Episode 474: 3:58 Mile to Ultra Everett Smulders

Everett Smulders is an American distance runner, coach, and entrepreneur. He became an NCAA All-American and achieved a personal best of 3:58.93 in the indoor mile (2021), going sub-4:00, along with strong marks like 1:48.31 in the 800m and 3:42.86 in the 1500m. After college, he transitioned into ultra running and endurance events. He is the founder and CEO of WesFly Athletics (or WesFly Training Systems), a running media and coaching brand.

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Timestamps:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Alright. Do you consider yourself to be like a tech savvy guy? I would probably be considered tech savvy enough for my age range to the average person my age. But anyone who's actually tech savvy would probably say I am. I know. Just enough to be dangerous. This stuff right here looks like a rocket ship.

Yeah. Digital panel to me, this, I had a lot of help with this one Jeremy Miller helped me pick out the stuff and figure out how to set it up and then nowadays I feel like it's just get on YouTube and ask chat GPT. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Here's a picture of this. I'm trying to do this right. What should I do?

Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. We have a lot more options now. So I was shooting a video yesterday, I was doing that shakeout run with Mason and I was playing this game. I didn't end up posting it. I was like, how many hybrid athletes are we gonna go see running around Lady Bird Lake on a five mile shake out run? And I thought it would've been perfect if I just ran past Jeremy Miller.

[00:01:00] Yeah. And I would've been like, look who I found. Or even better Nick Bear. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of traction down at Town Lake or Lady Bird Lake on the weekends. So we got the full history lesson on Town Lake during the run. Yeah, I know. We, so we got 22 miles this morning. This is a perfect run slash podcast weekend for both of us. Great way to start it too. And hopefully we didn't use up all our conversation stuff. I was about to say for the listeners, we've already been talking for three and a half hours, so I wonder what else there is to cover, but I'm sure there's plenty. I can talk to you all day, but yeah let's jump into it though.

I think just for the listeners too, maybe we jump in kinda your background a little bit so they have an idea of who you are and what you're up to and you've got some interesting stuff from your past that kind of makes you relevant in the running world and a resource of sorts too.

So what got you into running, I guess is the first question, right? Yeah. I'll give you the cliff notes version of my story. But originally [00:02:00] what got me into running is I played all the ball sports growing up, football, basketball, lacrosse, not baseball. And I wanted to not play football sophomore year of high school.

I played freshman year and my mom was like, what are you gonna do? I said, I'm just gonna train for basketball. She said, no, you're not. You're gonna do something else after school. And we would play backgammon. I don't know if you're familiar. Mm-hmm. It's a board game. You roll dice and try to win. And we would always bet it is funny, my mom likes instilling gambling in me, but.

I was down to the house with a ton of debt in chores is what my payment was. I was like, okay, I'll go to the mall with you, mom if I lose this game. And then it came to a point where I was all or nothing. And so I was either gonna run cross country or be forgiven for all my chores. I ended up losing and held my word.

And so I went out for cross country instead of just training for basketball. And I [00:03:00] figured if I'm gonna be here, I might as well not waste my time. Didn't have any prior running experience. And I quickly learned as a 14-year-old, like in this sport, the harder you work, the more consistent you are, the better you're gonna be.

And I'm like, wait a minute. You get out what you put in. I've never been good at anything before. I was deeply insecure about that. So it caused me to act out and be a class clown, just 'cause that's how I got attention. But then I found this one thing that I was like, pretty good at. I got like fifth or sixth at State that year, like first year running.

And I was like, oh, I'm gonna go all in. Mm-hmm. This is my thing, like off to the races. And so I was still, in the amateur I made some mistakes over training, easy runs too hard. But that year's track season, I ended up. At the state championship. I was going for the win. It was the only thing I thought about for the previous six months.

And when I was like [00:04:00] nine meters away from winning the 1600 meter state title, like 800 meters in, I literally just took off the Sprint and the monkey jumped on my back like the last 400 meters. And then the last 30 meters, I was just slowly tying up, up and like getting that tunnel vision. And I literally blacked out my face.

The guy in second ran past me, won the state championship, I crawled across the line and got second. Think I ran 4 26, it would've been like four 17 with a two flat final 800. But I was devastated. But I was very devastated. And then came back the next day and got runner up in the 800 as well and 1 57 or something.

And I, that was like the worst day of my life to that point that I thought. But it ended up being the best thing for my career because the next 364 days I was just out of bed. No lack of motivation, locked in, [00:05:00] trained incredibly hard, of course, had plenty of obstacles overcome and, but I had an amazing coach who bought into me, had other successful athletes and.

I just made my thing that I was gonna outwork everyone else and have a higher pain tolerance, like a pre-fund pain kind of mindset. And then of course got to the national level and got smoked. So I was pretty good. High school runner, couple state championships, four 19 miles. We were talking about the 800 and I can't remember exactly what we were saying, but like the incremental improvements.

Mm-hmm. Something that was interesting about my college career was I ran one 50 in high school and so over the course of five years, I really only got two seconds faster in the eight, but my mile time I cut 17 seconds off of. But anyways, I applied to two schools, University of Georgia and University of Mississippi.

Ole Miss was my backup school. You put your name on the application, you get in. And I really wanted to run in Georgia my whole life and [00:06:00] the coach of the program wasn't gonna give me any scholarship and I couldn't get into the school academically. And the ole Miss coach had given me a spot, but he wanted an answer by the end of the week.

'cause they were filling up their recruiting class. And so I tried to put some pressure on the Georgia coach and I said, Hey, I got this offer, can we work anything out? And he said you should go with the Ole Miss offer. That was pretty devastating. I didn't know anything about running in college. I didn't know anything about the program.

I'd never been on campus, but I was like, screw it. Let's do that. I'll be on the track team and join a fraternity. It'll be a good time. First day of practice learned. You can't be in a fraternity and be on the Ole Miss track team, and this Irish guy who mentored me, took me under his wing.

He said, look, anyone can go down the street and join one of these fraternities. Not a lot of people can be on the best middle distance program in the country, and a lot of people would kill for that. So just give it a semester and see what happens. So I got placed on this world class team. Craig Engles was on the team.

He got fourth at the Olympic trials that [00:07:00] summer in the 1500 and 800. He's notorious for getting fourth at the Olympic trials. Yeah, he's done it like five times. Yeah. Yeah. No shade to you, Craig, if you're listening. And then just had this meteoric rise. I went from walking on to basically a full ride.

And it was just like my environment. Like I went from like 40 miles a week to 70 and my body was able to handle it. So the freshman year went amazing. I had some success. I don't need to toot my own horn on all that stuff. But then I, yeah, had I struggled for two more years, had an awesome college career.

Found my groove again, senior year, broke four in the mile. And then I was kinda like. Semi elite wasn't having any brands knocking on my door out of college. And I was honestly a bit tired of running around in circles on a track and giving it everything that I had. Like I got everything that I wanted out of it.

But I had listened to you on [00:08:00] Rogan and I was always interested in ultras and triathlons, and I read Goggins' book like everyone else. And so when I graduated college, I just went and did a solo a hundred mile run in my backyard basically. I did a 10 mile loop 10 times. That was like by far the hardest thing I had ever done.

My knees felt like there were ice picks in 'em the entire last 30 miles. I don't know. I wanted to hear from you what breaks down for you in your long distance races? 'cause Mason, the other guy we were running with mm-hmm. He did. I think it was Brazos Bend 100, some local hundred in Texas. And he was like, yeah, it was never hard at any point for me.

I just had stomach issues. Yeah. And I was like, I've never done, I've never done a 50 miler or a hundred miler where my legs were not in excruciating pain and it was like a roller coaster of lows and highs. But I did that a hundred times. Of course I finished it. I said, I'm never fricking doing that again.

And then a week later I'm finding the [00:09:00] next race. And then I went down the Ironman rabbit hole, and did one in Waco, Texas. That wasn't a very good experience. I didn't love the bike, but I checked it off the bucket list, got that cone of qualifier, but I ended up not going, 'cause I was like, I'm not gonna spend 15 grand to ride bikes around a volcano.

I'm not a pro. And then I wanted to check Ultraman off the bucket list. Like I got a bucket list with all this ultra stuff. Mm-hmm. And it seems to never end and always get stuff added onto it. But I did both of those. Then I sold my bike and my wetsuit and then I, yeah, I started coaching in a high school for a career.

So I graduated college, did those ultras and I was unemployed and then I had to get a big boy job and I got married and I couldn't quite push myself to go corporate just 'cause I knew it would kill my soul. And I know what that kind of trajectory looks like. Nothing wrong with that. But I would rather make less money and coach high schoolers and cross country.

[00:10:00] I ended up working as a groundskeeper because the coaches needed positions in the school. Got the head coach, cross country job at the same school that I went to a private school in Atlanta called Love It. And then the distance track coach had a really good relationship with the head track coach and then a position to open up in the athletics office.

So I started doing some administration and then after three years I wasn't really seeing a lot of growth for me and wasn't seeing myself there long term. I didn't know what I was gonna do after that. But I started posting on social media again and just giving, like running value. Here's what I did, here's what I learned.

We won a state championship. The guys had like a 1612 5K average. So it was good. It wasn't like any of these American Fork High School teams or Newbury Park where they're having a 1430 average. But it was awesome. Like I tell people we were saying today, a dream job just doesn't pay the bills. Yeah.

So yeah, then I left that [00:11:00] job and moved to Europe with my wife and that's where I was for the last seven months. I didn't know what I was gonna do and I just posted on social media like five times a day and I learned how I can provide value to people who are interested in road running, track racing, ultra running.

And that's what I do full-time now. So that's my long cliff notes version of my story. Yeah, I mean it's cool. It's a kind of cool trajectory into, and that's just like nowadays too with the online economy. There's, it's like maybe your perspective was a little bit different 'cause you're younger than me, but for me.

When I was in high school and college, just the idea that the marketplace would look anything the way it does now is so far outside of the norm. It would've never dawned on me that I could someday be like building a brand, like a media, essentially a brand is basically what podcasting and online social media stuff is.

So did you start seeing that stuff like when you were in college as oh, maybe there's some [00:12:00] opportunities outside of just more in-person coaching or a professional athlete, I guess when did you start thinking, okay, this is a possibility to get into this stuff? Yeah it's good you mentioned that.

'cause I completely left out. A big part of the story is like, when I was in college, I started a brand called Wesley Athletics that was a YouTube channel, and I basically documented the life of a college runner. Mm-hmm. And I wasn't the first guy on YouTube to make a video, but I was one of the first people to have this like a vlog, personal brand Instagram kind of thing.

So I had the foundation for that already in place. Mm-hmm. But then when I was working in the high school, there's a policy, so for three years I basically fell off the cliff. Of the side of the earth. Oh, okay. And then I came back on and I was like, Hey, I haven't been able to post for the last three years, but I've learned a lot, so I'm gonna share it with you.

But yeah I am from a generation where I think there's [00:13:00] opportunity. I understand there's an opportunity for 19 year olds to make multiple millions of dollars a year through their cell phone. Yeah. And I know a bunch of people who are, and like for someone who's 40 or 50, like you had to eat shit for 10 years in your career before you could even speak at the meeting table.

Yeah. And right now it's so universal how you can reach customers and provide value. And I actually think, like with all this AI stuff too, how you and I are basically like freelancers in our lane of running, providing value there. I think a lot more people's careers are headed in that direction.

Like me, I'm a member of this country club in Atlanta and 10 years ago if you went there on a Tuesday at 1:00 PM it's gonna be empty. 'cause everyone's in the office right now. People don't do that anymore. They're in there on their laptops. They're on, [00:14:00] no, they're their phones probably at home, on their phones, on their laptops, mobile, super interesting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's a different world. When you were coaching high school, you had some pretty successful teams, didn't you? Yeah, we won a state championship and coached one kid to take my school record in the 3,200. I still hold the 16 and eight. I don't think that 800 will ever get touched.

Some awesome girls. But yeah, we had a 1612 5K average, won the cross country state championship and won three individual track state titles. But it takes time. That's one thing that a lot of coaches do, I don't know if they fully understand it. It's like you're not gonna come into a program that is 10th and state and go immediately to first typically.

Unless you completely turn their life upside down and they start doubling four days a week and are completely committed. Like you gotta build the culture, you gotta set the standard, but then you gotta let time do its thing. So it was just a slow buildup every year. A [00:15:00] a little bit better, a little bit better.

And then my final year, all the stars aligned and I couldn't sleep for two weeks before the cross country state championship. 'cause I felt like my whole coaching resume was at stake. And we were graduating five seniors and we had a really tight battle with this other school.

But we ended up pulling that one out and that's probably like my proudest coaching. Accolade you could say. And it was a close margin. Like we were at the finish line, tallying up the scores, trying to figure out did we win this thing, did we not? And then yeah, it was, the tier started flowing.

It was awesome. Did that experience, was that what kind of spurred your mind? I want to like coaching online and stuff too, and build a coaching brand outside of just in person stuff. No, in person is what I love. And like I was, I just took you guys through my whole life from the athlete to college.

Like every phase that I've gone into, I've had no [00:16:00] plan whatsoever for where this is gonna go. Like when I left my high school coaching job, I was trying to find a corporate job mm-hmm. As a travel agent in Europe. But I just posted a video online and the first one I posted went viral. And then I saw the opportunity there.

I forgot what you, what was your original question? Oh, what got you into this kind of coaching? Yeah. Is that just based on online? No software. What made me fall in love with coaching is I was volunteer assistant coaching at the school that I ended up working for. And it's the kids that like it.

They don't really have a group of friends, they don't know their place in this world or this school, they don't have a lot of confidence. Mm-hmm. They may be spending a little bit too much time on the video games or the short term, the short form Instagram reels, and just like building that confidence in them that they take into like the other areas of their life is like what I really love doing.

Like performance is [00:17:00] cool and I love competition, but I care more about the one-on-one relationship and like, how can I make this person better and how can I give them a better experience? And the biggest issue with athletes that I've coached is like the biggest obstacle, the first and biggest obstacle to overcome is they don't, most people are not like you and I where we're like, yeah, we're gonna go set the record, of course we are.

And have that kind of confidence. They don't even see themselves as someone who can be a contributor on the team. That's the reality of the majority of the most of these kids. And then the gears start turning their head and you build their confidence and they're like, oh, I might be able to score and be a contributing member of this team.

And then they get older and the other seniors graduate and then they're like, okay, I might be able to actually lead this team and show the younger guys how it's done and to avoid the mistakes that I made. Then that just snowballs. So it's more so the personal development. And I've [00:18:00] always been into the self-help kind of stuff.

Big Tony Robbins guy growing up. Yeah. And running is just there's so many lessons in running. I think it's all just a disguise for life. Mm-hmm. And, yeah. Yeah. The same scaffolding would be applied to just about anything. Yeah. And it's just funny, like what people learn that scaffolding from, and it's it sounds like with you, it was like you came at the right time.

It's what you needed. And then it gave you the right signals at the right time to keep pursuing it. And then by the time you had, by the time you were ready, you were invested. You were all in. Yeah. And then you also learn I, like I, I'm using the stuff that I learned through running and track, like the hard lessons of delayed gratification.

Yeah. And like staying consistent and like you will be rewarded eventually for the work that you're doing. It's not completely being done in vain. I'm applying that into coaching, into the professional world, into [00:19:00] business. How did you get into coaching? Yeah. I got coaching not too different from your experience.

I grew up running, so I knew it was something I wanted to be doing. Ran in college. And then college is really where I started taking running seriously. Where I started looking okay, my peers are doing this, therefore I need to be doing this too. Versus just doing what the coach told me to do and thinking okay, this is fun.

I like this, but not really diving into the world of running, so to speak. So in college I learned a ton. Like I, I learned so much in college in terms of oh, like you can actually be a fan of this sport. It's not just like this activity you do. And then like my teammates too, it's like I talked to them and they'd be like, oh yeah, we were running like 60 mile weeks in high school.

I'm like, I don't think I ever ran more than 30 miles a week in high school. And only one year did I get anywhere near what would be considered like training year round. So all of college was basically me basically learning that I wanted to do that for the rest of [00:20:00] my life, that wasn't gonna be just this temporary stopping point.

And then once the team and the competition wasn't there, running was what you wanna do for the rest of your life. Yeah. But at that point, I had no professional aspirations. Like I wasn't good enough. There was no clear sign that would be something that would be available to me. And at this point, like we're talking like 2005 to 2008, so the internet is just getting its legs for the most part.

Social media barely exists. We have Facebook, MySpace and there was no such thing as an influencer in its traditional form or building an online brand really. I went into teaching. And with that came coaching track and cross country. Like I had some, when I was student teaching, I had some volunteer spots.

And then when I started teaching full-time, I had some full-time coaching spots with that. And that really kinda got me interested in that side of things where you get that first experience where you're at a meet and it's oh, all those cool emotions that you have when you run a good race and you see your teammates do well, you get that as a coach too.

Yeah. And you sometimes [00:21:00] get a 10 x 'cause there's just, you can see a ton of different people running versus just yourself or a couple of teammates. You also get nervous. Yeah, you do. You get really nervous. Yeah. It's almost similar to crewing when you crew in an ultra marathon, you get that same kind of living vicariously through the person for a period of time, but without all the physical destruction that comes with doing actual competition.

But it's also hard for someone who can be a control freak and thinks that you do everything the best way. Right. You gotta be because you're not in control. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you definitely learn when you start coaching just okay, yeah there's, even if what I'm doing is the perfect thing on paper, there's gonna be deterrence or there's gonna be like pivots and individualization and just kinda like the art side of coaching in there that really informs you.

And I think that's what keeps it really interesting. No athlete's really the same. Right down to the granular level. So it's fun solving that puzzle or helping solve that puzzle too. [00:22:00] But really what got me into coaching, the way I'm doing it now is when I started running ultra marathons, I was still teaching and I started having some success where the sport was very much growing and people had this within the sport, had this big thirst for like, how do we do this?

There's really not a template. There's really not. I can't go on and get like the Jack Daniels like formula, like instant running. So people would just reach out to me like, Hey, do you coach anybody I'd, can you coach me? So I ended up having enough of that occur that I was like, well, I might as well put up a website and get this, make this look more formal.

So, my last year of teaching, I think I had maybe a 15 person roster that I was coaching one-on-one. And then that same year I had an opportunity to get a professional contract. 'cause I'd run a few good races. And then it was like between the two of 'em, it was like, okay, maybe this is something I need to focus on versus trying to be good at such a wide variety of things, or spread myself too thin with a full-time teaching career, trying to compete as an [00:23:00] athlete, trying to coach as well.

It was like, I'm gonna end up being like, okay at all these things and doing everyone a disservice, including myself if I don't pick a lane and go for it. So in my mind it was like. If the athlete side is very short, relatively speaking. And if I fail, I can always just go back to teaching. It's gonna always be there.

So, I can do that at an old age if I want to. So I took that chance. And then it's just, it was funny 'cause at that time I was like, well, I'll try it for at least three years. 'cause I had a three year contract at the time. And then I was like, if I fall on my face, three years, it was worth a shot.

And then that's that. And then after that I just basically was like, well, I'll just do this one year at a time and see if it keeps going. And it just kept going and as these different things built up, like podcasting, social media, brand building, things like that, you just kinda layer things in as you learn it and can do it.

And yeah it's, it is interesting. We were talking about the new age of working. It's like you have built your life in a way where the things that you would [00:24:00] do anyways if money didn't exist, you're doing exactly like this technically right now is work for you. So it's, yeah, it's super interesting.

I'm in a similar boat, like when I'm training, I'm technically like upholding my athlete sponsorship stuff. Mm-hmm. I'm here on the podcast hitting people's ears at home. Yeah. It's interesting. Do you think you'll ever go back to teaching? Could possibly, yeah. I wouldn't ever say never at this point, it would be difficult just because I've built so many non performance based things around my job.

Yeah. 'cause it, I wouldn't say no, but in the full capacity it would have to come. I'd have to start like really not wanting to do some of this stuff anymore 'cause it would just, it's just like a time limitation thing really. And I still enjoy doing this stuff. 'cause it, there's so many crossovers too between coaching and even podcasting, especially when you're getting to the educational side of the podcasting of you're using a lot of those tools and skills and you're just distributing it in a different way.

Yeah, and I know, [00:25:00] I would say of all the jobs out there, you definitely have bosses when you're teaching, but it is pretty open. Like I never, at least my experience was like I had good relationships with my administrators and stuff, so they trusted me, I trusted them and they more or less didn't come in and try to micromanage me at all.

So I did have a lot of kind of that same sensation of I've got this like Play-Doh and I'm gonna mold it the way I want to and I'm gonna teach these standards the way that I think is gonna work the best, versus having someone tell me exactly how to do it and then feel like I'm just being bossed around all day.

But even then it's hard to argue with the flexibility of being self-employed either. Like it's a blessing and a curse though. It is. It definitely is. And you learn that quickly where it's very nice for, it's very nice to be able to say okay, these are things I need to get done and I can rearrange 'em however is most convenient versus having someone tell you gotta do this now that then and this there.

But some of that structure actually is very useful too because [00:26:00] I think it's just, it, it's just, it's good discipline practice I think in my mind, which you need to have to run strong races. I think you have to have a discipline framework to some degree. And if you're too, like loosey goosey with your own schedule, you lose a little bit of that kind of built in callusing in my opinion.

And it's just also hard to be efficient if you're doing that too often. Yeah. So at a certain point you have to say, okay, this is when the day starts. I'm going to do these things today and probably in this order and add a little enough structure there where you feel like you're still making sure you're getting the things done you need to get done and staying on top of all of it.

Yeah. But it's fun to build and create on your own. Yeah. I sometimes envy people in the corporate world who can clock out at five. Yeah. I have a hard time shutting it off and it's your challenge that I'm currently trying to figure out and I'm in my early stages, so sometimes you're in.

Areas of life where you don't have much time for balance. That is a good point too. Yeah. [00:27:00] You definitely never are typically off and when you are, 'cause I'll do I'll try to set it up in a way where it's like I don't have to work all the time. It's one of those things where I could always try to add more, like I could always record another podcast or I could always make another Instagram post or I could always take on another coaching client.

So there is an endless amount of work I could do. So finding where those balances are so that you can say alright, today I'm just gonna do stuff that is non work related. It gets difficult. 'cause all my work related stuff are, like you said, things that I would probably do with my free time if I was working a different job.

But at the same time, you do need breaks from that stuff. But when I do take those breaks, it's almost impossible to completely remove it from your mind. I might not be doing it, but there's something in the back of my mind still churning about okay, well on Monday that client is starting and I gotta make sure they got this set up.

And I don't actually have to do it until then, but it's still in the back of my mind. Or, you know what, I've gotta [00:28:00] get a podcast guest scheduled and iron out. It's okay, I'm gonna wait to do that until Monday because I said I'm gonna take a break right now. But in the back of your mind, you're still thinking about getting it set up, gotta deliver to these sponsors, right?

Yeah. How do you unplug and relax? Like I'm talking about no race on the calendar. Yeah. Getting out of the work cycle. How does Zach chill? Probably not as often as I should in some cases, although it's hard to untangle that because of what we said too, because if I was a lot of my, a lot of the stuff I do has a little bit of that element in it.

I do disconnect though. Like I'm a huge Green Bay Packers football fan. There we go. So that's what I was looking for. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, this is totally different from running and it's funny 'cause like when I was a kid, I followed all the sports like all the pro sports. Like I had a team cheering for 'em, and you'd go from season to season.

And as I've gotten more [00:29:00] busy and just, you grow up and just have all their interests and priorities and things like that's whittled down. But the one that kind of stood out that I just never let go of was Green Bay Packers football. So I stay pretty in tune with the NFL and the Packers and stuff like that.

So yeah, like on a Sunday when the Packers are playing, like I'm turning everything off and watching the game and following that stuff. And then if I'm trying to relax and do something else, I might be listening to a podcast where people are doing commentary on the team and basically like what I'm doing.

But from that, their end. So I'm like, I'm engaging with their content. Yeah. What about, so switching gears here a little. What would you say your coaching style is? My coaching style is like very much looking at it through the lens of, I think the, I think there's like really important components, like core components that are gonna be fairly universal and that's gonna be like a low intensity foundation.

And [00:30:00] then interval work that goes above your aerobic threshold, mainly targeting like threshold and VO two max. And there's a lot of wiggle room outside of that. But those are like the key anchor point stuff. And then from there I look at it through the lens of once that foundation is there, we want to use those other components and go from a framework of least to most specific.

So just 'cause I'm running a hundred miles or my coaching clients running a hundred miles, it doesn't mean doing short intervals at VO two max is not important for them. It's still very important, it's just very unspecific to race day. So we might do that earlier in the training plan and then by the end we're letting go of some of that and focusing more on getting some long miles built in that are specific to what they'd be doing out there on the race, at the, on the race course versus working with someone running a 5K.

We might be doing those short intervals near the end of the plan. 'cause that's gonna be a lot more specific to their race day approach. So my style kind of follows that framework, but then. There's a lot of [00:31:00] wiggle room within it too, based on people's strengths and weaknesses, like what they come to me with.

Some of 'em come to me with a more, I would call traditional ultra marathon background where they've just been running a lot of slow miles, in which case we've got a lot less juice to squeeze by piling more miles on them. But we got quite a bit of juice to squeeze by doing more short intervals and more kind of higher end of the aerobic intensity spectrum stuff than what they had done historically.

Or it could be someone who is coming to me from a more traditional track background and maybe they didn't do many miles, but they did a lot of interval work and things like that where we can benefit from getting them a little more exposure to some longer running and some lower intensity stuff. And so there is that kind of developed skillset or the strengths and weaknesses side of it too, that I like to get into with new coaching clients.

And think about one of your athletes that has been super successful on your training program, super awesome to work with. You're excited for them to get on the start line 'cause you know they're prepared. What makes them a great athlete for you? Yeah. So I would say there's the programming [00:32:00] side and then the adherence side to it, which is most people have a, I feel like once someone starts paying you, like they're probably gonna be fairly compliant at least.

So that's not as big of an issue or big dv or big divergence from one person to the next. But then success doesn't necessarily come from alright, here's. Zach's master plan of how I'm gonna get from here to there, and I just gotta hit this thing right on. The big piece for success there is the communication piece.

So I really love it when I have coaching clients where they do a workout and they're like, I noticed something that I wouldn't really necessarily be able to pry. I would've had them if we talked on a frequent enough basis and we'd maybe get to it. But there are some clients where they'll do a long run and they'll just be, they're really curious about why they felt a certain way or their attention to those details are a little bit higher than average where they're like, oh, I felt they're just telling you these things on, like a, [00:33:00] sometimes they think they're being annoying and I always like, they tell 'em like no, this is really excellent because this, yes, I do the same thing.

I'm like, please ask me questions. Uhhuh. 'cause if you are wondering something and you don't and I don't hear from you, that's not good. Well, and to some degree it's if you don't hear from 'em, you can assume okay, it went well and it probably went well enough where it wasn't like, oh, I skipped the workout or I went and I did 10 extra intervals, or I ran twice as far.

But there are enough little things in there that we just don't like people. I think sometimes running is so interesting to me. 'cause there's the things that feel the most objective oftentimes aren't, and the things that feel subjective are actually where real progress can be made.

So what I mean by that is it feels objective to say alright. If you do these intervals at this heart rate or this pace that's gonna give us what we're looking for and that can be directionally accurate. But if I have a coaching client who does that and then they come back and they say to me, [00:34:00] Hey, I got to that last one and I didn't feel like I could have done another one, I want to know that because we're probably gonna just pull back a pinch and then we're gonna wait until they get that sensation to be able to maybe do an extra one or two afterwards.

And then we're gonna stress 'em up to it and we're gonna make less mistakes along the way and we're gonna save time through that. And there's really nothing objective about them saying that. It's like a subjective feeling of I would've struggled to do an extra one. And you can sometimes tease that stuff out of the data too, where if they're really struggling at the end, sometimes there's some slowing of pace and things like that.

But the other one is like perceived effort. Perceived effort is such an awesome tool and it's the one I had advocated for as being your primary guide. And then all these other things like heart rate, pace and all these awesome data things, which I think are really valuable. You can start shifting those to be like post-work workout analysis tools or in some cases with a coaching client, if they're really busy and they don't really help, they don't really want to dig into that stuff.

If I can teach 'em [00:35:00] perceived effort, it gets really easy for them to go and say we're doing like an interval session of. Four by four minutes at VO two max and their VO two max pace. If they know what that feels like, they don't actually have to pay attention to pace. They can just dial up what that feels like and do their four by four.

And then afterwards I can look at all that data and see where it's been moving from that session to the next one. And over the course of weeks or however long, we end up using that exposure point for them. And I think that ends up almost simplifying something that feels really complex, but when you try to explain that, it feels well, why are we using something that sounds subjective, perceived effort?

It's what I feel, right? It sounds as subjective as it can get, but once someone actually learns that it's really quite objective because they're just really learning what their body's telling them. And your body's gonna tell you different things when you're at aerobic threshold or at lactate threshold or at VO two max.

And when you start understanding what those things feel like, that just becomes such a rock solid guide. And then we can use what the [00:36:00] data spits out from that sensation to tell us if we're leaning too heavy into something or not enough into something and guide the training that way. So that's the other piece of the puzzle that is really useful.

Then with the perceived effort or with the communication side, is that perceived effort is something kinda have to talk about Yeah. In a lot of cases. I saw you had Rory on the podcast last week. Yeah. Link letter. He had this awesome insight when I was talking about heart rate. I go crazy online with all these heart rate gurus, but he said.

Do the work, analyze the data afterwards. Uhhuh, when you're writing workouts for someone, are you going, are you looking for them to be in a heart rate zone? Are you looking for them to be in a RPE or are you giving them, Hey, I want you to do four by a mile and hit seven 40? 7 37 20? Mm-hmm. Last one. Hard but smooth.

Yeah, it's a good question because RPE is a skill you have to learn. So if someone doesn't know it, you can't really just assume if I tell you to go at an [00:37:00] RPE of eight out of 10, that they're gonna really know what to do with that, which is crazy to me. I got, well, you grew up like you, you literally evolved in the world of understanding the pain difference between easy all the way up to really hard.

Yeah. So it's almost like a language you were born with. But I got these high schoolers that I coached and I'm like, so how was the work? At the end of each workout, I do Google sheets, shout out to training peaks. I know you work with them. The guy I talked to, the guy who is on the business side of things about that this week, I'm like, no, I like my Google sheet.

But at the end of each day, they get prompted with nine questions. Did you complete the activity? Are you fueling properly? Do you have any soreness or injury? What was the rate of perceived effort? What was the distance covered? What was your average heart rate? What was your average pace? And then athlete feedback where they put the splits and whatever, where they ran their feelings and it's like their diary.

But I'm like, okay, lemme break this down for you. On a scale of one to 10, how hard was it? Yeah. That's your RPE and he's [00:38:00] oh, I don't know, like a 10. I'm like, okay, so you couldn't have done any more? And he's no, I probably could have. I'm like, okay, then it's not a 10. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point.

Like I think you can, there are some things you can probably do with a little bit of prying pretty quickly without too much experience. But what, the way I kind of like to do it is if I want to do short intervals and long intervals, I'm probably pinning the short intervals to VO two max, the long intervals to lactate threshold.

And then at that point in the training, we're probably just doing a lot of volume at low intensities, like up to their aerobic threshold or their top end of zone two. So you just gave four different zones. Mm-hmm. How do you determine what they are? Yeah. Zone is? So this is what I do with it is we'll do field tests and the field tests are gonna give us an idea of what they should be targeting during those different things.

What's an example of a field test? So we'll do, I'll have 'em do a 12 minute Cooper test for their VO two max to give us a pace that they can start [00:39:00] with, and then I'll have 'em do a 30 minute like Joel reel running lactate threshold field test. And that will inform us of how we should structure their long intervals.

What do those look like? I don't know what either. It's basically just like a 12 minute time trial and a 30 minute time trial. Okay. But we wanna try to remove it from race day. 'cause if it's race day then we probably have to, certainly for lactate threshold we have to stretch out beyond 30 minutes.

Some of 'em come with that data though. Like I'll have some coaching clients where it's oh, I just did this race and it took me roughly 60 minutes to finish it. And a lot of times if they were giving that a good, hard effort, we can use that and just inform us with race races and stuff like that too.

And you're putting that through a calculator? Yeah. And that's gonna spit out some of the zones. But realistically the way I like to use it is assuming we are not going from like wildly different environments where it's oh, I did the test on this track and now I'm gonna go run in the mountains.

Yeah. That's like we can do that, but we're gonna really need perceived effort at that point. But what I do there is we have this preliminary data that kind of informs us where you're at right now. And pace can be a valuable [00:40:00] guide and an easy guide 'cause it's really easy to look at your watch and see what pace you're going.

But it's a moving target because as you improve that same workout will feel the same, but you'll be going faster. So I look at intensity as fixed pace is a moving target, and as soon as I can move you away from having to use a moving target to a fixed target, I think it's just gonna get more simple because then I can start looking at time, which is another fixed target and intensity and how they engage with one another and how we're distributing all of it.

So we use those field tests to get some paces that they can use as a guide. As they start doing the short intervals, they're now learning what it feels like to do an interval session at short interval intensity or a long interval session at like lactate threshold intensity. And once they start feeling comfortable with what that feels like, I start telling them, look, once you start noticing that it's feeling easier, that's our sign to start to improve the pace or move the pace down a little bit.

And [00:41:00] I'm always fact checking that also with the data too. 'cause I can usually see it right. Especially with a little bit less so with short intervals but with long intervals. Once they've had three or four sessions of that, if I'm looking at their spread on training peaks and looking at alright, here's this block of long intervals that you did originally, here's the heart rate.

Even though I don't think the heart rate in live form is really gonna inform them that much, it can inform us post run where if it's like that first set of intervals, you're like hovering around this spot, whether it's accurate or not is irrelevant as long as it's like an accurate, as long as it's not like an inaccurate reading.

'cause your watch just simply didn't pick up your heart rate. It's just like it, it's capturing the progress. Yeah. Yeah. The progression up to where we're trying to get to and then that's averaging it low or something like that. I can usually tell alright, by this fourth week you've got that same interval session at the same pace and now your heart rate on average during those intervals is five beats from its lower.

That's probably a sign we need to. Push the pace down a little bit, [00:42:00] bring that heart rate back to the intensity that you were at before. And usually by then we've got like multiple different things pointing in the same direction. They notice the perceived effort feels a little easier. Those intervals are relaxing a little bit.

I'm noticing the heart rate data start to shift. The pace has been fixed, so then we just adjust that moving target pace one to recalibrate the intensity on those. How often do you think you and your athletes should do all out efforts in training? That's a good question. I like what Steve Magnus says about this because he's you shouldn't do that too frequently.

Because by doing so, you're probably stealing from tomorrow in the way where if I had someone go all out in a workout on Tuesday, they're probably not doing a quality session again until for at least multiple days, if not a full week. Yeah. So then it's like how much work did we get done in that one session versus what we could have got done in two sessions where we went a little bit less aggressive And [00:43:00] almost every time I'm gonna get more total volume spent at the goal intensity by distributing it into two sessions in that same timeframe, but less aggressive.

With that said, on race stay, you're not trying to cross the finish line feeling like you got one or two reps left in the tank. Right? Yeah. You're trying to cross the finish line, feeling like you gassed that tank empty and there is. Experiences that really teach you where that line is or inform you of how far beyond the perceived line that you've developed is.

So then I do think there's what I call 'em hero workouts, like workouts where you're just like, all right, I'm just gonna, I'm a workout warrior. Yeah. I'm going to town on this one. Nothing worse than being a workout warrior. It's like your training indicates that you're in sub four mile shape and then you go run a 4 0 7.

Yeah. Yeah. And it should be the other way around. Right, right, right. If you're a savage. Yeah. Yeah. So I think some of those big workouts are informative if you do them at times [00:44:00] where it's seldom enough where you can absorb the opportunity cost of maybe not being able to hit another workout as soon as you would've otherwise.

Or the other way I like, the other way I like to describe this is with a long enough timeline, you like almost anything that has an opportunity to be useful. So if my timeline is so short that by doing a hero workout, I'm going to really compromise my development, 'cause now I'm just gonna run out of time to expose myself to the intensities and the things I need to do to be ready for this race, that's a problem.

If my timeline is long enough where I can check the boxes, I need to, with that kind of process of leaving a rep or two in the tank and feel like you can get back to doing another decently hard session sooner rather than later. If I have enough time to make sure I do my due diligence there. And then I also have a couple flexibility spots because of that to do something where I'm like, okay, I'm gonna really push the pedal to the floor and really reimagine what I'm capable of.

Honestly, those are probably better done in races in most cases anyway, because it's just a great environment to [00:45:00] explore. So at that point I'd be more inclined to say, just go do that 5K and push harder, that 10 K and push harder, something like that. But I think there is some room for that stuff just to recalibrate the brain in terms of alright I can actually do more than I thought I could, which might be helpful at the end of a race.

Yeah. You're also doing more ultra longer stuff and you can do a lot more damage on a 30 mile run than you can on three by 150 meters in spikes. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. You do have to be very careful with that. And there is that incentive I think and that draw. 'cause a lot of times people get into ultra running because they do enjoy the long, slow stuff.

So it does make sense that they would be pretty receptive to you telling me to go do a 30 miler and push hard at the end and then tomorrow do the same thing again. Yeah. Do you think that you should train fatigued when you are in the bulk of training? Part of it's gonna be cumulative fatigue because if you're not working a system where you're pushing so much fatigue in one session [00:46:00] that you get what you need out of it, you have to stack.

So I do think. You wanna be training on some degree of fatigue, but not to the degree where you're noticing the workout quality is dipping. And to some degree you use that as a sign. So I tend to standardize my training plans to be like three weeks up, one week down. And the idea there is that we overstress you for those up to that third week.

And then all of a sudden we 're hitting that point where your body's Hey, if these adaptations are gonna occur, we need to back off a little bit. You do the deload week and then you can keep doing that and micros stress your way up. Now it is three, three up, one down.

There's nothing magic about that. So like I do the same thing, right? Yeah. There, I mean it could be two up, one down, maybe sometimes it's four up, one down or maybe it's three up and half down. And that's just what it took because the individual, so what I'm usually looking for within that framework is are we getting to a point where your workout quality is now [00:47:00] starting to say, we're heading in the wrong direction?

And once we get that signal, it's okay, it's time to back off and let that catch up. Yeah. And an early runner that might happen with one session, we might know right away, whereas like a real experienced runner, I might, you might go out and have a little bit of a rough workout. We might say, ah let's wait for the next one and see again and confirm it.

Just because your tolerance to stress is so high, it's hard to really rely on one data point to really inform if you've gone too far or not. Yeah. I also feel like the down week is also mentally and psychologically valuable there. I'll give my athletes instead of mile repeats where they have paces they have to hit, they'll do some sort of fart lake or progression run.

Mm-hmm. Just so it's yeah. It's a light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to hit anything. If you feel good, you know the opportunity's there, open your stride up and get some good miles in. That's two thumbs up, but, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm gonna be like, I'm the, everyone knows me as the runner [00:48:00] guy and the coach at this wedding tonight, but, and they're gonna going upstairs, they're gonna be like, oh, this is easy for you, isn't it?

I'm like, I'm actually the most tired person here. Yeah. And I can't stand for another second. 'cause I did 22 miles this morning with this freaking animal. It's like, why is he falling asleep at nine o'clock on the table with loud music in his ears, even though he was supposed to be fit. Yeah, that is, that is, what you described, I think is just like the marathoners experience, right?

They're, if they're fresh, if they feel good, that means it's time to hammer. Yeah. And that's, it is time to put work in. And then, you're always like in that state of alright, I felt good and I felt good just long enough to get that good workout in and now I don't feel good anymore and I have to wait until I feel good again.

So as soon as you start actually like feeling like you've. You're actually realizing your fitness, you're putting yourself through the ringer again. Yeah. And getting outta bed in the morning sometimes is like you're limping more often than not. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Actually, it's interesting.

I don't think of long distance running, we were talking [00:49:00] about health and longevity this morning. I actually don't think it's the healthiest thing at all. I think taking anything to its performance conclusion is gonna come at health trade-offs. Yeah. And it's one of those things where it's like the path to peak performance is like this linear progression in health.

And then you get to this point, like maybe around 80% of the way there, where if you just wanted to be healthy, you'd stop there and then you would have actualized optimal health within that activity. But if you want to perform at your best, now all of a sudden you're probably like giving up other healthy parameters that just happen to be counterproductive for your specific target.

So like the marathoner, they may not be doing the same strength routine that would be optimal for someone to have good musculature later in life when they get to the point of their training plan where they're peaking for Boston or the Olympics or something like that. Yeah. The marathon, the [00:50:00] marathoner build is weak.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Do you know Mark Sisen? Yeah. Uhhuh. I mean that, that guy is like the healthiest man alive. Yeah. And he's just on his paddleboard playing Frisbee. Yeah. I think it's. One high intensity interval session, one long session, a bunch of easy stuff. Mm-hmm. Filling in the gaps and then three or four strength training sessions and a healthy diet.

Good sleep. Mm-hmm. You're good to go. Yeah. And probably some like activity that puts you in multiple planes like position and movement. So like Mark, I think it was like ultimate Frisbee or something like that. So he's out there like he's actually got a game that is gonna put his body in all, it's kinda like that, like a parameter for him probably if I can do this effectively, it means I'm doing those other things.

Right. And my body's able to perform in this environment that has a lot of different variety to it. But yeah, I think Mark is also someone I look at as okay, I see there's a potential here because you're also going to, this is actually probably good for human [00:51:00] health if we're not gonna see a 52-year-old winning the Olympic marathon.

Yeah. So, we might not even see a 40-year-old winning the Olympic marathon anytime soon. We might not see a 30-year-old doing it. Right. Yeah. So when you look at it through that lens, it's like from a pure performance standpoint where that is your number one objective and goal. You age out of that early enough in life where you can do what Mark did, which 'cause Mark did put himself through the ringer for performance earlier on in his life.

And then he got to a point where he was like, okay. This isn't the way forward at this point in time. And then he reinvented all that, the way he moves and eats and everything like that. To the degree where I look at it, I'm like, well, if you can still put yourself through the ringer for performance in your twenties, thirties, maybe early forties, and then say, okay, I got my fill there.

Now I'm getting beat by all the kids. Might as well start going the Mark Sisson route. I think that's cool to see that you can maybe have the best of both worlds. Yeah. Do you know Brian [00:52:00] Johnson, dude who's a biohacker Yeah. Yeah. Uhhuh what are your thoughts on that? You can plead the fifth if you want.

No, I'll be upfront about this one. There's, I think I like the idea of exploring human optimization, and I do think you need people who are going to live on the edges of that to really show what's possible. At the end of the day, like most people aren't gonna be like, okay, there's, no pun intended, the blueprint.

Yeah, exactly. And follow it. Exactly. But they might look at that and be like, okay, there's a lot of things I could be doing better, and they start working within a reasonable parameter. The problem I see with guys like Brian Johnson is it's never just, okay, like here's some good life habits that are gonna help you really improve things.

It's always to the extreme that often ex like removes any sort of human enjoyment from what most people would consider, like an acceptable routine to exist in this world, in [00:53:00] a ha happy way. And then there's always some like product that gets sold at the end of it, where it'd be one thing if he was just saying oh yeah, olive oil and almonds are good for you.

Great. They are, and you can buy them in a hundred different forms. But he's gonna be like, well, you have to have this exact type of almond and this very specific type of olive oil. And oh, by the way, I'm like one of the only people who sells it. Yeah. That's the part that I think is kinda triggering. I think it's a money ploy.

Yeah, it's a hustle. It's a hustle at that point too. So do you think there's any PD issues in the sport of ultra running? Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. And we know, I bet you have some inside scoop. There's. We've just had people get caught even with our very like poor rudimentary testing measures.

So I, I've never heard of anyone in I would never suspect you or Sorkin or Jim Wamsley. It just seems like it's not a sport where peds would come into play. But now as more money gets [00:54:00] injected into it, I think the PED usage gets more rampant. And when you look at just the performance enhancing drug landscape, it ends up being, I think we learned this from triathlon.

It actually ends up being like. Age groupers and people who note that the top end of that sport weren't and aren't doping to, but you actually have almost the incentive is still there even when you're not like, on the top of the podium necessarily because Yeah. What made me think about it is my follow up question is do you think there's any sort of peptides or steroids or TRT that is a net positive for your health?

'cause peptides are super popular right now, but illegal, right? Illegal. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So someone like you wouldn't take it, but mm-hmm. I know a bunch of guys in their mid to late forties that do ultras that are doing TRT. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Which probably is to supplement low testosterone. Mm-hmm. But no one's testing 'em and no one really cares.

Yeah. If it was Charlie [00:55:00] Lawrence, obviously that's gonna be an issue. Uhhuh. Yeah. It is that weird thing where historically performance enhancers in general were like these things that you only really engaged with if you were trying to cheat and beat competition. Whereas over the last few years with all the biohacking and human optimization stuff, it's become more of a, oh, you're like you described now you're in your forties, your testosterone's low.

We can do something about it. Whereas in the past, maybe we couldn't. We, or it was a lot more demanding to do something about it. So it's like the average person, if they 're an average guy and you're not competing in, like professionally and you want to do TRT 'cause your doctor said this is gonna make your life a lot better and everything you do is gonna feel better.

It's hard to argue against that, right? Like as long as there's not some clear downside to it, unfortunately. I think that ends up just basically putting this like gray area [00:56:00] doping protocol as a standard human approach at a certain point where now all of a sudden, like you take like the middle of the pack of any marathon or any ultra marathon, and a lot of the men there probably are technically cheating.

They're technically doping even though they're not gonna go and win the race and steal money from someone directly the way you would see if like me or Jim Walmsley or someone who's out there like breaking records and getting paid directly for it would be cheating. So I think that's probably the biggest, the biggest doping in ultra running is probably more of this kind of gray or low tier doping versus like the real sophisticated programs like you saw like with Lance Armstrong or like what you probably see at the Olympics and things with EPO and whatnot.

But even that, we know it is there because there's been people who got caught doing it. And it's if you, it's one of those things where you catch one person doing it, you probably didn't catch the only person doing it. So yeah. I could see it being this, like being the Golden Trail series stuff.

Mm-hmm. Which I don't know [00:57:00] a ton about, but that's like super competitive. Yeah. Trail running. The peptides thing is intriguing to me. Yeah. Because they look pimping. I'm not, I'm never gonna take 'em. I've never taken a PED. But I just can't, there's gotta be a downside. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to know.

Let's just imagine there isn't, then it becomes this weird question of okay, if you want to compete, you can't do this, but technically you'd be better for you. Yeah. Isn't that'd be, that's kinda a weird space to live in where like all the people around you who aren't competing are like optimizing with this low hanging fruit, but you can't touch it because technically it's illegal for your sport or your job.

Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure there is a downside. We'll get to see people openly riot it up at the enhanced games. Right? Yeah, that's true. Except now I'm seeing people who have opted into the games, but they're saying, I'm not gonna use peds. Yeah. I'm like, all right, then get the hell out of the [00:58:00] league.

I'm here to watch the people. I'm here to watch Fred Curley run a 39 second 400. Yeah. But I think in track and field and sprinting, like the steroid use is. Out of control, off the charts. Yeah. If you look at the top 60, a hundred meter dash performance and the people who have had doping mm-hmm.

Associations in their career. It's like number 61 is the first guy who's not Usain Bolt, who has a clean record. Yeah. I think it's probably a lot dirtier than people think, and people still think it's probably dirty. Yeah. But then I like to see someone like Cole Hawker or these people who are absolute stud track athletes, and I was like, well, if my fat ass was able, my fat stupid ass was able to run sub four, I bet these guys can run 3 42.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it is one of those things where you're gonna have people who are genetically and everything lines up where I don't think the whole sport's dirty, I guess is what I'm saying. I don't think, 'cause you see a lot of these heuristics [00:59:00] out there where it's oh, if you get on an Olympic podium, you've probably doping.

Because if you're not, that means you beat a bunch of like highly talented, highly dedicated people who are doping. And that's a really appealing assumption because it makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah. But I do think there are just at, just real freaks out there who are gonna be able to perform at a high level without doing it.

And the hard part is we just don't know who that is and who Yeah. Who it isn't. I think the Mile World record holder, Elgar Rouge Yeah. Was on the sauce a little bit, but I think. Technology training, all this caught up with it has caught up with it. So now I think a clean person could beat a dirty record.

Mm-hmm. That's the, well, the best argument I've heard for super shoes actually is that it gives you enough of an advantage where now if you had the same ability as someone maybe 10, 20 years ago who was probably had a much easier path to dope, now all of a sudden it's I could actually get to a point where I could exceed that time even [01:00:00] without the doping.

Yeah. But, yeah. So the question with a lot of this stuff is like, where do you draw the line? Mm-hmm. What if, what if you get trampoline shoes Right. With springs in 'em? It's what apparently 40 millimeters in one plate is where you draw the line. Yeah. And why, yeah why 40? Why not 48?

Why not 60 Uhhuh? But yeah I guess 'cause they look so freaking goofy. They, yeah, they do. Have you seen any of the Puma innovation shoes? Yeah. They're wild. Yeah. You would never, like if you would've shown that they don't even look, they look gimmicky. They don't even look like they would be good.

They look like those moon shoes that they made back in the day where they were supposed to be able to get extra. Yeah. Well it was just fun. You're a kid and it's like you're walking around on a trampoline and Yeah. It's funny I put a pair of those on at TRE and just did a little jog down the hallway area and it was weird.

It was like, you almost felt like you were just like. Floating. Yeah. Like you, the shoes are actually doing the walking for you and rolling you. Yeah. Yeah. So it'd be interesting to see efficiency data on those versus the legal options. If it's like, what is it? Could it be like a [01:01:00] 10% efficiency benefit?

I don't know. I throw some stilts on mm-hmm. Do a marathon in those, the way I describe these carbon shoes, I got the scones on to like the average person who's like, how do you run so much and stay healthy? Like sometimes I'm doing three workouts a day. I got this bro science theory that like Atlanta is all concrete that we're running on, and these shoes, it makes it feel like you're running on a trampoline.

So it just reduces the impact on the joints and bones. You run into some lower ankle issues for a lot of people, like Cooper Tier and Cole Hawker are doing a lot of their training in trainers like Pegasus and Bone Marrows. Mm-hmm. But yeah, man, it's, I was pre super shoe era too. Yeah. I was like in college freshman and sophomore year we were still doing track workouts in the flats, and then junior, senior fifth year we got the Nike next percent Okay.

Thrown into the equation. Mm-hmm. And it's not even, they do [01:02:00] make you faster in the actual run itself, but I think it is the ability to train harder and recover faster. Mm-hmm. Where the real gains are made. Yeah. Yeah. And if you can. It's like the same argument with cross training where it's alright, the limiter for me running is the impact more so than it is the cardiovascular exposure.

Like stress exposure. So if I can hop on a bike or an elliptical or something like that for an extra two hours every week and not introduce any extra impact, but tap a little bit more into that, then I can get it. And this is almost like you can do that to some degree, but actually within the mechanic and everything that you would do specifically to running.

And yeah, I think that probably makes a big difference too. Yeah. Yeah. Has, switching gears here a little bit on the coaching side of things. I agree the limiter is like the time on feet, but when people are starting running and we're thinking [01:03:00] aerobically about the week they're doing or the Yeah. The work they're doing day to day, someone who's running life is newborn, they just started running, versus someone who's been running for five years is not going to be able to recover with two hours a day of aerobic volume.

Mm-hmm. The same way someone who's been doing it for five years is mm-hmm. So it's like this interesting little puzzle of, yeah. Like physically, what can your body handle? And then internally, what can your heart. Recover from. Mm-hmm. Because I always encourage my athletes to think about their heart, like the engine of a car.

And we're stressing it at the right time for certain periods of time at certain intensities, and then we're just doing the low maintenance stuff. And then at the end of the season, we're gonna give it two weeks of rest. But yeah, there's, I guess there's two components to the frame and the aerobic side of things.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of moving parts in running right now. It's actually, it's getting a little bit more like [01:04:00] cycling with the tack is a big component where you, your shoe choice could make a meaningful enough difference both in your training as well as your your race itself, which I don't know, people feel a bunch of different ways about that.

I don't know. I, to some degree, I always find well. I do wonder, it's easy for me to wonder because most of my career was in the pre-super shoe era. My fastest hundred miler was without super shoes on. So you can always ask that question, what if I would've worn this shoe?

Would I have been x number of minutes faster? And it's it, I would like to pr don't get me wrong. And if I do pr it's gonna be in a pair of super shoes. But I also like the fact that I feel like I got very close, if not to my potential in a hundred miles without the super shoes, because.

I have this sort of running trajectory from my life that sure variables change to improve over that time, but none as drastic [01:05:00] as super shoes. So I also have this uninterrupted timeline of development that I can look at and say, okay, that's cool that I was able to inch and claw my way to that spot and not think, oh yeah, you had that jump there.

But that was because of super shoes. I guess if I do now I'd probably have to say that, but I felt like I had a good enough race that, and I mean it looks beautiful on paper too 'cause it's like a two minute negative split on a, between the first and second 50 miles that it's like really hard to like really look at it and think there's a ton of improvement to be made here with the same inputs.

Yeah. One of those days where everything just lines up perfectly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ben Thomas, the coach at Virginia Tech who coaches Cooper and Cole and some others like private contractors, independent contractors with their sponsors, he has them doing like a sub eight minute three K on a Monday in the middle of a training week on the alter G.

Yeah. And gets super creative with stuff like that. And when I see that, I'm like, that is a good coach who's [01:06:00] using critical thinking, developing his own training methods, trying new stuff versus so many people out here are just trying to. Ride someone else's like Jack Daniel's wave. Mm-hmm. And think it's like this template and this training plan that it's like this is the answer on how to do things.

But I feel like once you start to find your groove and think independently and try stuff on your own, that makes sense to you, that would work when you see a lot of the innovation and breakthroughs in the sport. Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. I think, yeah we've got enough competitive pressure in distance running, especially at the Olympic distances where it is one of those things where you, we have, there's a lot of things that everyone's gonna probably do for the most part.

And then the next jump is gonna be the creativity of the coach, of finding that next little thing that is gonna maybe give their athletes a 0.5% improvement in [01:07:00] what they end up getting on performance. And I think it's so fun to think about just people testing those stuff out and playing around with it.

And then ultimately also from the athletes side, picking the coach that's gonna actually be able to present that sort of approach to you. 'cause these athletes are just, they can only do what they can do to a certain degree and they have to be focused on just doing the workouts that are prescribed and then trusting it at the end of the day.

What new training ideas are you toying around with? Or where do you think there's some, there, there people may be onto something with that. Because you've been doing this for 30 years now. Yeah. Yeah, if we're talking about ultra marathons, I would say the biggest innovations have probably been in just order of operations with training inputs and fueling.

Fueling has been huge. Yeah, I mean you have completely won 80. You used to be low carb, but now you're down in gels on the long run. It's so it's just at this point in time, like for me, like when I started doing low carb, the big hurdle for the big kind of like [01:08:00] roadblock I saw with the top end of the sport was we have this like workload per hour capacity we want to try to hit and you have to be able to fuel it or it's just gonna run out of steam by the end of these long races.

So it was almost this thing where the faster you go, the more you're gonna require fueling. And if you are acquiring more fueling, then you get to this stop if I can't get in any more fueling or I'm gonna puke it up, or it's just not gonna process and it's not gonna get utilized. And then therefore that's my sticking point.

So it was like, it became a problem of how do I lower my fueling need at that pace so that I don't hit that cross point of I can't do anymore before I get to the pace I could actually sustain. And now I just think we're seeing whether it be the new products on the market or the strategies to be able to tolerate more or just opening our eyes outside of just oxidation rates. 'cause it's really easy just to look at it through that framework of [01:09:00] oxidation rates. If this is my carb oxidation, this is my fat oxidation, I replace the carb oxidation and I'm good. And if I can get that carb oxidation lower, then I just have to do less of it. I think what we're seeing with some of this stuff that hasn't really been thoroughly proven in research yet, but we're seeing it at some of the highly pressured events like the Tour de France and marathoning and things that go beyond these processing limits.

There is something going on within this, like the human system that is perceiving that coming in and it's improving performance. And with ultra running it was like, okay, 'cause this has been around from cycling for a lot longer, but like the big hold up I think with ultra running it was like, okay, you're running often through like very temperatures or very terrain, makes it a lot more difficult to digest.

Is it reasonable to expect someone to be able to do a hundred plus grams of carbs per hour? Early on in my running career, I don't think that should have been the expectation. I, there were guys trying it, most of them failing at it. There were [01:10:00] some that were probably doing it and you thought maybe they were just lucky they had an Iron Gut or something like that.

Joe Kleer, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. His dad was an ultra runner too, by the way. His mom was an Olympian too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's got some good genes and his wife is a sub two, 800 meter runner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and they're both brainiacs too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so I think it was just one of those things where you need proof of concept of can we see enough guys successfully hit a hundred plus grams of covers per hour out on these hundred mile runs?

And over the last three to four years, we've just seen that repeated over and over again to the degree where now if you look at the top 10 at Western States, all those guys are pretty much hitting a hundred plus grams per hour. So you're being influenced by big carbs, big carbs got me.

Yeah. Have you heard this theory that like David Roach is just promoting big carbs so that people have to order more nutrition? Yeah. It makes sense that feed sponsorship doesn't help his case with that, does it? No, it's a chicken or egg thing. Did the feed sponsorship come because he [01:11:00] did so much carbs or did he do so much carbs because of the feed?

Guess we'll never know but it is interesting to think like the driving point behind that or just the education on it too, because even the gut training part of it where it's okay, yeah, maybe you couldn't tempt 80 grams per hour in the past, but maybe that was because you just weren't really preparing your body for it the way you think of because I think of it, think of it this way where if I wanted to run a hundred miles as fast as I could, but I didn't do any long runs, I just didn't prepare my body to be able to do that.

So if I do all my training without practicing high carb intake during some of those long runs. I shouldn't expect my body to be able to do it on race day, but when I do that now, maybe I can. And I think that's what we're learning too, is people are getting better at knowing how and when to be able to do that carb training and gut training and stuff to prepare their body to be able to stomach, literally stomach that much intake.

Yeah, I get it. I get a little [01:12:00] crazy about it. Like I'm a pretty obsessive person as many runners are. Mm-hmm. And I just like trying to down as many carbs as humanly possible. Yeah. Well, and sometimes the products too, the science and sport beta fuel gels, that's 40 grams of carbohydrate and that just goes, slips right down the hatch.

Yeah, that's what I do for a marathon. I have all my athletes do it, three of those an hour or a sports drink. And I'm like, when I started ultra running and I was doing the hundred miler and I was seeking some guidance from people who have done stuff like it, it was very simple. It was 300 calories an hour, 90 grams of carbs.

How you get there doesn't matter. Mm-hmm. So I was eating cookies and pizza and yeah, soda and sugar and gummy bears. And in a way, ignorance is bliss. I did that one in 18 hours and 18 minutes and I haven't gone anywhere near that speed since. Yeah. Granted it's 110 degrees in the Florida Keys and that's the only other one.

And then, actually the other one where I tried to run sub 13 hours, I just exploded in [01:13:00] DNF that mile 92, but. Now it's no here's the blueprint. Two of these gels, one of these carbohydrate drinks mixes it down and you're good to go. That's the other thing I find interesting too, that I think also fed into the carbohydrate tolerance thing with ultra running is better hydration.

Better hydration. Which I think goes along with better cooling too, because when I look at someone's pinch point in a race, if they had a bad race 'cause they had a digestive issue, sometimes I explore hydration first because here's something else. Sometimes you'll hear a lot. I was doing, let's just say 60 grams of carbs per hour consistently, and it was working great.

It worked well in training and all of a sudden I got two thirds of the weight in this room and all of a sudden that exact same thing just stopped working. It's like, why did it work for that first 15 hours and then all of a sudden decide to stop? We look into their [01:14:00] hydration. It's well, you weren't drinking nearly enough and you weren't engaging with hardly any electrolytes in any structure.

So it's like your body's ability to tolerate that 60 grams of carbohydrate shifts. Once you start introducing mild to severe dehydration, now all of a sudden that same 60 grams feels really weird in your stomach and it wants to come back up. So a lot of it I think is okay, your fueling protocol was fine and it would work.

But it also has to come along with really good hydration along the way too. Which, when you look at some of the data with ultra marathon running too, it's like you're probably not gonna arrive at the finish line without some level of dehydration because it's just the processing, the mass doesn't matter.

Yeah, it doesn't, exactly. Yeah. Although when you start getting into the math, it does get really interesting with, I think we might have talked about this a little bit on the run this morning, but Jeff Mcg Jeff Magaro he went into a lab to get his sweat rate [01:15:00] tested and he was losing like two liters per hour in 90 degrees.

So an insane, really high Yeah. He's You're not replacing that. Yeah. And he was training for Western State, so the guy he was working with was like, well, we gotta figure a way to lower that because you're just gonna fade if you go through the heat and can't keep up with that. Yeah. New IV drip.

Yeah, exactly right. He came up with this really elaborate cooling protocol where he has a shirt and a hat, and his goal is basically just to stay soggy all day, is the way he describes it. I can't do that logistically miserable. And probably feels a little miserable when you're doing it, but he was able to because his hydration intake during the day was so low that I didn't believe it when I first saw it.

And then I saw him report it again after another race and I was like, okay, well I'm gonna talk to this guy about it. And he told me it was basically just, he was able to. Create a microclimate essentially around him where when he was running through 90 degrees, his body probably perceived it as 60 to 70 degrees and therefore was losing like [01:16:00] five to 750 milliliters per hour versus 200 or two liters, 2000 milliliters, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you do western states and you do the river crossing, you do that in your shoes and put on Yeah, and run total subversion if you can. Yeah, man that's an issue for me. Like when I'm doing a hundred miler, I'm, I got three pairs of shoes just to switch 'em out because some people get torn up.

They'll train because the thing about an western states is you have the aid station right before you get into the river, and then you go up this climb that's about two miles long because it's a spot called Green Gate, and you have aid up there too. So a lot of people will put a new pair of shoes up at Green Gate, so they go through the river soaked, and then they get up to Green Gate, they change out of those and then have dry shoes on going forward.

Pros are just like, I don't have time for that. Right. Yeah. Well, and it's California too, so the other thing is it's so dry. Like you could be literally dripping wet and then 15 minutes later be bone dry. Yeah. So you got that going for you. I sweat like a pig in my [01:17:00] skin rips open when it's pruned.

Yeah. Yeah, humid. He, that's one of the hardest things to race in for me is humid weather for just I just overheat so much faster in it. Your topical cooling doesn't work nearly as well. Evaporative cooling literally isn't working very well, as you can tell. 'cause the sweat's just pooling on your body versus evaporating off.

And then the chafing, it's just miserable. Yeah. Dude, the keys 100. Yeah. You gotta do it one day. It literally feels like you're in the jungle behind a plane engine. And if I would, you're not doing a good job of selling it. Last year when I did it, if I would've put flip flops and board shorts on and just walked the thing, I would've done it faster.

But since I tried to win the fricking thing, I had to stop and rehydrate and regroup myself together. I did it in 29 hours. Yeah. I had booked a hotel for Saturday night starting Saturday morning thinking I was gonna finish the race. Middle of the night. Yeah. And then go to sleep. Ran through the night, saw [01:18:00] a second sunrise on the run.

I don't know if you've ever done that with your 12 hour, a hundred milers And then finished the race and straight to the plane. Yeah. Oh man. But it's dude, how was that plane ride? Surprisingly, the recovery was really fast. I have no clue why. But when I did the 18 hour a hundred miler, I couldn't walk for four days.

Oh. Maybe less running. So lower impact. Yeah. Less running, more walking. Who knows? Yeah. What, so when you're in the pain cave, like you're grinding it out, gritting your teeth, what is this typical thing for you that starts to be the limiting factor in speed? Is it your aerobic system? Is it your calves?

Is it your quads? Is it just a monkey jumping on your back? Yeah, I would say it's usually some form of alright, this physical element of like quads is a big one, is just getting to a point [01:19:00] where I feel like I'm working so much harder than what this pace is producing. And then that just like grind.

Then it shifts to like a mental thing where how long can you tolerate that? And when you're at your best, you can tolerate it for a lot longer. When you're not, then you can see it a lot quicker. And you're, I'm sure you're like the distance your foot gets off the ground gets lower and lower mm-hmm.

And then you're just dragging. Yeah. And it's so hard to come back from that. 'cause then you start thinking like, the mind wants to go to this. Like it can't possibly get better. Right. Like, how could I continue to do what got me here and get better? It just doesn't make sense. Right. So that's a really tough hurdle to get over.

And even knowing it, you still sometimes can concede to it. I've had plenty of races where I look back on them and I'm like. Yeah, maybe I gave up too early, or, hindsight is like really, like when you're sitting in your bed all comfortable and you're looking back on it, it's a lot easier to say that.

But I do think part of the sport is [01:20:00] . It is just like being open to the idea. And I think a lot of alternators hate this because it's like the whole ethos of ultra running is mental toughness. And then that is also something that probably claims a lot of races or like giving in mentally earlier than you would like to admit is the reason why things didn't go as well as it could have or why you dropped out.

And for me, some of it's true, but it's also something where it's probably on a spectrum in terms of how well that's gonna, how well you're gonna leverage that. So some days like, like when I've had my best races, a lot of it's just because I got to that breaking point that would normally get me to say I hit my limit for the day.

Now it's just survival mode and I'm able to punch through that Yeah. More times than I would've otherwise. And I don't know necessarily that there's anything I'm doing tremendously different other than just taking reps [01:21:00] and, eventually you get to a rep where you have that for one reason or the other, and then that's where your best races come from.

I tell my track athletes, when it gets, when it starts to hurt, you start, you're at that point in the race, you start to feel it. That's when you need to go. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I talk about that in the a hundred mile to some degree too, where I feel like at this point I've done enough of these really controlled a hundred milers where no matter what, at two thirds of the way in, I'm gonna be faced with this kind of spot where it's like I have to choose to conserve and have a good day, or I have to choose to be aggressive and hope it works out.

And if I choose to, I hope it works out and be aggressive, that's where I'm gonna get my PR at this point. But I could also blow up. Yeah. Yeah. I think in a 5K race or a cross country race, there's a decision that needs to be made during the race when people are making moves. And it's do I go with that person and cover the move or do I hang back and jog it in?

And you have about less than half a second and make [01:22:00] that decision. It is a hundred miles. Or you got a little more time, you got a little more time, you can contemplate it for a mile. Yeah. Which I think is a good and a bad thing. It's good in the sense that you can really assess what the right move is, but you may not be thinking very clearly at that point either.

So sometimes I feel like having that split second decision is you just gotta go with it and then you don't overthink it. Whereas the hard thing is about a hundred miles, it's so easy to overthink stuff because you can, yeah. The intrigue of a 200 miler, 250 miler. I was disappointed to hear you say it's not on your radar anytime soon.

Part of the intrigue to me is like a common feedback that I hear after people do it is I was on day two and I was like, how the hell am I possibly gonna finish this? Mm-hmm. Each step is excruciating pain. And then in the afternoon on day three, I was cl clicking off seven 30 miles and my body had never felt better.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And just going through that [01:23:00] roller coaster sounds like a pretty cool experience. Yeah. I would love to be 180 miles into a race, gone through hell already, and then suddenly you, God gives you your legs back. Right. King of Moab, max July documentary. Yeah. Yeah. And it's wow, this is mind blowing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that is intriguing to me to explore that experience. I would say there's like probably two things that have kept me from really just saying, all right, let's do it this year. And one is just ever since 2013 when I ran my first really controlled hundred miles and had my, at the time, my fastest hundred miles. I've had this question of just like, how fast can I run a hundred miles in a controlled setting?

And I've just not, haven't convinced myself yet that I haven't, that I've gotten. That. Yeah. I may have. And then look, I might look back at that and be like, okay, well I really spent a lot of time really confirming that in, in hindsight decades. Right, right. But I think at the end of the day I'll be more like I'll be more happy with the whole experience if I know I answered that question.

[01:24:00] Yeah. So that kind of takes a lot of opportunities off the table too. 'cause it's just such a precise thing for me right now in terms of what I have to do to get myself in that position to even have a shot at Pern which kind of makes like a 200 miler be a big distraction. But I say that, but historically too, I have benefited in the past from pivoting to something totally different for a while.

Not totally different, it's still a hundred miles, but like when I ran my fastest a hundred miler, the trending block I did before that was a San Diego a hundred more trail mountain type stuff because I just needed a break from the flat runnable stuff. Yeah. So maybe that would be the excuse like doing coca one year just to get the 200 mile experience.

It's just one to rip the bandaid off with yeah. Right. And then like reset and then come into the a hundred mile stuff with a lot more a lot more kind of refreshed mind or fresh mind for it, have you ever cracked mentally in a race just like where you surrendered to it and you're just like, I can't do this anymore?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's the worst feeling. Mm-hmm. I, ID Nfd the mile 92 of the last hundred that I did, and I'm just like. [01:25:00] I wasn't injured. That race just broke me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's hard. You can only imagine what kind of state I was in to drop at 92. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was trying to, I was trying to drop out at 30, 35 and my wife wouldn't let me.

She was like, we didn't come all the way to Ireland for you to do this shit. Get back out there. And then I'm in the fetal position and on the side of the road at three o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And I'm like, I cannot take another step. Yeah. Yeah. It is, it's, hear stories of that too, where you think you, you just assume someone has reached some physical limitation.

I remember one of the ones that stood out to me was Claire Gallagher was running Western States, and I'm trying to remember what year this was, but she was in the top three and dropped to 95. Yeah. Just a massive hamstring issue, I think, where it was like, I just can't go any further. I'm like, like I don't know if I can even walk in this type of situation.

And that's just gutting. 'cause it's oh, like you're so close. Yeah. You're [01:26:00] so close. And like in the mix too, it sounds like you're so close, but five miles is still five miles, right? Yeah. And if you've blown your hamstring out, five miles is Yeah. Take any debilitating injury you've had in the past where it's right away that first running step.

Yeah. I shouldn't be doing this. Five miles is an eternity in that situation. Yeah. And then, yeah, 20 laps around a track. Yeah. And then you compound that with 95 miles on your legs that have everything else broken down too. It's just, it becomes an immovable object, I think. Yeah. But I've had more where it was like here's the interesting thing about the track is it is so precise and so accurate and so data rich, you get you know exactly what's happening and that's good and that's bad.

It's good because if you're really going for a pr, it's good to have that information and be able to adjust quickly and be able to stay on track. It's very straightforward. Yeah. But it's also very mentally crippling. You're 15 seconds slow on a lap. Right. You're like, what the hell's going on?

Yeah. Did I, it spirals [01:27:00] so fast where I, my decision making is different on the track than it is on a trail. Like on a trail. Like I can hit a low point and just be like, alright, let's just get through this on a track. It's just like that, that, that degree from, okay, I think I'll be okay too, my day is over so quick.

And I think part of that is just, I think part of this environment, and part of it I think is too, it's you, if you're finding yourself on a form, your track running a hundred miles, you're really just there to run fast. It's real, I shouldn't say that. There's a reason, there's other reasons, but for, you wanna get off that track sooner rather than later.

Right. Well, and in my point of view, like I've had that experience, I've had every experience from amazing, like a world record performance to that was terrible. I dropped out and everything in between. So it's like I'm not really looking for new experiences to learn from along that spectrum at this point.

I'm more looking for is my goal still on the table? [01:28:00] Yeah. And I think at that point it makes it a little bit more complicated too, because it's really hard to go into a race with a goal and stay in there if that eagle falls off. Yeah. And I think there's good reasons, good and bad reasons to pull the trigger or pull the plug on that.

But it is a little bit different in my opinion. Whereas if I did, if I were doing like Western states again, or some hundred mile choice I've never done before, if I was having a bad day, I would just finish it because it's okay, I want this experience, this is a new experience even if I finish below what I was expecting.

Whereas that's just not the case on the track for me anymore. Yeah. I can only imagine how brutal 400 laps around, I guess it's like 400, 400, 2 and a half, 400, two and a half in lane one. That'd be nice. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you get some bonus miles. You do. You do. It's i, because there's all these other events going on during it.

So you typically pass the, or the faster person passes on the outside. So [01:29:00] I would say we've run estimates in different races and when I ran my fastest time, it was probably, I actually spent a decent amount of time in Lanes two and three on that one just because Track was a little full, a little more full that day.

So, it's probably not a ton different than the tangents you're gonna hit on. 'Cause I think they say for road marathons you should assume a 1% increase just from not being able to hit the most exact line. And I mean if you apply that to a hundred miles, you're looking at an extra mile at that point.

But we estimated just from the line two and three times for some of it's probably between a hundred, 102 miles is what you actually end up running. Yeah. So I feel like it would be possibly faster if you were able to, if you were able to find like a 50 mile or a hundred mile straight on a road.

That's where Tunnel Hill is. That's what I was, yeah. Tunnel and Tunnel Hill is probably really fast because of that. But if Tunnel Hill was paved, now it's even faster. Oh wow. I didn't realize it's not paved. It's crushed limestone. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. [01:30:00] So you do lose a little bit of, a little bit of that efficiency on that surface and I guess your hip, your left hip doesn't get completely screwed on the track 'cause they switch directions on you.

Yeah, I mean it's. It probably becomes less of a problem. It was actually interesting being out on the track when Charlie Lawrence broke the American record for a hundred miles there because his hip was not a hundred K or a hundred K I'm sorry. I'm waiting for him to get a hundred miler.

Yeah, he'll get there. I think he'll be fun when he does. He's resistant to it now. Yeah. I think he's just, I think, I don't know for sure, but my, my, my impression of Charlie is like when he has a goal, he really wants to get that first before he starts moving on to a different one. Yeah. So I think he's still got this appetite to see what he can do in a hundred k, which from what he said is breaking six hours, which would be pretty cool if he did.

He's also in the elite marathoning scene. Yeah. He's running in Boston in the elite field. That's true. He'll probably run like Boston's not super fast. Horse's probably run like two [01:31:00] 17 or something crazy. And once you get to a hundred mile training and you're probably going for a hundred mile world record, he is gonna look a lot different than two 16 marathon training sessions.

Yeah. Yeah. It becomes something where for someone like Charlie, it would be like the one the marathon. He's optimizing for a lactate threshold, then a hundred miles. He's optimizing for aerobic threshold, he would probably give some a hundred miles, or I'm sorry, he did give away some marathon potential to do that.

At least in the short term. And then it just be, yeah, it just depends on what he wants to do. I think the hundred K and the 50 mile, I think is a little more conducive to doing, still doing the marathon. Yeah. Mm-hmm. For a lot of people who are trying to run fast and ultra distances, like they're limited to 90 miles a week.

Right. Maybe 70 miles a week maybe. And I probably just want to do marathon training. Yeah. Uhhuh or a bunch of weight training. Get that Killian Coth Yeah. Training set. Yeah. He said he put up an Instagram reel the other day where he was [01:32:00] talking about how he distributes his training from like faster stuff to like just low intensity volume and then strength work.

And I think he said like his strength work is four or five hours a week or something like that. So he's That's a lot. He's getting it in. Yeah. Yeah. He's big. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's like, the interesting thing to me will be as the sport continues to grow and we see more competitive pressure, enter the two hundreds and the, some of these are getting, Coco Donuts two 50, so it seems weird to say two hundreds 'cause it's like a whole nother ultra marathon on top of it.

But just what is the ideal, what are the ideal variables that make you like maybe better at the 200 than you would be at the hundred? Or is there a scenario here where like the best a hundred miler in the world and the best 200 mile in the world, they switch spots and it's just night and day different in results based on which one they do, where like the 200 miler entering the a hundred mile just is an afterthought to the a hundred miler and then the a hundred miler in the 200 is an [01:33:00] afterthought to the 200 miler because the ver the difference in variables is enough that it just is not conducive to do them both.

Yeah. I think if Killian drops down to Western States, he's gonna do a lot worse than if Jim Wamsley jumps up to Coca Donut. Yeah. But you also gotta carry that 30 pound right pack uhhuh up from Phoenix to Flagstaff. Yeah. Durability. Wesley's probably like 130 pounds. It's one of those things where I think you look at it just from a, like a, an ability standpoint, it gets really easy to draw a scenario where Jim blows all the records outta the water, but there's still the actual putting the foot on the ground part of the puzzle.

Yeah, and it's, you could also make an argument that it's like we don't know that Jim can tolerate that sort of a pounding for that long either. So it could be that he's like hours ahead of everyone and that at 180 miles he's done. Yeah. We've seen that too. I usually look at this through the lens of, [01:34:00] if we had not just one example like Jim, but we had the best hundred milers in the world.

All say, alright, we're doing Coca Donut. That would be sick. Yeah, it would be sick. It would also be like something where I bet a lot of those guys would get beat by Killian even though they would. Oh yeah. Even though he would get beat by a lot of them. I bet. If not all of 'em, at a hundred mile distance, I bet the DNF rate would be insane.

Oh yeah, it's insane. They'd go out way too fast. They, you go way too fast. A lot of injuries, a lot of people dropping out. Like it'd be interesting what percentage of that group finished. But the other thing is I think when you, there would be a scenario there though, if you got that much depth where whatever happens to be, maybe it's three just happened to translate really well to the 200 and then they do probably improve by a good margin because we just injected a ton of competitive pressure into that event.

But to me that's not like a fair argument for the guys and gals who are crushing the two hundreds right now because [01:35:00] we can apply that same logic to any ultra marathon race too. It's as if we took the top hundred marathoners in the world and dropped 'em on a track to do a hundred miles with any sort of six to 12 month prep phase.

Yeah, they don't, there'll be some that run slower than like me or kin in that environment that have much faster marathon times and way more marathon potential because whatever variables were specific to the a hundred mile didn't. Line up well for them, but there's gonna be a few at least that run like 10 flats.

Yeah. And then it's wow, look at that. That's what Exactly. Yeah. I also think the 200, 2 50 and now 300 mile distances, if you are looking to get into the sport and be as competitive as you can and fast track your progress as fast as possible, you could do a 250 miler two years into running at all.

Mm-hmm. But the shorter [01:36:00] you are, I think the more time you need to develop, build a resume that fitness Oh, to go fast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanna run a fast a hundred miler, you ain't gonna do it six months into training. You gotta have a fast marathon, a fast half marathon, probably relatively, but if you're doing two 50, you gotta be a tough M effort.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's probably a bigger, the window's probably wider, it's also less competitive. Two 50. Mm-hmm. 200 milers might get upset at me for that. I think it's harder, but less competitive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it goes, I think that you could, you can ease, I think you can probably prove that just from the standpoint of availability and then just raw numbers of people who do them.

That, yeah. And when you look at all turning specifically, a hundred mile distance has just gotten so much attention over the last decade. We do see the, we do see just a lot more competitive pressure pushed into that event. So yeah, there is [01:37:00] that. Mike McKnight's. Mike McKnight's the perfect example of what I was just talking about, yeah.

Mm-hmm. He's not a naturally gifted athlete. He would agree with me there. He is just tough, he's a tough dude. Yeah. And he can just grind out the triple crown. And he's got some big goals this year. I don't know if you've seen him. Yeah. He went from like, all right, I might need back surgery to, alright, I'm doing every 200 miler I can get my hands on.

He got every record and went to High Rock's World Championships. I love the guy, but he reminds me of myself a little bit. It's oh, I'm the worst runner in the world. This is so hard that I'm gonna set the world record. Yeah. Yeah. No, it'll be fun. I'm excited for Coca Donut this year. I think that's gonna be fun, I love Coca Donut week.

Yeah. I go to sleep and I wake up and I get updated on where everyone's at. Yeah. And now that I'm so entrenched in this world, I always know a few people that are in it. Mm-hmm. So that's fun too. You wanna see where they're at. Yeah. Like Cam Haines. Yeah. For me, it's the storyline, like the sports. I love our track and field, the UFC and triathlon, and it's because I'm [01:38:00] invested in these people's lives.

Yeah. So I would rather watch Cam Haines tackle Coca Donut because I've been so involved in the buildup and following him. Whereas if you put me in a NFL stadium at the Super Bowl. I couldn't care. I could care less. I couldn't care less. Yeah. I couldn't care less about what's going on. I don't know any of those people.

I can't even see their faces. Basketball I think is a little cooler, but yeah, I love the story. It's the story and that's what's made that, that's where we get where, because I think we see this conversation happening in ultra running where it's like, it seems I think to a lot of people who follow the sport closely, that these 200 plus milers are producing like these celebrities at a disproportionate rate.

And if you have this weird argument of man, the person who's sixth place at Western States should be getting more attention than Killian Koth. Because sixth place at Western States is what we've learned over the last 10 years is such a huge accomplishment. And it's I [01:39:00] understand that thought process, but that's it's also yeah, but like you're ignoring every variable outside of just like raw running potential.

'cause it's like, what is that to another it's impressive, right? Like we all like the idea of wow, that person's so fast. But if that's all it is, then what's the real draw? And then when you look at storytelling, these 200 miles stuff, there's so much potential for that. Because first of all, you have this broadcast that goes on for days.

So what are you gonna do other than story telling during it? Then, like you said, a lot of these individuals come in with a personal brand of sorts that people could have been following or could engage with once they see them out there at Coca Donut. You look at Killian as this example of someone who got legitimately interested in these 200 milers before anyone cared who he was, or paid him to do anything.

So it was just out of my pocket, I wanted to figure this out, failed epically and still said, I wanna solve this puzzle. I'm gonna, I'm literally gonna pay money [01:40:00] and experience discomfort and invest hours and hours every week to try to figure this out. And then he figured it out and he figured it out.

Regardless of whether in 10 years someone will be running so much faster than Killian that he would be considered certainly less impressive than we consider him today. It hardly matters because people just want to see that like that, that, that story of he figured it out and then within the ultra world, it's just such a valuable tool I think that people look at as we all have problems we're trying to solve when it comes to our racing.

Nobody actually has the key to the perfect race. Like we're all trying to fix something or improve something. So when you see someone like Killian go from not being able to finish these things to being able to win all three of 'em in the same year. It's okay, that guy's a good problem solver.

So I wanna know more about him. I wanna learn from him. I wanna work with him. And I think that's where a lot of the attention comes in. And then that's very well earned. Like he went through the rigors of earning that, [01:41:00] that, that sort of I think attention from the average altar owner. Yeah.

He documented it all too. Yeah. I can't wait for that documentary to come out. I don't think it has yet. Yeah, I don't think so. Not the one on his last year, but Yeah. Yeah. You also if you aspire to be a professional athlete or do it for a living, maybe use media to do it. You also need to know how to position yourself or sponsors.

Mm-hmm. And tell your story. And it doesn't have to look the same. You don't have to be an influencer. But if we look at Cole Hawker's, just the example that I'm using every time, 'cause everyone knows him. It's not just running fast. It's your only responsibility. You also have to know how to brand yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. And if it is just running fast, you have to be running very fast, very consistently. 'cause it's like Galen Rupp was like that, right? Like we didn't know anything about that guy. Yeah. But we all cared what he was doing. We knew he was a savage. Right. Yeah. And to a degree, if you're that good relative, relatively speaking, it almost gives you an advantage to tell less [01:42:00] because then everyone always wants more.

Usually those people end up. Eventually giving you that when they get at maybe the back end of their competitive career. But Galen doesn't seem to really be all that interested in No. Although he's done some broadcasting stuff, which has been pretty interesting. Have you seen any of that? No.

I've met Galen a couple times. He is quiet. He just likes the grind. He's not into the media side of things, but I think more nowadays it's more about how much content you're putting out there. But back when I was in high school, it was like, if you run fast, you're gonna get a lot of followers and attention.

Mm-hmm. And so that's a good way to frame it. It's just what do you do once you get that post race interview? To tell your story. Do you know this guy Marco Langon? I don't think so. He's a Villanova runner and school record holder. 1305 5K dude. Okay. Second or third in the ncaa, outdoor 5K.

He's got like a Connor McGregor flare to him. Oh, I know who I'm talking about. Yeah. He's from New Jersey. And he'll run his mouth on the post-race interview. He has got this dia doa [01:43:00] NIL deal. He's what I think running needs. Ultra running. It's an interesting take because if you come in and you're just a douche yeah, no one's gonna like you.

And it's not really it's more so everyone's running their own race and trying to better themselves and it's not really about the competition. Yeah. But I think if someone did come in and run their mouth and be like, I'm gonna, I guess Jim Wamsley did it. He is gonna go get all these records.

Yeah. That would be awesome to see. The thing is you can be confident and have some bravado as long as you don't make excuses if it doesn't work out, or you actually accomplish the goal. So like when Jim came onto the scene and was like, oh, I'm gonna break 14 hours, or run 14 hours at Western States, at the time when Tim Olson's record was pretty fresh, still relatively speaking, and it was 1447, I think it was like, that's such a big jump.

And with an event like Western States where you get all these like kind of purists around it, like you don't wanna [01:44:00] like they're not gonna ruffle the feathers. Right. Especially if you haven't if you had gone in blasted a hundred miles or somewhere else and it showed like this clear sign of oh yeah, he probably can, I think it would've been maybe a little less controversial.

But where was he coming from? Jim? Yeah. I mean I know he ran at Air Force Yeah. And had Achilles injuries. Mm-hmm. His whole college career. But did he graduate college and then just say, okay, I'm gonna go get all these records. Yeah. So I mean he, he had the Air Force stuff, then he got out of that and I think he was just trying to figure out what he wanted to do and he started hiking.

Okay. And then he started realizing like, oh, I can cover this ground a lot faster if I run through it. So he started trail running and then he started dipping his toe into the trail running world. And that led to his, like his, what really blew him. He won JFK one year, but he won it in a year where it wasn't super competitive and it was like nothing close to a wooly performance that we see today.

And then he started from there figuring it out, like what is his body capable of handling? Where does he need to train to be able to do the [01:45:00] most without getting hurt? And once he solved that puzzle and was able to put in some of those huge training blocks that you maybe heard about going into some of those races is when he started, like he, he destroyed Lake Sonoma a couple of times, which was a huge race back then, where we, it was like one of the spots where if you wanted to go and say this is where I stack up, you go there.

And he didn't just stack up, he obliterated everything. Yeah. And then the Western states thing came around where it was almost like this perfect way to fail where he put up this huge goal, he is basically on pace for it all day long. And then he has that wrong turn where it was just like this tragic scenario.

But he showed us enough that day where it was like, I think he could do it. Yeah. And then in 17 came back and blew up and dnf. But then from there onward it was basically just nail it. And then he just started stacking all sorts of wind everywhere else too. Then you have Jim Walmsley.

Yeah he's, we were just talking about not being super into the media, right. But he's on, he's pretty quiet. He's on goat status, so he doesn't need [01:46:00] to, yeah. He's, whereas Truitt is the other way around. Yeah. Yeah. He's a, yeah. Yeah. Jim is definitely in a spot where everyone who follows the sport closely probably wants to hear from him more, and he gives you just enough to keep you engaged, but not, well, his results keep you engaged, but like outside of his results, he'll give you enough here and there.

Like he came on the live broadcast of Western States this year after he pulled out because of or didn't start because he was injured and he talked for like the first hour of the live broadcast and was just dropping all sorts of great information. And it was just like, I remember at the end of that I was just like, just let him cook for 14 hours.

Yeah. We got some catching up to do. There's such an appetite for his info, like what he knows and his knowledge from the sport. So I think there's, whether he wants to or not, I guess is the big question, but I think there's a lot of potential for him there if he ever wants to do more media type stuff.

Yeah, that'd be cool if there [01:47:00] were more pro ultra groups. We're getting closer to that. It's actually, we've actually had waves of it too, where Coconino Cowboys. The Coconino Cowboys. Yeah. Yeah. They were probably the biggest example of that. Now we're seeing it more kind of gravitate around teams where these teams will put on camps.

And so Hoka will have a camp somewhere and then like their top runners will all go out there and they'll train for a while. And I'm sure they're getting like, just like informed on the media side of stuff too and giving assets for that because that's, it's kinda what we were talking about before.

It's like you kinda gotta build this brand where to some degree you wonder like where do you draw the line as a sponsor to put this athlete in a position where they can still do the things they need to do to be successful on the performance side of things, but also leverage that. And I think that's maybe where there's a lot more opportunities that haven't necessarily gotten tapped into by brands.

Kind of like getting a little bit more involved with, alright, we're gonna [01:48:00] hire a videographer and have 'em like, follow you around for a little bit of time and then we're gonna put together this like YouTube series so that they're doing like very little of the legwork. Other than just going about their day for a little bit of time.

Yeah. And getting some of that content. I've thought of other issues too. 'cause you always have this like pro athlete versus influencer kind of dynamic and then you get like people who dabble in both. But it's like these two groups that are both really good at a different thing.

Where one's really good at performing and one's really good at storytelling. So how do storytelling influencers, they're often still competing and performing. They maybe don't always know what they're doing, but I feel like that's like the perfect, like those combined strengths thing. Yeah.

Where like you story tell and collaborate with this athlete and that athlete will help you with the trainings, methodology side of things. And I think there'd be some cool collabs there. Yeah. I can't tell you how many NCAA runners there are that are seeing guys [01:49:00] like Jeremy Miller and Matt Choi make a healthy living.

Right? Yeah. That's centered around running and fitness. And they're like, dude, I could smoke this guy twice on Sunday. Yeah. And like these are like 2 13, 2 14 marathoners that like no one's knocking on their door to give 'em a contract. 'cause then I'm making a US team. But what they fail to realize is that the content side of things is hard.

Mm-hmm. And speaking to a camera and articulating your thoughts and storytelling is also a skill in itself. And if you take this one dimensional marathon runner that's really fast, but doesn't know how to do that side of things. Mm-hmm. Of course a brand's not gonna give you money because people aren't going through the results sheet.

And seeing 33rd place at the Boston Marathon, two 17, Robert Smith attached with Hoka, okay, I'm gonna go buy some hoku cheese now. Yeah. Yeah. Well here's the other thing too, it's if I'm a brand and I want to get my product out there and I find an [01:50:00] influencer who I think has a good message and a good, like a good system in place.

It's so easy for me to say, here's a check, here's the product. Just plug it into what you're doing. I don't have to go any further than that. If I'm gonna do that same thing with an athlete, I probably have to spend a ton of money sending out the videographer, sending out the film crew and maybe even coaching them on how to speak.

Right. 'cause they're not gonna be as like, comfortable in that situation or guy with a gun behind the camera. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I think you're right about that though. I think the one thing where I do feel bad for the influencers is you see a lot of the memes about 'em, where it's oh, must be nice just to put up a 62nd reel of every food for a few days and then just have no job.

It's like they're not just putting up a 62nd reel every few days. Like these guys and gals are like, they are like spending probably a, at least a full-time amount of hours doing all the stuff in the background to [01:51:00] create what ends up being a 62nd reel. Yeah. And it's hard for people to appreciate that it could take 40 hours to make a 62nd reel at the caliber that some of these people are doing, and they gotta figure out how to turn those eyeballs into dollars.

Exactly. So the big mega influencers. Yeah. Brand. Here's 50 grand. Right? Right. Go make a post. But. Nowadays, like the ad sense on YouTube is not good. Instagram doesn't pay me for 10 million views in a month. Yeah. So you gotta also have a product or something to sell affiliate marketing. You're not gonna be able to make a living doing that.

Yeah. Yeah. So then it is yeah, so you get the business side of it then too, where it's like they're sitting there and they're like writing up proposals and figuring out what this is worth and doing the research on that. And then, and also coming up, I call it content or what do what you call it, the other, it was like content farm or content hunters.

Yeah. They're content hunters where it's like they don't just it's a lot harder than I think. Sometimes people think okay, pretty [01:52:00] much every day I need to have a video and, but not know ahead of time what those videos are going to be. So you have to get really good at recognizing, oh, okay, this is something that will showcase part of my life and also be good with the algorithm and get attention.

And that's difficult and stressful too, to think I gotta be good enough at this to catch these moments and then actually document them and put 'em in and then edit 'em in a way where it's conducive to the algorithm. Yeah. It's a paradox too, 'cause people are craving authenticity, but if you're scheduling and batching your content, you're technically planning it.

Right. And the best content I think is made when I like. You're fired up, you get done with the run, you have this thought, you hit a record. You're like, it's a rip. Yeah. This right here is why you need to take sodium during your run because I just did a 20 mile run and now my kidneys are bleeding. Yeah. And this shit sucks.

Whereas if you're like sitting at your desk, here are [01:53:00] three reasons why you should take sodium during your run, it's just, it doesn't hit the same weight. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. So it's one of those things where I think it is like anything, like you put enough competition into the world of whatever it is, you're gonna get a lot of work and a lot of effort because the people realize that's what's gonna get them to the top.

And I think that's the same with the influences. The ones you probably see the most often on your discovery feeds are probably the ones that have gotten to be the best at doing all those things and figuring out a way to do all those things. And took the risk to say, okay, this is what I'm gonna do for a job, and spend the time with that versus something else.

So, yeah. That's the other thing too, with the runners, they're like, must be nice to post a 62nd reel. It's okay, you try it, start it when you have no followers. Watch all your friends, send it to each other and make fun of you. And then tell me how nice it is. Well, and the other thing too is like if you're an athlete, like you almost have a leg up in that world.

Okay. Because if you say something, people are gonna, you, there's [01:54:00] already a layer of credibility there. Yeah. Where if you take an influencer who's just. An average result from a performance standpoint. They have to earn credibility through something else versus being able to say, look at this race result.

Now listen to me. And a lot of people are gonna listen to what they have to say based simply on that result. And you still have to learn how to do all that you still have to be entertaining, which is where, maybe some of the athletes struggle the most or are comfortable doing that stuff.

Because at the end of the day, like you, you, the you are like these influences, they're it's a bargain they're making where it's like I have to be willing to share things with essentially the world potentially that most people would probably rather just keep to themselves. Yeah.

And that opens a whole can of worms of like, when done authentically. I think that's pretty cool. But it is an expense. They're paying for their privacy. Then the hard part about it that I think frustrates people is you get people just making shit up essentially and orchestrating something that's not actually there.

[01:55:00] You think it's harder nowadays to make it on social media and get traction 'cause it's competitive and saturated? Yeah. I don't know if it's harder because I think the pies just get bigger and bigger. So it's probably hard. It's definitely harder to be in, say, like the top 1% of Instagram creators, but.

I think the pie is so much bigger now. Like the barrier to entry to be able to monetize is way lower than it maybe would've been in the past because there's so many people engaging with the platform now. Yeah. And it's all about attention. So you could have zero followers and you get a video with three views.

Right. You can go viral and suddenly your page has changed. Yeah. That's an interesting scenario too. 'cause if someone goes viral almost by accident, I always want to, you're not prepared, right? We were talking about this before. It's almost kinda like winning the lottery where you get this massive influx of people paying attention to you.

But if you did it [01:56:00] without any skills because you just accidentally went viral, can you actually continue to produce content that people are gonna pay attention to? Yeah. Because if not, then you just whittle away. It dies on the vine, essentially. Yeah. And then we got guys like Killian who, Killian Kuth, not Jordana, who have been doing this and shooting videos in their garage for years.

Mm-hmm. And they're stuck at 3000 followers. Right. And then win the triple crown. And overnight there, he's already got the coaching business set up. Yeah. He's already been making videos on his page so it's not just a new empty page. And so he had the stuff in there ready to go mm-hmm. For his big moment.

And it came and he had the reps, he knew he had a he figured out what at one point, what it felt what he wanted to share with the world. Yeah, when it was like 3000 people, it was probably a labor of, well it was definitely a labor of love to a large degree. The people who followed him and found him early probably were really appreciative that he was willing to put that stuff up for really no monetary gain other than to here you go, have [01:57:00] fun.

Yeah. But then like you said, once he blew up, it was like not only did he have that back catalog of stuff people could comb through, but he already had a protocol in place. He didn't have to learn about when I shoot this, when do I shoot this? He just kept doing what he was doing. Yeah. Yeah. Facts.

Have you ever had a moment where you have a bad race and you're like, man, I'm freaking coaching people to do this and I suck myself. I need to just retire and hang up the cleats? Yeah. The, for me for me it's been, there's been some events where like I really enjoy and love the idea of it, and I just haven't figured out like the 24 hours, one of those where like I've tried a few times myself to just really get a good 124 hour and I just haven't figured it out for myself yet.

But it's one of those things where well, so then to, to your point, I coach people who run the 24 hour and people still seek me out for that distance despite that. So that is an interesting dichotomy of the I like these things. Like when I'm teaching someone about it, I'm like, here are the tools to be successful [01:58:00] here.

I haven't been able to apply those tools for myself successfully yet. But also, I promise you these are the tools. Also, a bad day for you is 150 miles and that's a good day for, well, I wish it was like I, the furthest I've gone is 125. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, if you're doing a hundred and sub 12 hours and then those other 12 hours, you're only squeezing out another 25.

Well, that's been one of my problems in the past is I've tried to shoehorn a 24 hour into another event. Two doing, like preparing and racing a hundred miler and then saying, I think I got another race left in me. Maybe I'll try this 24 hours just to see what it's like. And then going in with a scenario where it's like you gotta give it its own buildup and its own attention.

And I did give the 24 hour one proper buildup in a 10, an amount of attention and oh, probably to too much of a degree. It was like the one phase in my career where I was like, alright, I'm gonna explore some 200 mile training weeks. And I think I did maybe three or four of those and [01:59:00] it just was not a good idea.

In hindsight. Yeah. Always tired, always running. Yeah. Like never recovering. I felt like by the time I got to the race, I had some little niggles that were just like there, but not really noticeable in my day to day that flared up on me during it when you went out there for a longer period of time and then it's like you start losing.

The drive to do the event because you used all that mental energy Yeah. And training to do those huge training weeks. So I think I liked it, I overextended what was necessary to have a good race and then paid for it on race day. But it is one, I think it, it's like the 200 mile stuff though, where I have a hard time saying, okay, this half of the year I'm gonna just train for a 24 hour versus doing a fast hundred mile.

Because I do think I can do it, I can still hit my max potential at the 24 hour, like later on versus I think my timeline to be able to do my fastest a hundred miles or getting really short. Yeah. I probably only have a couple more years before I really [02:00:00] realistically have to say okay, at this point I'm not running faster.

Yeah, you were probably running too fast when you're doing 200 miles a week still, three or four weeks is a lot. But when I did a 219 mile week doing 50 KA a day for a week. I felt like my legs grew, like new muscles that weren't there before and they were just completely shredded. Yeah. And that was just a seven day stint in the buildup to a hundred miler, which I think is valuable if you like taking time off work or something to get a really big five day block in.

But what were your thoughts on the 200? Yeah. For a month? I think there are a few things. One, I think. 200 miles. I have a hard time saying don't ever entertain 200 miles a week. 'cause it's just too much because it's a marathon a day. Yeah. And Sorokin has proven it to be doable. He broke his world records with blocks of 200.

Like he had an eight week stretch where he averaged over 200 miles per week. He's doing 'em fast too. Yeah. Very fast. 5K fast. Yeah. Yeah. Like his, like he's, yeah, he's doing these 50 Ks and they're like [02:01:00] averaging in the mid to low six minute pace. And it's not steady the whole way. It's like he's working down.

So at the end he's like sub six minutes for parts of that. It's an, it's one, one of the more impressive training blocks I've seen publicly posted. For me when I did it I, I can't. I should go back and look. I can't remember, I know I did at least three weeks where I hit over 200 miles, but I was doing much slower than sorokin.

'cause my goal there was, like, my thought was for that 24 hour things went really well. I could maybe average somewhere between seven and a half to eight minute mile pace. So I was doing a ton of miles, just between seven 30 and eight 30 mile pace. Which, that's proper zone one for me.

So it wasn't really that stressful from oh, I gotta go out and focus on this run. It was more just like. We're just, here's this 20 mile run in the morning. It's time. Yeah. This mental grind. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. I love Killian's. He has this new zone that he made up called zone 0.5.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're on the bike, you're just letting Gravity do its thing. I do that a ton. I do a ton of junk [02:02:00] miles, uhhuh, but I also, maybe this is just coping, but I, when I, my approach to training and racing is not my priority. My coaching's my priority, so I'm just all over the place trying to stay healthy.

Yeah. Like I'm doing in-person training, three workouts a day, two high schoolers, one guy training for a marathon. So I'm doing like two 800 meter workouts and then a marathon workout in the afternoon. And then the race, I just, maybe, again, maybe it's coke, but the race, I'm just looking for an enjoyable experience.

I like making vacations out of 'em and taking the pressure off of the result. Every time I put pressure on the result, I go out too fast and explode. But if I'm going to the Florida Keys, I'm like, okay, I am gonna go run for 24 hours in the Beautiful Keys and then get some tacos and margaritas afterwards, and we'll laugh about all the shit I had to go through then that's where.

If the result comes. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I do real, I'm just gonna keep going back to the Florida [02:03:00] Keys until I win the thing and get a bad water ticket because the application for bad water is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So is that the goal? Badwater? That's my top, that's my Everest. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Right on you. You said, I agree. It is a lot about the crew and the puzzle, and I think that's cool, but you just can't, there's no way around 135 miles through Death Valley in the middle of summer. Mm-hmm. Summiting Mount Whitney to the highest point in California, and that is badass. Yeah. And no matter how much biohacking you do, right.

That is bonkers. When you say that sentence to anyone, it's not for external validation. When you say it to yourself, you're like, yeah, I did that shit. Right. No, I get it. I think there's a reason people love that event and keep going back to it. When can yeah, it's an interesting one.

And in terms of storytelling too, you have that perfect combination of this as an event with a history, so a lot of built-in stories that you're running in the footsteps of, and then [02:04:00] Yeah. How do you tell your version of it Yeah. And come up with what, what comes out of it.

And if I got in January, I would do Arrowhead and then in July, Badwater, it's just I think arrowhead's harder, two extremes. Oh, I probably agree. Though I think this is subjective. The surface obviously sucks. Yeah. This is subjective in the sense that someone's blowing me up. Lemme make sure I'm not doing anything.

Okay. We've been recording for too long at this point. No, we're good. Okay, cool. No, we're good. But yeah I just think it's, I just, this is gonna be something where other people will feel differently based on their strengths and weaknesses or preferences, but I just think Arrowhead, like when you start getting into the world of I'm pulling a sled.

Yeah. And you're removed from any sort of support for hard, large portions of that. Whereas with bad water, you have your crew rolling along the whole time. Yeah. So I think there's less ways to really [02:05:00] engineer an ecosystem around you that can make it less logistically demanding for the runner at Arrowhead.

Whereas Badwater, just making something logistically easier doesn't necessarily make it make it. Less difficult 'cause it just means you can probably go faster, which means you can push harder. And I just feel like the heat can really mess you up more so than the cold. The cold.

You just gotta make sure you keep moving or else you'll freeze and have the right equipment. But if you do stop moving at Arrowhead in the wrong spot, you could end up in a lot of trouble. Whereas at Badwater, if you stop moving and get in trouble, your crew's gonna sweep you into an air conditioned van right away and you're gonna be fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Andy glazed. DNF Badwater. Yeah, that's right. He's got crazy cramps 35 miles. He took a video of it. His leg is like literally spazzing out. Oof. Andy doesn't take in electrolytes. Yeah, I have a That's fair. I have [02:06:00] a I don't either, unless I'm in a hot race and like sweating buckets.

If I'm doing a midday run in Atlanta and it's super hot, I don't, but I think people will get enough salt in their diet, and should get enough salt in their diet where if they're exercising for an hour a day, they should be okay. Oh yeah. An hour for sure. You can rely on reserves. I think it's, I think with Andy, 'cause he doesn't do it even during these long races, he, I mean he gets sodium through eating whole foods and stuff.

Soy sauce with his sushi, right? Yeah. So he probably does actually get a decent amount in, but it's unplanned and just spontaneous. But I suspect it's partly I bet if he got his sweat test done, he'd be like. 300 milligrams per hour. Per liter. Whereas like you get the high end is like 800 too.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that guy so much. Yeah, he's fun. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Dope. Dope, man. Well, we've spent a lot of time together. I should probably let you get to this wedding. I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be in the doghouse when I get home, so he didn't tell me it was gonna be two hours and 15 minutes long.

Geez. Hey, that's all good with me. When you do the in-person [02:07:00] ones, you gotta take advantage of the opportunity. I think so. Oh, a hundred percent. It's been a pleasure, but let's do it in Atlanta next time. Where can people find you before I let you go? Coach Smolders on Instagram and if you wanna work with me, link in my bio application, we'll get on a call and have a good time.

Easy. Awesome. Easy. Alright, dope. Human performance outliers Pod wrapped up.