Episode 504: My 100 Mile PR - Why I Will Break It
I will be taking a big swing at Desert Solstice Track Invitational on December 19th where I plan to establish a new 100 mile personal best. In this episode, I highlight why I am confident I can do it, and share some details on my approach going into my 100 mile peaking phase.
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Episode Summary:
Desert Solstice 100-Mile PR Announcement Announcement
Targeting a 100-mile PR at the Desert Solstice Track Invitational in Phoenix on December 19.
Confident that PR pace will be the conservative target (with a more aggressive target still to be set based on upcoming training).
Event will be livestreamed.
Experience & History
This will be his 9th time at Desert Solstice (first in 2013).
Prior results there include world records, American records, personal bests, and DNFs.
Very familiar with the short-loop track format and how to manage splits.
Last Year vs. This Year
Last year had a strong summer training block and tested high-carb fueling + super shoes at the Equalizer 12-hour (ran 100 miles as a B-race stress test).
Nutrition went well, but the extra 100-miler disrupted the timeline and contributed to an underperformance at Solstice.
This year: no 100-miler before Solstice; focusing solely on peaking for it.
This Year’s Training Path
Early year interrupted by a severe cedar oak pollen reaction in Austin (limited typical early-phase VO2max and lactate-threshold interval work).
Built a lot of high-quality low-intensity volume from January–June.
Planned race at the Pettit Center was canceled after developing a blood clot on the flight.
Post-recovery: re-established top-end fitness starting with sprints, then short intervals, then longer intervals.
Fitness returned faster than expected; managed ~4 weeks averaging close to 120 miles/week while still hitting quality interval sessions.
Training approach: prioritize quality sessions (pace at specific intensities), then add as much low-intensity volume as possible without compromising those sessions.
Confidence Drivers
Better experience with high-carb fueling and modern super shoes/foams.
Shoe options narrowed but not finalized (will discuss closer to the race).
Turned 40 in January; being more selective with non-training demands (podcasting backend, coaching roster) to protect recovery while still staying active online and coaching.
Inspired by post-40 performances (e.g., Sorokin’s records, recent women’s 100-mile world records by 45-year-olds).
Feeling physically strong and ready for race-specific work.
Race Strategy & Execution
Conservative goal = 100-mile PR pace.
Aggressive goal still to be determined from upcoming specific training.
On the track, every loop crosses a timing mat with splits shown on a nearby TV; will calibrate early to stay between aggressive and conservative lap splits, then race more freely later.
On strong days he often finishes faster than early splits, pulling the average toward the aggressive side.
Peak Training Plan (Next Phase)
Shift to 100-mile specific work: consolidate volume into fewer runs, longer long runs, and more time at goal 100-mile pace.
Typically likes 4–8 weeks of this phase (currently has closer to the higher end).
Will use TrainingPeaks fatigue scores (his productive zone is roughly –10 to –30) to monitor load and insert deloads when needed.
Visualization practice: treat long runs as segments of the race (e.g., imagining miles 70–100) to stay present and reduce mental energy drain on race day.
Nutrition Plan
Race-day target: 90–100 g carbs per hour.
Gut training: fuel interval sessions with small amounts of gels; fuel longer runs.
In the peak phase: fuel most efforts over ~90 minutes or at 100-mile pace, starting around 50–60 g/hr and building to 90–100 g/hr on key sessions (including longer track efforts and back-to-backs).
Episode Transcript:
All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I have a solo episode for you today, and this one is going to be to make a big announcement. That announcement is that I have a race on the calendar that I'm going to peek for and I'm going to be taking a big shot. I am going to be breaking my hundred mile PR in December at the Desert Solstice Track Invitational in Phoenix, Arizona.
So I'm very confident about where my fitness is at now and what I can do in the next couple of months to peak for the hundred mile runnable format that Solstice offers every year in December. Yeah, so much so that I am comfortable saying that I think that that'll end up being my conservative target on the day. So I usually go into events like this with an aggressive and a conservative target and then something in between there. And that's usually what I like to operate inside of when I'm checking splits and things on a short loop course.
And I think I can get to a point by December 19th where a PR pace will be the conservative end of that.
I'm gonna share why I think that, why I'm confident about this one, what I've been doing, what I plan to do, and just a little bit of background on everything so that you have some insight as to what I'm thinking. And then if you want, you can follow along on the final push between now and there and then ultimately on race day because they do live stream desert solstice. So if you want to tune in during the race and follow along when we get to that point.
That will be an option. So, first of all, I'll just share that in 2013 was the first time I did a very runnable hundred-mile course and was actually at the Desert Solstice Track Invitational. So, for those of you who've followed my career, you probably know a lot of this already. But I just say that to show that this is an event I'm very familiar with. It'll actually be my ninth time at the Desert Solstice Track Invitational.
I've done it eight times prior. Though those eight times have included a lot of different stuff with respect to what I did there, a good chunk of those were fast hundred-mile attempts. And I mean, I've had everything there. I've had everything from world records to American records to personal bests to DNFs, the whole experience. So I found myself falling way short. I found myself bettering my prior self by decent margins and things like that.
I'm very familiar with how that event is structured and what to expect on most years there. So I've got that going for me with respect to just experience and familiarity around this structure.also I've just had a very interesting year.
I actually had an interesting two years if you really want to go back. I felt like I had a really good training cycle last year, last summer, and then went into that.
fall season with some races in mind. I was also changing a few things. The two big notable ones that I'm gonna dive into a bit here as well would be my dietary approach as well as just kind of the same thing a lot of people are dealing with right now. It's just figuring out the kind of shoe game and what they want to wear for a race where they're trying to max effort. So last year I had a really good training cycle in the summer. I wanted to do desert solstice as my peak race, but I was very concerned that doing it there with
The new higher carb approach that I've been using now for a little bit over a year would be kind of risky just because I wouldn't really necessarily know what I would be able to hit and if there were some troubleshooting that I would need to do. So I decided to do a hundred miler in October, the equalizer 12 hour, where I ran a hundred miles inside of that. And that was supposed to be
B race where I was going to stress test everything. I thought that would be a very useful thing to have or maybe even a necessary thing to have to make Desert Solstice realistic.
In hindsight, the nutrition side of things went so well that I think I probably wouldn't have done it. I would have just focused on the desert solstice and trusted that the nutrition was gonna work as well as it did. I mean it's easy to say that in hindsight, but all that is to say is I think I did have a really good setup last year to at least get close to my PR in the hundred mile at solstice, but the timeline just didn't work in my favor. I think I just
Overextended a little bit with trying to include that race in hindsight and ended up failing ethically at Solstice. So we're going back this year to reconcile that, I guess. And this time I won't be doing a hundred miles between now and then. I might do some races, but there'll be shorter distance races, not hundred milers. And the reason why I'm confident outside of just that, that kind of peek into things where I had an opportunity to really stress test the nutritional approach, get a little bit of better familiarity with.
the super shoes and the foams and things like that and what shoes I could probably get away with or which ones I should focus on for for race day compared to what I've worn in the past prior to being able to use the premium foam shoes in races like hundred mile PB attempts and stuff like that is just this year itself has had its share of challenges, but when I look at it from January to today.
I've actually been able to do a lot of productive stuff in training that I think puts me in a position to speak very well. So it kind of started back in January, actually. I had a really bad reaction to the cedar oak pollen here in Austin, which is just an interesting kind of scenario where people who have reactions to the cedar oak pollen, they don't typically get those right away. They kind of develop over time. So we have spent enough time in Austin now where I guess it was my time and I got hit really bad.
It really interrupted my ability to do kind early phase of training that I would typically do for a race, where I'll do short intervals that are targeted pretty close to my velocity at VO two max. And then I'll be doing some long intervals that are targeted closer to my velocity at like lactate threshold before ultimately trying to point that fitness towards the specifics for a hundred miles. And I wasn't able to do nearly as much of that as I would normally like to.
But I still wanted to try to do a race, even if I wasn't gonna be able to have an optimal scenario going in. So I stacked quite a bit of high quality, low intensity volume between January and June. So I was supposed to do the Pettit Center in June, then it got derailed.
my flight over. I've talked about all of this in the past. If you haven't listened to my prior episodes on this, I actually developed a blood cloud on the flight over to that. So I had to cancel that race, reset, and then kind of determine what was in front of me with respect to training and racing.
So all that is to say I had a challenging first half of the year, but I was able to do a lot of low intensity volume. What I was lacking coming out of that was having some exposure to the top end of things. So my first order of operation once I got through the blood clot and was able to start training again was to reestablish that. So I spent a decent bit of time as I was getting back into running, focusing on early on, even just things like sprints.
And then ultimately the short interval side of things and then starting to put in more long interval type intensity workouts and things like that. And over the course of that, my fitness came around pretty quickly, a little bit faster than I expected it to. And I was also able to do it in the context of relatively high volume. I had about a four week stretch where I averaged close to 120 miles per week while I was putting in a lot of those interval sessions. So usually for me, if I can
manage to maintain the quality in those interval sessions and not sacrifice a lot of the volume in my training, that's a pretty good sign. So the way I usually look at that, just for people who are interested, because I think this is applicable for for other people's training too, is when I look at the quality sessions or the key sessions I'm trying to do in say like a week's time or over multiple weeks, I first break down, well, what are the quality sessions I need to do to get where I need to be?
And where do I need him to be? So what kind of pace am I able to produce at given intensities? And then from there, I fill in as much volume, like very low intensity volume, as I can get away with without compromising the quality and the progress of those intervals. So different seasons, different training cycles have produced different results with that. But when I've been at my best, I've actually been able to tolerate a fairly high amount of volume in the context of that. When things are maybe a little more shaky.
Sometimes I can still get the quality out of those sessions, but I'm not able to do it with quite as much volume for a variety of different reasons. But all that is to say that this time around, I was presented with an opportunity from my body, I guess, to be able to do that. So I'm really excited about where my just overall running efficiency is right now with respect to how fast I can run, like a short interval session, how fast I can run a long interval session, how comfortable the paces are becoming at.
lower intensity all the way up to like my aerobic threshold and ultimately being in a really good spot to be able to point that fitness at the specifics that I will need to do in order to be ready to run a fast hundred mile time. So that is a big reason as to why I am feeling pretty confident because this time around I think I have a better look at just the structure of things from the nutrition side. I've got a better look at the the shoe world with respect to
what I think is gonna best serve me for optimizing efficiency and stability for a hundred miles and the balance there. I haven't officially picked a ratio yet. I have it narrowed down to a few options that I'll probably talk about in a future episode as I get closer to pinning that down. But I've I think I think I've got some really good workable options that I'll be able to pull from and be able to trust on the day of and and know that they're gonna be a good choice for me. So then where that leaves me essentially is
what I have to do now in order to maximize stuff and why I think I can do it at a higher level than maybe I've been able to more recently. So one thing I think I have realized over the last couple of years, and part of this is that I just turned 40 in January. So I'm getting older. There are definitely things I can't get away with that I could get away with when I was in my twenties and early thirties. So one of the things I've noticed is that
I am a very curious person. I like to do a lot of things. A lot of things interest me. If I could have a couple hours every day to explore different things, I would never run out of things that would make me excited to get excited. So I'm I. I usually have to make compromises with respect to how much stuff I do if I want to peek for a race. The two main things for me really that go outside of the actual training and racing and recovering from those and then any accessory stuff that I would do to stay on top of all of that.
is recording podcasts, coaching, and just engaging online essentially in order to kind of keep what I guess we just call my personal brand in a way where my business works. So one thing I think I've noticed in the last couple of years is I just have to be a little bit more conservative about how much of that stuff that I do when I'm really trying to maximize my performance. I think there's still a balance there. I don't think I would ever be the type of person where
I could just sit down and say, all right, I'm gonna do nothing. I'm just gonna train, eat, sleep, all that stuff, and then just kinda like rinse and repeat and just go total dark mode. That seems like not the move for me. I base that partly on the personal experience. I you know, I used to be a teacher, so in the summers I would have essentially what would be a professional athlete setup where I could basically do nothing but train and
and recover and things like that. And it was just never fulfilling to me to just focus on that. I always felt like I needed other hobbies or other things to keep me interested and keep me going and things like that. So I've been fortunate to be able to put things that I really enjoy doing, like podcasting and coaching, and hopefully educating some of you all online and things like that. So that has been part of the stuff that I've done around the training and racing and built in order to make this a career that I can sustainably do and support myself with.
So what I have noticed though is I probably have to be a little bit more cautious around some of that stuff. So I've got things set up over the next few months where I'm just gonna be able to be a little bit more focused on the training side of things. So just lowering the demand side of what I have to do kind of behind the scenes. In terms of how that'll interface with people who are following me, I'm not gonna be recording less podcasts or being less present online or anything like that. Those things are stuff that
that I'll continue to do, but just offloading some of the back end stuff with respect to kind of how all that stuff gets gets done is something I'll be doing and then also just kinda managing my coaching roster in a way that it gives me a little bit more time to still be able to work at a at a at at a spot I like to as a coach, but not have to have too too many too many clients on board to be able to really be able to do the things I think I need to do to be able to feel like I'm going through the the peaking phase of this race in a way that'll get me where I need to be.
I don't know exactly why that is with respect to just changes over the years, but it's probably just due to there's just more things I need to do to recover from the training that I otherwise would have been able to bounce back from a little bit quicker when I was younger. And that just means being a little bit more attentive to that side of stuff and taking those opportunities to relax a little bit and not be thinking about other things. So that's another reason. I've just also been really inspired, I think, recently by the
fast runnable hundred milers over the last few years. I mean the one on the men's side, the obvious one is Sirokin. I mean, he broke every record from a hundred K up to twenty four hours post 40 years old. Just recently was second at world hundred K's at I think he just turned 44. So he ran like a world class 100K time, which as you get older is probably more difficult to do than running a
really fast to your potential hundred mile time just because you gotta go even faster in a race like that. So, you know, just looking at examples like that of what people have been able to do post forty has been really inspiring. More recent examples yet even have just been the women's hundred mile world record that was broken twice in the last year, forty five years olds in both cases with that one. So yeah, it's just like why not? Why not
take advantage of an opportunity that I feel is still on the table for me if I really kind of push myself and put myself in a position to be able to do it. And thankfully right now I've been feeling great physically. I feel very confident to be able to put in the big race specific type training sessions that typically help me get to a point where I feel comfortable with the target race pace and things like that. So that is another reason why I'm feeling ready and confident to get into it this year.
A couple more things just with what I plan to do and how I'll end up actually going about the race itself. So like I said in the beginning, I'm very confident with the conservative side of the goal being a PB attempt. So that kind of gives me a pace or a lap split to focus on that side of things. And the next step then will be as I go through the
hundred mile specific training sessions. So for me, what that oftentimes looks like is I start consolidating volume into fewer sessions. So that might mean I'm doing fewer total runs per week, even though I'm maintaining or maybe even slightly exceeding the amount of volume I was running prior to that. It often also means I'm pulling back a little bit on training sessions that are less specific to the hundred mile intensity or hundred mile distance. So what that also ultimately allows me to do is allows me to do
longer long runs and focus a little bit more of my training load tolerance towards the actual pacing that I'll be doing at Desert Solstice, which, you know, when it comes to being able to really fine-tune that and dial that in, it's really hard to find a better environment than a track because I mean tracks are everywhere. You can get that on them and train specifically for the venue. And then you can dial in the pacing exactly the way it's likely going to look.
There's always some sort of weather variance usually with these things with respect to where your training environment is and where the actual race venue is. I guess within the world of uncertainties on race day, weather's always a big one for everybody. I think we just actually saw this at the Chicago marathon in the lead up to that, everyone was kind of talking about how it's looking like it was gonna be a little warmer than prior years. So you may have had people making slight adjustments to their pace targets and things like that going into that race. Those are all things that I still have to consider.
doing at Solstice as we get closer to it. But historically it's been a pretty pleasant weather experience at Solstice. Last year was maybe the exception. It got up to 80 degrees, I think, last year during the heat of the day. I didn't have a day that was going to be productive for me anyway. So I don't think that would have changed had it been typical temperatures, which are usually not much higher than 70 degrees in the heat of the day. So I think I'll be in a good spot with respect to
Being able to, especially now that the weather's starting to cool off a little bit here in Austin, be able to do some training that will be close enough to what I'll experience on race day at Solstice to get a good look at where my paces are at different intensities or within a range of intensity that I like to work in from a hundred miles based on past experience. So that will be my next step will be putting in that work, actually doing those hundred mile specific training sessions.
And then coming up with where I think I can maybe put that aggressive target. So between now and then, my next problem to solve is where do I put that aggressive target to pair up with my conservative target? And the reason why I do it that way is because on these track ultras, you have a scenario where every loop you go by, you go over a timing mat. And when you go over that timing mat, you get a split. And they'll usually put like a big TV about
maybe 20 meters away from that timing mat. And then you can actually look and you see your name pop up and you see the split you hit. So when I go in with a goal time or a range of goal times that I want to try to have as my like A goal, B goal, C goal or something like that, I can also produce from that information a lap split that I would need to hit or a range of lap splits that I need to be between to be somewhere at the A to that C goal or that aggressive to conservative goal time. And
That is something that I'll be working out as to what that would end up looking like. So once I can get that aggressive goal established, then what I'll do is I'll have like that range that I'll try to operate in. And I will lean heavily on that during the race itself where it'll be something where I'll go out there early on. I'll be spot checking to see where my splits are landing and then I'll calibrate. I'll calibrate to make sure I'm landing in there.
And then there'll be points during the race where I feel better than normal and I'll probably be gravitating a little closer to the aggressive side. And there'll be points during the race where I'm maybe feeling a little less than ideal and I'll be kind of lingering maybe a little bit closer to the conservative side. And then ultimately what usually ends up determining how good of a day it is is once I get to a point in the race where I no longer have to really worry about splits anymore and I can just say, Okay, now I'm just racing and go after it with whatever I have left on
really good days, that means I might be even exceeding my aggressive goal pace at that point and making up for maybe some slow slower splits earlier on in the day and having a strong enough close where I can bring my average closer to the aggressive side of things. So that's my strategy going in.
Some other things I pay attention to along the way just to check myself with respect to how much fatigue I'm taking on is when I'm going through these training sessions. And I did this with my interval phase of training, and I'll continue to do this through my ultra specific long run development phase of training. Is I I'll collect all this data and I'll upload it onto training peaks and then
Training peaks will basically give me an indicator score of where my fitness is at comparatively to prior points in this training cycle and then sort of where my fatigue is at. So for me historically, when I look at all my data that I have on training peaks historically, my loading zone for development tends to be a fatigue score that falls between negative ten and negative thirty. And these numbers aren't as important.
like necessarily to anybody listening to this other than it's specific to my training. I think people will have a different fingerprint on this to some degree, depending on what they're doing. But for me, what I notice is when I'm sitting between that negative 10 and negative thirty on that score, that means I'm adding enough stress where I should see some improvement at whatever I'm focusing on. But I can't linger there forever. It's not something I would be able to sustain year round or even for months and months on end. So
that'll that's something I pay attention to 'cause usually once I've star started stacking week after week after week after week in that zone, I get to a point where I start kind of feeling the fatigue add up to a point where I feel like I'm working maybe a little bit harder to maintain the quality I'm looking for. And usually that usually maps up, I start drifting to the high end of that range or maybe out of that range at a higher negative number past thirty. And then usually that's a good indicator for me to maybe just take a little bit of a step back for a few days or do a Deload week or something like that before
kind of pushing on and adding another component that will be helpful on race day. So I've had training cycles in the past where I felt very confident with as little as four weeks worth of hundred mile specific work. That's definitely on the short end. I typically like about twice that much time. So that's about what I do have is twice that much time. But I think realistically in terms of getting the durability that's specific to the hundred miles on the track.
Having somewhere between four to eight weeks for me is a pretty good spot to be able to really, really dial that stuff in and get that set and do the work required. And I look at it similar to the way I look at the volume that I do during the interval phase, where I don't necessarily go out and say, All right, I'm gonna run twenty hours this week or I'm gonna run 150 miles or something like that. I usually look at it more through the lens of how I want to do this many sessions.
where I'm gonna hit my goal of a hundred mile pace. And if I can tolerate more work around that at lower intensities. So for me, basically like doing runs in the context of those that are closer to zone one or slower than the goal of a hundred mile pace, then I'll do it. And usually when I'm able to do more of that, that's where I've seen some of my higher training volume weeks in the past. And if I need a little bit more rest and pull back on that, I'm gonna probably defend the
the specific work, the the sessions that are longer and at goal hundred mile pace and also defend the ability to consolidate them a little bit more so that I feel like I can do some of those back to back long run sessions where I think you really do benefit from the durability that's required at the end to stay on pace and feel like you can do it even when your body's starting to get a little bit more fatigued. So that's my strategy going in. The other thing I'll usually work on at this point in the training cycle is
start when I do these race specific events. So when I get on the track and do a long run or even just do a long run not on a track. I usually like to start to visualize, like to think of myself to think of things as like where I would be in the race during a certain point that I want to practice. So the best example of this I think is like say I have like a 30 mile long run and I go out there on that training run and just imagine what it would be like to start that at 70 miles and just be
visualizing what it will be like to run 70 to 100. I think that sort of like psychological mental work really helps with the ability to be a little bit more intuitive on race day. And what I think that translates to is less mental loading. I find when I do a better job of really focusing on that visualization during the training sessions that are specific to the race, I'm able to kind of quiet my mind easier. And really the big thing I'm trying to avoid
on race day is thinking too far ahead. So if I find myself early on in the race constantly having to pull my mind back from I need to get to 100 miles, I need to get 100 miles, I need to get to 100 miles, that's where I tend to burn a lot more mental energy than I typically feel comfortable with. And I think I pay for that a lot of times at the end if that happens to be the case. So the better position I can put myself into just sort of being in the moment
And being able to do the things I need to do in the moment so that I'm on pace. So that when I eventually do arrive to a point where I get to a spot where I'm like, okay, I can wrap my head around what's left. I can just zone in and hit that section the same way I would any of the long runs that I'm gonna do between now and then. So that's the other thing that I'll be playing around with a little bit. on top of that, just some stuff that I will be practicing that I sort of mentioned before, but specifically I'll be getting
really heavy into the race specific nutrition side of things. So the way I've been managing the high carb race strategy is I really like 90 to 100 grams per hour. That's gonna be my target for race day. So in order to do that, I need to be practicing. That's not something I can just go in cold turkey, not fueling any of my workouts with. So what I have found is enough to train my gut to be able to tolerate that and feel comfortable on race day is I'll do
During my entire training cycle, I'll do some fueling during my interval sessions. I don't know how necessary that is. On paper, you can make an argument that if you're doing an interval session and you're well fueled going into it, you probably don't need to do any fueling. What I have found my own personal experience doing high carb is if I'm doing an interval session, I don't really need a lot of carbohydrate in it, th in terms of trying to hit a specific
total of grams per hour or anything like that. But having a gel that I can just have like little small pulls from just periodically through that interval session does make me feel like I'm a little bit sharper. So I usually do some intra workout feeling fueling during those sessions. And sometimes I'll just do a little bit more than I think I even need just to kind of challenge my gut a little bit in a session that's not race specific, but it's just an opportunity that I think is useful to do during and gives me one more practice opportunity.
And then I'll usually fuel my long run. So my long runs before the ultra-marathon peaking side of things tend to be more traditional where they're about between two to three hours. Beyond that, I usually consider it an ultra-specific long run where I'm no longer working on just the fundamentals of becoming a better runner and I'm working on the specifics that I'm gonna be doing on race day, even though they may come at a trade-off to what would be considered a really well-formulated running specific training plan. And
So I'm getting some of that race practice fueling earlier on in the training cycle too, during the interval sessions and during my long runs. Where that changes is now that I'll be doing a lot more race specific stuff, I'll start fueling almost everything that goes beyond like an easy pace at 90 minutes. So anything that's past 90 minutes, anything that's at a hundred mile pace is going to be fueled. And I'm gonna start out a little bit lower than the target. I'll probably start out somewhere closer to like say 50, 60 grams per hour.
And then I'll start to titrate that up to where when I do my real key sessions, where maybe I'm doing three to four hours on the track or something like that on back to back days, those ones are gonna be ones where I'll start doing much closer to the ninety to a hundred grams per hour and get a few reps at least in with that very specific fuel strategy there. So that has proven at least at this point in time to be effective enough for me to be able to trust being able to hit that ninety to a hundred grams pretty consistently throughout the day. So
That's the plan with that. That's the strategy of getting into it. I mentioned that partly just 'cause it's popular topic right now and I think sometimes people get confused with respect to like how and when people are oftentimes fueling and it's just one of those things where I don't know that there's necessarily a huge need from a gut training standpoint to go and fuel a sixty minute easy run. Maybe if you had a s your gut has struggled historically and you're really looking for every opportunity to practice that. But I don't see a huge need to be doing that as constantly during the majority of training and then really
Once I start getting into this phase of training, that's where I think it becomes the most important. That's when I'm trying to expose my body to the things I'm actually gonna be doing at the most exact, including the fueling inside of things like that. So I think that's all I got for this episode. I'll maybe do another one midway through and just check in, share with you how everything's going. I'll I'll almost certainly do one before the race just to highlight how everything's going, tie a knot maybe on just the the actual like i pace strategy from a
aggressive side to the conservative side and put all that out there and then ultimately I'll do one post race too to share how things went. Good, bad, perfect, whatever it happens to be. So I'm really excited for this build. I'm looking forward to it. I always think with these hundred mile specific training blocks going into the race, that's the part of the training that I love the most. That's what drew me to ultra running in the first place. So when I can come into those feelings like I got all the tools available to me. It's something I really look forward to. So
Let me know if you have any questions about anything I talked about or just in general, happy to share with you any details that I can and keep you updated along the way. Otherwise, you can always find anything that I'm up to on my website at ZachBitter.com or I'll be tracking a lot of the kind of day-to-day stuff and highlighting some of the things I'm doing in training on Instagram at ZachBitter.