04.880 | in order to go do that thing afterwards.

02:56:06.560 | And I think nowadays,

02:56:08.880 | we're getting to a point where like,

02:56:10.480 | your reachability from even a really small,

02:56:15.520 | like unmonetized thing previously

02:56:19.920 | is now an option where if like you live in a city

02:56:23.120 | where there's only two other people

02:56:24.240 | interested in your topic of area,

02:56:25.680 | so you're not gonna be able to turn into a job now

02:56:27.760 | with the internet,

02:56:28.720 | you have the world at your disposal.

02:56:30.320 | So that two to three people in every town

02:56:32.160 | can turn into thousands,

02:56:34.080 | tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of people.

02:56:36.000 | And if you really focus your time and energy

02:56:38.080 | into that thing,

02:56:38.720 | then who knows where you can go

02:56:40.720 | and how much more enjoyable your life can be

02:56:42.320 | if you're able to turn your career

02:56:43.520 | into a passion of yours.

02:56:44.640 | So I think like,

02:56:46.160 | that is something I would tell people,

02:56:49.280 | focus on that.

02:56:50.880 | - See the thing you're good at

02:56:52.640 | and it kind of sparks that flame

02:56:54.960 | and go with that,

02:56:57.200 | even if society doesn't really want you to,

02:56:59.920 | like it's non-traditional

02:57:01.760 | and the odds are low of like traditionally defined success.

02:57:06.080 | Just do that thing.

02:57:08.160 | I've struggled with that.

02:57:09.040 | It's like, it was always clear,

02:57:10.400 | especially like in school,

02:57:12.480 | there's stuff I'm actually good at

02:57:14.240 | and stuff that the world wants me to do.

02:57:16.000 | - Right, yeah.

02:57:16.880 | - And I kept doing that.

02:57:17.360 | - The world wanted me to be a plumber

02:57:18.480 | when I took that test my sophomore year.

02:57:19.920 | (laughing)

02:57:20.420 | - Yeah, right.

02:57:20.920 | But even like academically,

02:57:23.600 | just going to university and academia,

02:57:26.400 | there are certain ways,

02:57:28.080 | even in, I would say,

02:57:30.480 | even in the thing you want to do,

02:57:32.960 | the way you do that thing,

02:57:34.560 | the world will want you to do it a certain way.

02:57:36.560 | And even just like finding your way of doing that thing

02:57:40.560 | is really powerful.

02:57:42.400 | Like for me, the way I do research,

02:57:44.800 | the way I learn is different than colleagues of mine.

02:57:50.160 | And I've realized that,

02:57:51.440 | that I really like to follow things I'm passionate about

02:57:54.720 | versus sort of the rigor of studying

02:57:57.360 | like the fundamentals all across the board

02:57:59.120 | and building up in CASEL

02:58:00.480 | on the fundamentals, like layer upon layer.

02:58:04.080 | It's just, there's a bunch of details

02:58:05.600 | in the way I pursue the very thing that I currently do

02:58:09.200 | that's different than others.

02:58:10.640 | And it took me quite a long time to accept

02:58:12.560 | like you don't need to do it

02:58:14.000 | the way everyone else is doing it.

02:58:15.440 | It doesn't, not everyone else,

02:58:16.880 | but majority of people are telling you to do it

02:58:19.120 | 'cause one, it's beneficial to do it different

02:58:21.280 | 'cause then you'll more likely stand out.

02:58:23.520 | And two, like why the hell are you doing it

02:58:26.000 | the way it's not working for you?

02:58:27.440 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:58:29.040 | You know, I saw that all the time when I was teaching.

02:58:32.080 | I was dual certified.

02:58:33.280 | I was, my certifications were in history

02:58:36.160 | and broad field social studies.

02:58:37.440 | So like econ, psychology, history, all that stuff.

02:58:42.560 | And then I also had a certification of special education,

02:58:44.800 | which was, you know, people think of special education

02:58:47.520 | a lot of times as like, oh, it's the, you know,

02:58:49.680 | the kid who is not smart enough to do the regular thing.

02:58:52.000 | When in reality, it's like, I mean, there is some,

02:58:55.040 | you know, there's obviously like, you know,

02:58:57.280 | like certain things like Down syndrome and stuff like that.

02:58:59.920 | But like, there's also like a huge population of groups

02:59:02.720 | of both like gifted and talented on one end of the spectrum

02:59:05.760 | where they're incredibly smart and they're like the geniuses.

02:59:09.840 | But for whatever reason, the standard method of learning

02:59:12.800 | does not click with them, does not work with them.

02:59:14.560 | And then they just need a slightly different path

02:59:17.440 | or maybe a drastically different path

02:59:19.040 | and they're gonna just flourish.

02:59:20.800 | And you have kids that end up falling on the other end

02:59:23.200 | where, you know, maybe it's really difficult for them

02:59:26.960 | to be able to read at the speed of other students.

02:59:29.840 | But if you give them this specific direction,

02:59:32.720 | they can just thrive in a certain area.

02:59:34.800 | And just seeing that like, you know,

02:59:38.480 | that there's multiple ways to do stuff

02:59:40.480 | and there's not necessarily one path to the end

02:59:42.480 | is I think such an eye-opening thing to learn,

02:59:45.520 | especially if you learn,

02:59:46.160 | maybe that's what I should answer the question

02:59:47.840 | that you've asked me with is, you know,

02:59:49.520 | keep an open mind as to what paths are forward

02:59:52.000 | and know that, you know, maybe just because,

02:59:54.320 | even if you look to your left, you look to your right

02:59:57.040 | and all your classmates are successful doing it one way,

02:59:58.960 | it doesn't necessarily mean

02:59:59.680 | that's gonna be the way for you.

03:00:00.720 | - Yeah, so that could land you in eating a meat-based diet

03:00:04.480 | running across the country.

03:00:05.600 | Like the incredible madman that you are, Zach.

03:00:10.640 | I'm a huge fan, as I've told you many times,

03:00:12.800 | you're an inspiration to many.

03:00:14.560 | I'll be there checking in every day

03:00:16.400 | if you somehow make it out the starting line

03:00:18.480 | on September 1st.

03:00:19.840 | I know Joe Rogan and millions of others will be as well.

03:00:23.200 | So I'm excited to see all the suffering

03:00:25.600 | that you're gonna go through.

03:00:26.400 | I wish you the best of luck

03:00:27.520 | and thank you so much for talking today.

03:00:29.280 | I really, really appreciate it.

03:00:30.480 | - Well, thanks a bunch, Lex.

03:00:31.520 | It's been an honor to come on your podcast.

03:00:33.760 | I've been a fan of it for quite some time

03:00:36.480 | and I thought about wearing a white suit,

03:00:38.880 | but Michael Malice already took care of that one.

03:00:41.360 | So it was off the--

03:00:42.080 | (laughing)

03:00:42.880 | - Well, and I think it would be really good

03:00:45.600 | for the ratings of this conversation

03:00:47.360 | if you end up dying during that run.

03:00:48.960 | So-- (laughing)

03:00:49.920 | - I'll do my best.

03:00:50.720 | - So everything that could happen,

03:00:52.400 | it will be positive for the world.

03:00:54.160 | (laughing)

03:00:55.200 | - So you're saying I should try to average

03:00:56.240 | 100 miles a day.

03:00:56.960 | - 100 miles.

03:00:57.840 | (laughing)

03:00:58.400 | Well, I think you're gonna push yourself to,

03:01:00.240 | again, it's not the main priority,

03:01:02.560 | but it's trying to beat that record.

03:01:05.440 | That's probably gonna take everything you have

03:01:07.360 | and that's truly inspiring.

03:01:09.840 | I wish you the best of luck, man.

03:01:10.960 | - Thanks a bunch.

03:01:11.760 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Zach Bitter.

03:01:15.680 | And thank you to Ladder, Belcampo, Noom, and BetterHelp.

03:01:20.720 | Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

03:01:23.440 | And now let me leave you with some words

03:01:26.240 | from Steve Prefontaine.

03:01:28.080 | "I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end.

03:01:31.600 | "And if it is, I'm the only one who can win it."

03:01:34.640 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:01:39.280 | (upbeat music)

03:01:41.860 | (upbeat music)

03:01:44.440 | you

Zach Bitter: Ultramarathon Running | Lex Fridman Podcast #205

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