Episode 376: Jeremy Miller - Rise Of The Hybrid Athlete

Jeremy Miller is a hybrid athlete, co-owner of Switchback, and host of the Jeremy Miller Podcast. He joined the show to chat about how he began incorporating running into his fitness goals, and what led him to dipping his toe into the ultra world. Jeremy is aiming to parlay his build up and race at the Chicago Marathon into his first flat 100km at the Brazos Bend 100km this December.

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Check Out My Endurance Series:

Episode 337: The Long Run Considering the Variables 

Episode 344: Endurance Training Simplified

Episode 346: Short Intervals Simplified   

Episode 348: Long Intervals Simplified   

Episode 352: Proper Aid Station Navigation

Episode 356: Easy Run - Simplified 

Episode 363: Mental Training For Endurance

Episode 366: Race Course Specific Training 

Episode 369: Speed Work Distribution & Double Threshold Sessions

Episode Transcript

Uh, the backyard stuff. Yeah. The backyard stuff's crazy. Yeah, they have one of the. The bigger ones. The big's backyard. That's this week, right? Yeah, they're doing it right now. They started on Saturday, and last I checked, which was like maybe an hour ago. I think they were on, like 56 yard or something like that. And they had one, one report. I can't remember the lady's name. They're like, she passed out crossing the finish line of the yard and they're carrying her back to her tent. So I'm guessing she's not going back out for the next year. Oh my gosh. And these ultra runners, you never know though. I mean, it would be surprising if she got back after it because each yard is like 4.117 or whatever it is in that particular event. The way they do it is they start or during the during the day you're on a trail and then you switch to a road at night. So they do have a little bit of variance in that one. I didn't know that. Most of them. I think it's the same loop, just because they probably don't have a whole lot of options outside of that. But that's surprising for that one, especially because that's like the original one, right? Is it last? Is he the guy that he seems like the more torture the better? Yeah, he's got a weird kind of way of it where he adds a bunch of little like kind of characteristics where you can see the masochism in there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, to come up with some of these races like the what is the main one that he also puts on. Oh Barkley's. Barkley's. Yeah. That one. Who even comes up with that stuff. It's crazy. Yeah I had a John Kelly on the podcast not too long ago and he's won it. He he won it and he's finished twice now. So it was a weird year where three people finished. So he was second this year despite finishing. And it was fun, fun to hear him talk about that where it's just like it is always like a little bit of a calculation because he wants it to be doable. He doesn't like it to be something where like, everyone is like, there's no way I was going to finish. So there has to be a sliver of chance, but it can only be a sliver. I mean, three people out of, you know, how many people did it this year? That's a good question. I don't know how many are in there. It's not a ton. It's less than 100, I believe. But yeah. And I remember that I guess the weather was really good this year. So I asked John about that. I was like, well, what is he going to do then? Because he doesn't want to, because normally you would think, okay, three people finished. He's going to make it like they're in trouble next year, I guess. But he's like, well, maybe not because he doesn't want to do that and then have bad weather come through, which isn't uncommon, and then have it be a situation like no one can finish a lap. Right. So here you are, not a yard. Yeah, it's a lap there. Have you seen the Gary Robbins documentary? That's pretty wild. It's so good. Could you imagine. Oh my gosh. It was like six seconds. He missed it. Yeah Spoilers. Yeah. And I believe with his situation he was. He actually got off course two or something like that. Yeah. And he knew at the time I'm not going to be able to fix this mistake. So I might as well just carry on, because you would have got timed out if he had gone back to try to fix the mistake. But I was like, that's what I was most interested in talking to John about was just like, you have this. Like, if you finish, it's going to be barely under 60 hours. So you're looking at that relative sleep deprivation and everything in a scenario where you already really can't make a whole lot of mistakes, right? So like when you're when you're out there for 50 hours and it's just like you're one mistake away from this whole thing unraveling on you, just like the psychological damage you could do to a person if they're, like really invested in that event, the sleep deprivation of those, it's got to be one of the hardest things to overcome. Like one of my friends, Pierce, just completed the Triple Crown of 200. I saw that, and I, I haven't talked to him since Moab, but I think he slept maybe like 4 to 6 hours across 90 hours it took to finish. It's like that. It's from what I know from him. Sleep deprivation is the hardest part. I would think so. I know, and it's different from one person to the next. I think I remember one of the first times I really started looking at that side of the sport was there's an event in Phoenix called Across the Years where they start three days at the end of one year, and then the next three days into the next year for their six day event. So across the years, yeah. And they had a year where it was like a little more, a little more of a production because the Giannis cross had come in. And at the time he had basically all the time event world records. And he was older at that point. I think he was almost 60 years old. So he had transitioned all the way just to like six days because that's what he could be competitive with. Yet at that point. And he was kind of going back and forth between Joe Figgis, this guy from the US. And Joe actually slept a lot more than Janice did. And Janice had, like, such a strict plan that he had his crew detailed to the point where he U1 had eight hours during the six days that he could sleep and was all like, exact. And he's like, don't let me deviate from the plan at all. And at one point I was following the live stream. It was like day five. And there, like Janice is weaving in and out of the loop and he's running into fences. So no dude who ended up winning Joe. He just ended up winning. It was. Yeah, it was him. Yeah. So I think it you know, I was looking at there's actually some reasonably good research on this compared to what you would think for something like this. And it's on cycling stuff because they've had a lot more like long stage cycling stuff. And they did one year. I can't remember what the event was, but they had a team that used it as a strategy. They started sleeping a little earlier than most people would expect, and they ended up doing much better at the end to the degree that they were probably moving fast enough to justify whatever time they spent sleeping. And my only question with that was like, if you're on a bike, obviously you have to be a little more attuned to what's going on because you can't really be falling off the bike the way you can just stumble around when you're running. No, I believe it. 1s I can't speak from experience cause I haven't done anything longer than a 50 miler, but from being with Pierce for like the Tahoe 200 that he did, I paced him there and. 1s That race, he was way more strict on like, okay, I'm only going to sleep for 90 minutes at a time. I'm going to sleep. Not at all. The first night I'm only going to sleep the second night. And then he didn't have a great race. He finished it, but it was a struggle for sure. And then the second race was harder, but he went way more based on feeling like, if I feel like I need to take a nap, I'm just going to lay in the dirt, take a nap. I need to sleep whenever, even as long as I want to. And he had a much better race because of that. And then in my own experience too, it seems like when I don't have a super strict plan to adhere to and I just kind of go off a feel throughout the race and be a little bit more adaptable. That's where I have better races. It seems like that's kind of the key with some of these longer things. Yeah, yeah. I think when you start trying, the way I look at ultras in general is you want to have a plan and a structure there so that you're not just throwing caution to the wind. But you should go in knowing that, like, there's going to be some deviation and there's going to be some sliding of things. So I think sleep fits into that where Mike McKnight talks about this, where when he got into the longer stuff he would say, okay, I'm going to try to plan a sleep at. You mean some of it's like you have these big aid stations with sleeping cots. It's like, well, yeah, that's where you want to sleep. Yeah. And but if you get there and you can't fall asleep, you just waste your time lying around versus you're out there barely functioning, and you could lay down and sleep on the dirt. That's the spot. You gotta do it, I guess. So, yeah. Having some sort of plan, but being adaptable and knowing you might need to deviate. Yeah. If certain things come up. Yeah, yeah it's interesting, but non sleeping. Related events two 4410 was it. 1s 244 1111 awesome. Yeah. So we're talking about the Chicago Marathon, which we just got back from not too long ago with a goal of running a sub 245 which you clearly got. Yeah it was tough. It hurt a little bit. But I mean the weather for me, I feel like the weather is the number one factor on race day. Like I trained as intentionally as I can for nutrition. So I try to eliminate any kind of error for nutrition. I try to train for the course as much as I can in terms of elevation gain or turns and things like that. But the weather is like the one thing, in my opinion, that is totally out of your control that can have the largest effect. So basically one the letter, the weather lottery. I mean, the world record was set that same day too, so I think they can attest to that as well. But no, I mean, everything went perfectly to plan. I like to set goals. Beagle seagulls going into races and a goal was up to 45 and everything went according to plan. So didn't you have to think about Beagle? Really? Didn't you have to think about it? No. I was like eight minutes PR from what I ran in Boston earlier this year. Boston's obviously a little bit harder course, more hilly for sure. But yeah, I mean I was happy with it overall, eight minute PR. I mean, if it was a ten second PR, I would have been happy. But even just getting that, that goal time was good too. And even I mean, for me at this point, the goal times are kind of arbitrary, but being able to set a goal and go out and execute on it is a good feeling. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. You put a lot of work into it. So in structuring the training around it, you kind of have that in the back of your mind the whole time. Is that like a sub 245 number? Did you do it pacing pretty even the whole way? Were you just kind of hit in your split or did you have a little bit of strategy there? Yeah, I always try to do a negative split just because from my very first marathon I did early 2022 was a very it was a wreck of a marathon. I still ran three hours flat. So it was like in terms of marathons, for first marathons it was good. But yeah, positive splits like the whole time went out at like 620 pace should have been at like 650 or 7 minutes and just slowly digressed throughout the race. Yeah. So I learned my lesson there, just bonked really hard at mile 20 and was like, I'm never doing that again. And so every race I've done since then of Negative Split and I finished feeling a lot stronger, just the race as a whole feels a lot better because you're not fighting the whole way. You're kind of just comfortable more or less for the majority of it, and it doesn't really get hard till maybe mile 20 or so. 1s But yeah, I mean, as far as the splits, I mean, I think the goal pace is about 615 per mile. I want to say the first five K ten k, I was like 620 or so. So even a little bit slower than the goal marathon pace. And then from there slowly got into a rhythm and kind of locked in around that, that 615 and I think my last mile was like A608 or something like that. So negative splits. My front half was a 122 something, and then the back half was a 121. So nice. Like I'm a huge believer of negative splits for marathons, at least not sure how that played out in ultra, but I think they probably have a big application in ultra. In fact. I mean, this is a bit of an interesting topic for me. I think that's the biggest point of improvement that even the top end of the field will likely see from outside, like just the increase in talent we'll see over the next however many years. With the current kind of talent, we have the biggest leap forward. I think like times would be better, better pacing because it's weird. It's like, I mean, you had the experience with a marathon where it's almost that perfect distance, where it's just long enough and just fast enough at the same time, where if you make a mistake like you did, like you really get clapped by that thing and there's not enough time to make it up, right? Yeah. It's not the time to make it. It's just this miserable kind of weird moderate intensity to be discomfort in. Yeah, or uncomfortable in. Whereas with ultramarathons, I feel like it's just the, the, the length of the race and the duration. It just feeds into this, this mindset of like, it's going to kind of suck at the end no matter what. It's hard to wrap your mind around feeling good, like, you know, like a day into a race or something like that. So I think people intuitively just think, well, I should be banking time early. And then since it's lower intensity, it's easier to accidentally bank time early. And I just think that ends up kind of burning. I think it burns mental energy. And I think what ends up happening is the way I think people can relate to this is like, you know, how early in a race, if you go through like an aid station, you have like this sense of urgency and you're just like, all right, I gotta get through. I got to be efficient. You do what you have to do, but you are quick and you're not wasting any time. But then at the end, if you're fading, you're just like you're looking for reasons to slow down and stop. You're like, oh, well, maybe I'll just go over and pick at that maybe. And before you know it, it's like, you know, you were saving 3 or 4 seconds here and there in the beginning and wasting 3 or 4 minutes here and there at the end. So the way I describe it is like, if you can get yourself in a position where you're actually even to negative splitting or the way I like to look is like maybe like a percentage to either side of even is probably like the operating zone. And if you can stay in there, the experience at the end of the ultra is so much better, and most people just don't ever get to that because they're always positive about splitting them. And it took me forever to get to that point where I actually had a race where I raced like that and I was like, oh, okay, I want that way. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely my experience in my first 50 at Bighorn last summer in 20. Sorry. Yeah. 2022 I went out hard. Like it's hard with that race too, because the first 18 miles are a lot of downhill. You lose a few thousand feet and so it's easy to run fast, but going way too fast. And then blew up my quads and the band was tight and everything. And so I basically walked the last like 30 K of the race just because it was just a mess of a day. Again, poor planning and poor training and all that going into it. So learn the lesson the hard way. But yeah, I'm a huge fan of negative splits at the very minimum, positive splits or sorry, even splits. Is that your plan for Javelina this weekend? Yeah, yeah. And the only caveat I'll say is. That approach is. I mean, you do have courses that it's not super clear as to what your pace is based on Africa. You'd have a course where the first half is significantly more difficult or easier than the second half, in which case it's like, how do you know? Right? But I mean, there's probably you could probably at least ballpark whether somebody is like running strong or not at the end and kind of play it out. But yet Javelina, you know, what I actually did is so I raced it in 16 and 17, and I was just looking at my splits from that. And I had, like most people consider good races there. I mean, I won it in 16 seconds and 17 and 16. I set the course record at the time, but when I looked at my splits, I was like, I left a ton of time on the table there by just going too fast in the beginning. And there's a little bit of, I think if you even split Javelina, you probably will be slower on like loops three and four just because of the heat. If it's even reasonably warm that day, you just have a situation where you start in 60 degrees, dry, perfect, and then you get to the middle of the day. Like in 2016, I actually had course record temps that hit like 102 degrees. Oh my god. And then most years though, it's maybe more like 90. And if you get a really lucky year, which we might have this year, actually it's going to be the low 80s. So it gets warm enough where I think like you're probably just logistically you're going to do a little more to make sure you're staying on top of that, and you might just be moving a little slower in general because of it, but I think it still should be pretty tight. So I had some splits at the end where I was looking at it and I'm like, yeah, I should have gone 15 seconds slower across the board here. And that probably would have saved me a minute, two minutes per mile in certain spots at the end. And hopefully that'll be enough to make it a little bit more, a little faster anyway. So yeah, I feel like. 1s The negative splits work obviously very well in like the shorter distances like a marathon are shorter, but when you get into the ultras, like you start talking about the weather and I'm like, yeah, if it's, you know, 40 degrees in the morning and then it's 80 degrees in the afternoon, like obviously you're going to have probably some, some differences in pacing. Yeah. Just based on external factors. So yeah, I haven't quite learned that yet. I haven't done a race over 12 hours quite yet, so I don't know. It's tough to say. Yeah. Yeah. And everyone's going to be a little different I think, you know, someone who is sort of shift in my mind on some of the pacing stuff is Camille Herron, because she's she's just ran some incredible races with some really lopsided splits and then which you could argue, well, how much faster would she go? Which is kind of a scary thought when you see some of the performances that she's put up. Does she go out faster? She goes out really fast in my opinion. And then you'll have situations. Here's where I think she might have something that's like a really, really cool strategy that's going to be, I wouldn't say independent of her, because I think a lot of people could probably apply this. And with some luck, when you get into the really long stuff where she just set the world record for 48 hours not too long ago and she actually slept, oh, I don't know how much sleeping she did, but she was like non move. Her non moving time was a lot more than you expect. But when she was out there moving she was moving really quick relative to what you'd expect for something like that. So like her average pace and being like I think like somewhere in the ten, 10.5 minute mile pace. But when she was actually like, if you look at her splits on her watch, it would have been a lot faster than that. So it's like you can make an argument. I think, like mechanically speaking, she's just so well tuned to the pace she's actually moving that it behooves her to use that. And since it's such a long mental effort having those breaks and just knowing that you have those available to you might help her, like psychologically. So it'll be interesting to see what she does when she does another one. Cause I was I think that's the only. 48 hours that she completed anyway. She might have done one in the past that didn't finish, but I mean, she knocked out a park at that one, and it looked a little different than I would have expected. Is someone to do for 48 hours. So how many miles did she hit? What did she have? I think it was 270, if I'm not mistaken. Oh my. Yeah, yeah. It's insane. Ten minute pace on average for 48 hours. It's incredible. Yeah. So she's probably what runs like 6 to 7 minute miles and then sleep periodically basically. Or take I think breaks. It's not. So my thought with that sort of approach where you're going to take a hit on more non-moving time is it would be more like kind of calculated like that. It seems like she just does it intuitively. She kind of just runs until it's like the body's not really functioning well anymore. It's not that things aren't cooperating the way I want it to. So she shuts it down for a bit, eats something, puts her legs up and then gets back out there and it just starts grinding right away, too. It's not like, okay, I got to kind of get moving again. It's like going back to the racetrack. It's like, yeah. So I think that's maybe where the difference could be, because I think some people are maybe less likely to have a positive experience going from that complete stationary type position back to moving again. Whereas she may just be like, enjoy that or prefer that a little bit more than that. Yeah, it's hard to even sit down for a couple of minutes and try to get back up. Everything's tight and muscles are all locked up and she's a little bit older, isn't she? Yeah, I think Camille just turned 4241. She's 41 or 42. So yeah, she's run some fast times. She's making it look doable for sure. For the older side of the sport. It's incredible that I mean world records being set. It's like I mean. I don't know. I would never imagine 40 year olds being able to go out and do that for running. Yeah, I think there's this. There's my guess with Ultras is you'll be able to see again. I think the big bulk of talent is yet to find the sport. But you have a situation, I think, where the intensity is so low relative. What you what you what you could do that you have a bit of a balance. Just like the marathon. You do have a balance of like how much foundational work you have just from years and years of running and then the relative experience and, you know, if you're doing something as long as 48 hours, I'm not sure. As long as you're like, your body hasn't kind of broken down on you in any weird way. You probably go for a while. You know, what would be interesting would be somebody who's maybe a little later to running, but did a lot of sport in their youth. So their body kind of has a little bit more of less running related beat down. But they have just like a big fitness base from prior stuff. But that might be asking a lot. Yeah, it seems like it's kind of the balance of or it's a combination more of like time, like you said, building up a base. I mean, like Kipchoge just, you know, I guess he's now second in the world, but, you know, had the world record and he's mid 30s roughly, but also combined with like the patience that I think is required for the long distance stuff because I don't know, I feel like for me the patience aspect is one of the hardest things. It's like I'm always constantly reminding myself, and my body's more than capable of doing these things. It's just being mentally ready and mentally focused for that set amount of time. Is that something you've struggled with, like or like maybe early on trying to like. Figure out the patient side of things. Yeah, for sure. I would say in the beginning I looked at everything through the lens of I'll train a ton and I'll have confidence that I'm ready to do this. And there's a little bit of just ignorance and naive naivete and stuff like that of just like, oh, I can do this. And then you kind of get out there and figure it out. 1s What I've learned though, is like, really the patient side of it is something that you want to practice during training as much as you do the physical side of it and work on things like, you know, just like holding back in a workout versus trying to have, like this killer workout or make it. Or here's a big one, like on the long run development, when you get into, like the race specific stuff, keeping it at race specific intensity versus running a little bit faster because, I mean, you're training for 100 miles or in some cases further, your long run is probably too fast for what you're going to do on race day. So like we're working on that, like, all right, I just need to stay patient and kind of let this come to me. And then the other thing, just the mind game of the entire day, is an interesting one where I think you can practice during training a lot more than most people maybe realize. And it's just kind of like looking at the race itself. It's just a compressed version of your training where you're going to have good workouts, great workouts, you're gonna have bad workouts, and that's how the race is going to play out, too. So in those particular situations come up, don't think of them as here's my reality for the rest of the race. Think of it as where I am right now. But we're going to have some change soon and then I can kind of get back to it, and that helps. I think just chunk the race into more manageable pieces versus where you get into trouble is when you're out there for 100 miles and you're just thinking about running 100 miles the whole time, that is just too big to wrap your head around, in my opinion. So then you end up burning mental energy versus conserving it. Yeah, I definitely practiced that for Chicago. Was chunking it up. I kind of use my gels as like each little check mark because I'm not really stopping at aid stations or the water stations during a marathon, but like doing everything in like four mile chunks because I'm taking a gel every four miles, salt pill every four miles. So it's like, all right, just get from the start line to mile four, and then we'll figure out the rest later. I've heard people using segmentation like that in ultras or like just get to the next aid station or to the next checkpoint. I think that helps a lot because it's otherwise so overwhelming to think of. I got 24 miles left to run at this pace. There's no way I'm going to be able to do it, but just get to the next four mile section and then we'll figure it out from there. I think that helps a lot too, just that segmentation of things. Do you do a cold exposure or like cold plunges or anything like the mental strength kind of stuff? Yeah I do. Coal plunges. I don't feel like I've done them for the mental stuff. I just love the way you feel when you get out of them. Fair enough. Fair enough. But I could see that being something that someone could kind of just get themselves used to. I mean, like, I think actually it's an interesting topic because I think ultrarunning is one of those things where you have this situation where the physical training isn't going to be enough to really prepare your mind for what it's about to do. So, like, you can kind of compound the training day after day, and that's going to take care of like the physical aspect of it, but really like doing like a dress rehearsal where like your mind is focused for that long, you're not going to able to do that with the activity itself or you're going to be doing the race essentially. So I've always wondered about things like, just what can you do, like in terms of just structuring your life so that you have opportunities to almost kind of have that same type of stress for a long period of time and just practice like how do I kind of chunk things in this situation? How do I manage what I'm doing now versus thinking too far ahead, but still recognizing where I want to be? And I just think it's busy. I think there's a balance there, obviously, because you want to be able to execute your training and you don't want to overextend yourself. But I think if you stay really busy, it prepares you for these longer races because you're just used to a day that is very, very full and has a lot of things that need to be done. But, you know, you have to do them one step at a time. So I mean, there's probably a point where you want to relax from that so you can get ready for the race, just like a taper, maybe taper from that busy day as well as physically. So I think that's helped me the most. I find when I have a lot of structure in my life and a lot of things that I'm interested in, I want to do, but they really fill me from when I wake up to when I go to bed at night. I'm more mentally prepared for races because it doesn't feel like it's really that much stressful. That is stressful in my mind. Yeah, that makes sense because, I mean, you do a lot like business coaching everything else you do. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I found two things that I think kind of mimic that mindset late in a race where it kind of gets hard. One is the cold plunge, for sure. So maybe you're just like, you've graduated from that, that mental strength, uh, level. I guess you could say that. Um, yeah. I feel like cold plunges for me. The first, like, 90s are whatever part of your brain gets lit up. I think it's like your prefrontal cortex. Like that decision making thing, should I get out? Should I like the fight or flight? Basically, that same thing gets lit up for me in a race when it's like fight or flight. Like, do I keep fighting this and keep pushing forward, or do I just bail out and walk and DNF or whatever? So I find if I could plunge like it's as consistent as possible, it kind of works that same muscle in the brain. And then. 1s The other thing too, which is odd, is like road trips. I hate road trips. And I realized this because we drive up to Wyoming every summer, and I think it's like 18 hours of driving. We'd do the whole thing in one day and it's miserable. And that's kind of where I learned the segmentation thing is like, okay, get from here to this next like four hour chunk of the drive. And it's like, because the only time we drive up there is when I go up there to do the Bighorn 50 and it's like three days before the race and I'm like, this is exactly how I feel when I did the ultra last year. And it's just like, that's what made me realize it's just patience. It's like, you can keep going. Your car is going to be able to keep driving on this 18 hour road trip, but like, you have to be there to man it and make sure that it gets there and stays focused for those 18 hours. So it's like finding different things like that. I mean, I wouldn't, you know, encourage anybody to just go on a road trip for them for the sake of it, for the mental sake of it. But those are the only two things I've been able to find in everyday life that mimic that same feeling. Yeah, well, what you're doing there, I think, is you're identifying things. So my advice for people usually is like, take inventory of what you're doing and look for those opportunities because you'll probably find more now like if you're looking for that. And in that. Yeah. Because when you think about just how many people , let's just say someone has a typical job. And they get like a project or something like that that's due in two weeks or whatever. And, you know, they're in their mind. They're already intuitively breaking that down. They're like, okay, I know I have to have it done by then, but that means all these different steps along the way. So then once they get to the outline of that project, they're going to just take it one chunk at a time. So they're doing these things. I think what ends up happening is in life a lot of these opportunities are there, there's gaps between like the starting and stopping gaps are longer. So like in a race obviously like you might have like that checkpoint might only be like a minute, like you're going to that aid station or two minutes before you have to start back up again. So it's like, how do you kind of work on that when you have a bigger gap between that, when you might have a full lunch break or something like that or but you can still kind of, I think appreciate the process. And if you recognize that you're doing it that often, you start to kind of get what I think is a more positive shift in your mind where you think like, oh, this is something I've actually practiced a bunch of times versus something I need to learn on the fly and almost, almost trick yourself into thinking, I'm ready for this versus I'm not ready for this. And yeah, but that's all it is. Is that kind of like when your mind goes negative, how do you bring a positive and that endless battle until you get to the finish line? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the mental side of running is for sure what got me into it initially and what keeps me doing it, because I was thinking about this the other day, like running as an activity is probably one of the most boring, simple things you can do. It's just the same thing over and over and over again. But like, I feel like I don't know if I actually have ADHD or some kind of attention deficit thing, but I get so bored with things so easily that I'm always on to the next thing. But I've been running consistently, essentially every day for five years, and I'm like, how am I able to do this incredibly objectively boring thing for years? But all these other things, I just have to move on to the next thing. And I think it's the mental side of things that is so intriguing, and it keeps me coming back because it's like you, you can make infinite gains in it. Basically, it's not like you can, you know, there's no end to it basically, which I really like. Yeah. And there's a bunch of different objectives or targets you can focus on. So it's like, you know, you get guys like Andy Glaze who's got like all these different inputs that he's trying to use it for. And then there's like, you know, guys like me or trying to chase like how fast can I run 100 miles? Or one of the most interesting topics that I'm looking to dive into more on the podcast in the next few months is just like this new wave of like, hybrid runners or people coming into the sport that weren't traditional into running and just trying to kind of hear those stories about what kind of drew you to it, what keeps you here with it, because there's still like there's still a lot of, I think. 1s He thought about running where people were doing it, when they were doing it, if they were athletic at any point. I mean, we definitely have people that are running now that were like, oh, I didn't have any sports as a kid, and just kind of like, this is maybe the one that was easiest to learn. Or as an adult, it might be the easiest one to pick up, just in general. But it's like it was like a component of so many different sports. A lot of people were doing it, but they were doing it as a means to an end versus the actual activity itself, or in worst case scenarios, it was like punishment. So it got ingrained in your head, is this I'm going to avoid that at all costs. Yeah. That's how I was. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a coach is going to make me drum laps. Yep. So yeah. What got you interested in running in the first place? Oh yeah. It's kind of similar to what you just described. I played sports growing up. Baseball and hockey. Hockey is like my main sport. I think I was better at baseball, but for some reason, I just liked hockey more. And obviously there's no running in hockey. It's that you get that cardio aspect. It's like a very power based kind of sport, very gritty. It's like you go in these short bursts, like the average shift during a hockey game is like 45 seconds. So it's, you know, like 1 or 2 laps around a track essentially, as you just I guess it'd be about a lap. 1s And yeah, I loved hockey, but knew I wasn't going to be able to play it forever. And I played for two years in college at the University of Wyoming, just like club level. Loved it. And then just realized that there's other things I probably focus on and things that are going to make me better. And so when we were my girlfriend and I were doing an exchange program in Hawaii. So I lived over there for about nine months, and I had heard of David Goggins on Joe Rogan's podcast, and I thought this guy was just crazy. But I loved his approach to the mental strength side of things. And for whatever reason, I was just like, really interested in, like, exploring my mind, I guess, for lack of a better term at that point in my life. And I was like, man, I feel like running could be such a good tool to see what else I could do. Because I was done playing sports, I was in school, but I was like, I'm just going to the gym every day. Kind of like lackluster lifting weights, not really with any intention behind it. So I want more purpose behind this. And so started getting into running. I would literally go out and try and set a new mile PR every day, because I had the only baseline knowledge I had of running was I did the mile in seventh grade. Yeah, and I ran. I think it was 712. And so now fast forward to college. I'm 19, 20 years old. And I was like, okay, as long as I can beat this 712 mile every day, I think I'll be doing good. And so I would just go out for, you know, seven minutes. 658 I, I got it down to maybe like 630 or something, which is crazy because now my marathon time is faster than that marathon pace. And yeah, I did that for a while. And then I kept listening to Goggins and trying to learn more about the whole running side of things, and I would hear people talk about Hunter milers and ultras, and I'm like, how are these people running for this far? And like, not getting burnt out because all I did was I was just running as hard as I could for a mile. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, I think if I want to go farther, I have to slow down. And so I started running like eight, nine minute miles and I was like, oh, this is a lot more boring, but I can go farther. So that was the whole basically first year of running. I don't think I ever broke a double digit run for maybe the second year of running. So just really eased into it from there. And then my friend in Wyoming asked me if I wanted to run this race. It was a 12 hour endurance challenge in our hometown in Wyoming, and it started at 6:30 p.m. until 6:30 a.m. around this eight mile loop in the mountains, and you just did as many loops as you could. And we're like, we could probably do like 50 miles in 12 hours, right? Like people do 124 hours. Why not 50 and 12? So we wouldn't when it didn't train for it whatsoever. I was doing like maybe ten miles a week at the time. So very undertrained. I think I ended up doing 43 miles. So not bad for not training. No kidding. That's a month's worth of training at that time. And I was like, man, what could I do if I actually trained for this? And you'll put it in the right, intentional kind of work. And that was back in 2020. So about three years ago now. And ever since then, I've gotten kind of obsessed with just learning more about the sport, learning how to fuel properly, how to pace properly, how to structure a workout, how to structure a training plan, and all that kind of stuff. I did a few half marathons there, did a couple five K's, did my first marathon bike 18 months ago, and then did my fifth marathon just two weeks ago. So I'm just obsessed with it now. Yeah, it's really cool. I think that I mean, you mentioned David Goggins. I think between David Goggins campaigns and Nick bear, like more nontraditional runners, have come into the sport in the last few years because of those three guys. And there's probably other other ones, too, that are good examples. But it's just like I look at those guys because it's like. Running. I mean, it's like anything, right? It's like people look at him like, oh, well, that's a runner or that's, you know, and I think running as a sport has tried to like break that stigma for the longest time, where it's like, you know, you don't have to look like, you know, the guy's standing on the Olympic starting line to, to run, like, in fact, you can go out and do that at any size or at any like, ability level. Essentially, it's just this activity that you can do, and obviously you can progress to a point where maybe you end up looking like one of those guys. But to a large degree, I think it was kind of just like, like anything. We're like, you know, I guess if I looked like 1s in football, like in high school, you look around and it's like, okay, well, I'm probably not going to be great there unless maybe I'm good at punting or like cornerback or something like that. So it's like, I think you get a lot of likes just like kind of the same type of attitude about it. But then when someone looks at someone like Goggins or campaigns or Nick bear, they're like, oh, those guys don't look like they'd be runners. They'll be doing something else. But here they are running not just out jogging, but running like 240 mile races and things like that. So then people start wondering like, oh, well, maybe I could surely do the five K. And then that leads to the marathon and then, you know, they're signing up for a 200 miler. Yep. That's exactly what hooked me in was like especially somebody like Goggins, just learning more about his story, how he was like a nobody, not, you know, naturally super athletic or gifted by any means, but just like, got obsessed with and stuck with it and like, prove that through time and consistency and intentionality, you can like do 100 mile race or 240 mile race. And I think the cool thing with him or Nick or campaigns is like, none of these guys are winning these races. It's like they're not breaking records or doing anything noteworthy outside of just finishing the race. And I think that's really intriguing to me for the sport of running, because like me playing team sports, it was always about winning. Like everything had to be winning. You got to win state this year. You got to be the top leader on the team. All this stuff is much more competitive against other people. But the cool thing is running. I think that's why it probably attracts so many people to is that it's like it's you versus you going to war with your mind. That's all it is, it's never about like, can I beat this guy or can I, can I maybe for you it might be because you're you're winning the race. Isn't he going for that? But for like, an average Joe, like me, it's like. You don't have to be winning or being an elite person to actually enjoy the sport. Well, I think the interesting thing about ultrarunning is it's sort of like kind of welds those worlds together to a degree because like you said, there's the competitive side of the sport, but you can still have the biggest events in the sport, and you're lined up with the everyone's lined up together, and there's always been this kind of weird thing. And you'll experience this when you do the Wyoming Hunter mile. You signed up for October. Yeah, it's a bighorn. Bighorn. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So like you'll have this you have this experience where like, you go 100 miles and everything that you've there's this weird disconnect that you can have someone that's done a bunch of them tell you everything about it, and there's an element that won't click until you actually do it yourself, because you'll be able to pin everything they told you to actual experiences for yourself. And then there's like this little thing in your mind that, you know, when you talk to someone else who's done it, that they've experienced that too. And you both kind of know, like no one else will relate to this unless they do it too. So it's almost like this, like a club that you write about. It doesn't matter if you're the last person across the finish line or the first person across the finish line. There's that camaraderie of knowing like, oh, I know what you went through. You know what I went through? And it really doesn't matter who crossed the finish line first. Yeah, there's a real mutual respect with running. And I think at least of all the communities I've been a part of, running is the most inclusive and encouraging of everybody. And I think that's, again, one of the greatest things about it is like, you can be somebody like yourself, an elite runner, but you're still interested to hear my story of just some average guy. And it's so cool because again, there's that mutual respect of love. I tell athletes that I coach now too, it's like, even though we're not running elite times or winning these races, like you're still putting your body through the same thing. And so whether or not you're doing it in the same amount of time as this other person, like you're still doing the same thing, like relatively speaking. And so I think that's always an important thing to note too, is like I try to train and live like a professional athlete, even though I'm not a professional athlete, I'm not winning. Races are sponsored by these big companies that are paying me to go fast. It's just like that, but I don't know if that makes sense. I'm just doing the same thing. But um, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And you can because it's like, you know, the barrier to entry is pretty low for the most part. I mean, there's obviously like expenses and you can see you can spend a ton of money on running if you want to. But in terms of just getting that experience we described, you can do that pretty easily in most cases. So yeah, it's interesting. Let's talk a little bit about your training for Chicago. I'm curious about how you prepared for that. Did you have a timeline where you're like, okay, this day is the day I start preparing. I'm sort of it was basically the day I finished the BigHorn 50 miler in June, because that would be from June to October was, I guess, about four months. So as soon as I recovered from that, I started getting right into marathon training. I think it's probably a week or two after. So it was a good, I think, 14 week block, but I actually don't know if this helped or not. I mean, it worked obviously, but I had, I think three friends that I went and paced for, for ultramarathons. One of them was Pierce at Tahoe, 201 for a friend in Leadville, and then another friend at the Crazy Mountain Ultra in Montana. And so that was 3 or 4 weekends where I would miss my long training runs and substitute it with like 12 hours in the mountains, just hiking and a little bit of running, but a lot of power hiking and just spending a lot of time on my feet. And I feel like that helped a lot. Obviously, that's not part of a traditional marathon training program to spend 12 hours in the mountains on a Saturday, but. I feel like that probably helped from a muscular endurance standpoint and just I think mentally too, just shifting the perspective of like, okay, I just spent 12 hours hiking through the mountains. I can knock out two hours and 45 minutes mentally. It's so short compared to those things. Yeah, from a physical standpoint, I think that probably helps. But then I worked with a coach named Will Nation, he's based here in Austin. Do you know him? Yeah, I haven't met well, but I know who he is. I think he's crazy fast. I think he's like a 213 marathon or like an OTC guy, crazy fast, super knowledgeable. But he put together the plan. For me, it was Monday. It was always about an hour to an hour. 15 easy runs. Zone two Tuesday was typically a speed workout from like 10 to 13 miles. Generally a lot of kind of alternate every week like intervals like 1K1 mile repeats and then mixing in like three, 4 or 5 mile tempos. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday it was all easy miles, just zone two training. And then Saturday, early on in the training was a lot of just long, easy miles, like anywhere from 14 to 18 miles generally, and then sprinkled in throughout that and then as we got closer to the race it was more of like marathon pace workouts on those Saturday long runs. So I think my peak workout for the last three weeks leading into before the taper was like 22 or went 20 miles, 22 miles and then 20 miles and then a two week taper. And for me, I think those Saturday like weekend long run workouts with like 20 miles at or with marathon pace is built in. Those are for sure the biggest needle movers for me like that. That's where I really can tell the biggest difference in fitness and confidence too, I think because there's not a lot of times in training you actually get up to that 20 mile mark or further at marathon pace. So from a mental standpoint, those help a lot. And then obviously physically just getting used to turning your legs over 20 miles into a workout at marathon pace, knowing they still work at that point. And from a time perspective, you get pretty close to your actual goal time then. So it's you're really kind of it's a really good dress rehearsal. And like you said, it convinces you and, you know, I bet the. The longer days out there, crewing and pacing were probably helpful. Mostly mentally, I would imagine. I remember when I was still just doing 50 milers. I hadn't done 100 miles yet, but I'd done a few 50 milers, so I kind of got used to the routine of that, and I was starting to normalize the experience of that duration of time. And then I went on this bike trip where we were biking, I think for like 3 or 4 days, and it was like one day it was like 14 hours. And none of it was hard. It was just like we had a bunch of heavy gear and we were just barely moving. And it was just kind of like just an exercise in patience and normalizing, being out there, kind of trudging along on these bikes. So like I remember when I did that 50 miler, then I remember looking back thinking like that went by so much faster than any of the other ones did. And the big difference was that bike trip thing was like maybe like I think six weeks before. So it's still relatively fresh in my mind in terms of like how, how, how long could I stay focused on a single task? So you do normalize stuff with that. And yeah, and you were out in some crazy courses. There's probably just some muscular strength going up and down. I mean, some of those mountains are gnarly specifically. I mean, Leadville is pretty intense with Hope pass, but that crazy mountain one in Montana, I think this is the second or third year they've done it. So it's a relatively new course. But it was gnarly. There's some I mean, just like sheer faces, you're hiking up and like, oh my gosh, we got to hike up that thing. And it just requires so much patience. And that's why I'm just continuously reminded with this running stuff until I can hit, you know, my, my genetic plateau, wherever that might be. I'm just reminded that it's so much mental training that has to go into it with so much mental patience, because it's like, again, during a marathon, it's that fight or flight response. It's like every second your mind's telling you to stop, stop, stop running. You just keep fighting that. And the more you do it, the more time you spend in that discomfort, the better you can be at it. And so just learning that as long as you put in the training and you get those physical adaptations, like then it becomes such a mind game. Yeah for sure. So you're, you're thinking of adding one more race to the schedule this year. It sounds like. Yeah, I just signed up for the Brazos Bend hundred K. I had Pearce Pearce talk about his podcast. He's a terrible influence. He's doing the Hunter mile version and he's got a whole bunch of people. He's like talking 100 miles. And I want to do the Hunter Miles. But for sentimental reasons, I'm saving that for Bighorn to do my first 100 mile, 100 miler there. So just doing the 100 K at Brazos, from what I know, it's very flat, fast, super runnable. I know you won it last year, right? Yeah. So that course is interesting. So like you were talking about before, weather is probably the biggest determinant of whether that is just as fast as you're going to find or a little bit slower. So the course itself is just like it's basically town lake, like hard packed dirt, like super flat, like there's this one little spot where it's like to say it's even. 1s I mean, you only notice it because everything else is so pancake flat and it's maybe like 20m long. And it's like you can kind of see the top of you can see over it sort of. So it's really not even a hill. It just becomes like this joke essentially about like, oh, that's the steepest climb on the course. It's probably a good reprieve though, a little bit. Right? Yeah. Some variation, different muscles for a second. Yeah, yeah. And just a spot to kind of like look forward to or that stands out on the course a little bit. But yeah I think if it's, if it's like not bad weather like here's where you can run it. Issues with that course. If it rains a ton of the days leading in it can turn a lot muddier. In which case then you go from like, oh, I could wear like a pair of super shoes to I probably need something that's going to like shed the loose dirt here and then you're just moving a lot slower. It's hard to go chase PRS and stuff like that. And then the other one is just the humidity. So like last year, it was such an interesting scenario. We had a three day stretch where it was 80 degrees in humid one day, 70 degrees in humid. And when I say humid it is like almost 100%. And then there was like a storm that was going to blow through, blow it all the humidity, and it was 60 degrees and cool on one or the other three. So we're like, where is that three day rotation going to land? And it landed on the 70 and humid. So it was pretty rough humidity wise. Um, so like you might get some humid weather. 2s You could get rain and mud, but if it's not like that, it's a really fast course. So you kind of just got to be open to this will either be something where I can really chase a fast time, or it's going to be something where I just need to kind of like challenge myself on the day, because there's going to be some variables there that are going to slow things down a little bit. But generally speaking, like if you're feeling up to doing a race, I love moving from the marathon into something like 100 K or even 100 miler for that matter, because the way I like to look at, like training for an ultra marathon is everything that you would do for a marathon or for any endurance event from a speed work standpoint is still important. It's just an order of operations thing. So from you going into it we can talk about your big horn training if you want, but my guess is with that, you are probably doing a lot more low intensity volume leading into the race itself, and then you recover from that. You get into speed work fairly soon after that, because the marathon is going to be the kind of the next thing on the schedule. That's kind of how I would structure a training plan for 100 K or a hundred miles. There would be a period of where we were just working on base, and we're trying to just get you really, really fast at like everything underneath your aerobic threshold or like the point I like to measure is just below the aerobic threshold. How fast can we get you there? And then from there we're going to drop a speed work development phase on it and try to pull that whole system up a little bit. And then with that, just like a really high level of just overall fitness, then we drop the race day specific stuff on top of it. So like everything you do at race day, intensity is just going to feel relatively easier and you're going to be able to do probably more of it, higher quality amounts of it and really kind of work on that. So you're kind of like inadvertently did that whole first phase of the plan, and now you're just at this point where with the time left, you want to get as specific as you can to what you'll be doing for that 100 K. And the biggest question you probably want to ask yourself is like, what is the kind of the goal, pace or intensity for that so that you can kind of start kind of feeling out what that feels like in training? Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out. I think. I mean, this is actually a good question for you to find an aerobic threshold. Do you. I know there's testing you can do. Like in a lab, obviously, but with a heart rate. Probably be the next best thing. Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a bunch of different ways you can try to kind of calculate it. Like you can go like you can go kind of 70 to 80% of your max heart rate can kind of ballpark it all. Oftentimes if you know your lactate threshold or you can do a field test to gauge that a little easier because it's not as long of a workout, you can go maybe 20 or 30 beats per minute below. That is another way to maybe gauge it. And then, like you said, you can go to a lab and they'll tell you exactly where it is. Generally speaking, I like to try to ballpark it with the field test or percentage of your max heart rate if you have that data, and then from there stress test in the field. So really what we're looking at with that is like once you get out there, the one way to do it is start really slow and then gradually speed up and just kind of target either like breathing in your nose and out your mouth, like nasal breath. And once you get to a point where that's not really feeling like you can really sustain that, that's probably the spot where you're getting pretty close to it. The other one is like, if we were to have this conversation like we are right now while we're running, if you'd have no problem having this conversation with me, you're below your aerobic threshold, most likely versus like, got to a point where, like we're talking and when it's your turn to say something like, you just barely got out, like 5 or 6 words, then we're definitely in a moderate intensity for you and past that aerobic threshold. So I like to ballpark it with heart rate then kind of like stress test it with some of those, like those that talk test or that breathing test, and then kind of start working around that to some degree and kind of go from there. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, I know. Do you ever use the Mafia tone method? Is that accurate? Do you think you can roughly. That's another one you could add to the ballpark figure. The hard part with age adjusted heart rates is sometimes they're just like, they can be pretty wildly wrong. I mean, any of those things can be wrong as well. So what I like to think about is, like, the more of those things you have kind of like speaking to one another, the better. So like if all of those things are lining up, then chances are you're probably heading in the right direction. And then if we took you into the lab, it'd probably test. Oh yeah, we're right right there. Right. And it is a range to a degree too. So it's like a lot of it is like the real harm there is like if, if we thought for one reason or the other that your aerobic threshold was. Like a degree faster than it actually was. You're at moderate intensity at that point, which is nothing wrong with moderate intensity training. It's just an opportunity cost thing where you're going to get more volume in that lower. The way I look at it is if you look at easy, moderate, hard, there's value across an entire spectrum, but it's all opportunity costs. And you want to make sure you're taking advantage of the right opportunities at the right time. So there's a time where like, let's say you got your aerobic threshold and it may be in a really good spot right now based on your marathon training, because your marathon pace is probably between your aerobic threshold and your lactate threshold. So that's another thing. You could probably get pretty close with just using that data too. 1s But like generally speaking, like if you're if we really want to improve your aerobic threshold and we're taking opportunities to practice that off the table by doing too much moderate or high intensity stuff, it's tough because you're trading in like usually multiple days of that for 1 or 2 of those higher quality sessions versus a scenario where, yeah, if your aerobic thresholds at a point where it's like plateaued and it's like unless you add more volume, we need to we added at another like, like a stressor to like kind of move the needle on things. Then the opportunity cost to do a moderate or high intensity is really low because any input is going to sustain that for the most part, and then we can actually improve something else while maintaining that. So it's all kind of just like where's the global fitness at? And then what are the inputs we need to do right now. And then there's a specificity thing too. So like right now, regardless of where that's at, you're probably doing lower intensity stuff now anyway because that's just going to happen to be what the K intensity will be. But yeah, generally speaking, if you get great weather, I mean you could probably like it. Somewhere in the neighborhood of like 60 to 90s slower than your marathon pace I wouldn't think would be extremely aggressive. That's kind of what I was thinking. So the marathon pace was 615 and even if I go out for an easy run just by myself, it's typically like trying to stay using, you know, like tone method or falling heart rate. It's typically around like eight minutes a mile generally. So I'm doing the math. I think I could probably hold eight minutes a mile for 100 K if I, if I needed to. And my guess about that, I was like, man, that's gonna require a lot of patience. Yeah, yeah. If if the weather's nice in the course is dry, I would, I would say eight is probably a relatively conservative bet based on your marathon PR and I mean, I think I think conservative is the way to go with something like that because there's so much time to make up for it where like if you get 50 K in and you're just like, let's say you come through 50 K and you're right on eight minute pace and you're just kind of still waiting to get started, then yeah, you're in a great spot and then you can start kind of walking it down if you want to. So yeah, that's kind of the plan. Just because I've never done anything like this, I've done one marathon where it was just strictly based on feel, and I was probably a little bit too fast there. But I've never done anything longer than like a 20 mile easy aerobic run. So definitely new territory. But I'm very excited to test it out and see the other thing. I mean, you're the guy. You're the man for the job. Yeah, to help me do it. Here's what I think you should try doing. So the input that I think is, I think generally speaking, the most important aspect is quality or the most volume you can tolerate at the highest quality, at the intensity that you're focused on right now. So like, there's a ton of different ways you could distribute that volume. You could do 20 runs in a week, three a day if you wanted to, and distribute it like, you know, in a way that it was like just really like that's an extreme, obviously. Or you could distribute it where you're doing like three days running, like really, really long. The risk to that obviously is like quality is likely going to have a harder time being sustained if you're just putting it all into one group and then it's just like logistically kind of a nightmare to do it the other way, right? So usually people are going to fall somewhere in between those two like undoable extremes essentially. But that's like the way I explain. That's probably one of maintaining quality at the highest amount of volume you can tolerate, because that's going to move the needle on performance the most. And then from there, I think it's how do you actually distribute it in a way that works for your schedule? That's probably one of the biggest ones for most people is like, most people have a schedule and they have non-negotiables that you can't you can't avoid. So usually that comes in the framework of two different things. How much time does that actually add up to in terms of availability. And then where are those available times? And then we start building from there. So with most people, it's going to be some sort of situation where it's probably not an even spread over the week because they're probably going to have like a weekend where maybe they can go out and do a long run or maybe two long runs, in which case we are going to probably skew some of that volume and work on race day specific stuff there for someone like yourself. The other advantage of that too, would be let's say we decided on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, three hours each. And just target that eight minute mile pace. You could probably just head down to Town Lake. That'd be a pretty similar course profile to Brazos and just kind of sense out how that feels on that second day. Like if you're if you get to that end of that third, that third hour on the second day and you're still feeling like, all right, I mean, I could I kind of feel like I should run a little faster than this. This is feeling like, you know, then I think it's a really realistic goal. Yeah. Okay. That's good to hear. Yeah. Wonder from a volume standpoint. So like for Chicago, I think my peak was around 65 miles with probably 20% of those miles being high intensity, maybe 15% being high intensity. So I don't know, just say like 55 miles of the 65 were probably just aerobic runs. Uh, do you think maybe bump that up to like 60, 70 miles a week, like, keep that same running volume as a whole, but just more time spent aerobically? Yeah. So the way I like to look at this is it's the biggest because all these inputs are just leading to your training load. So like when you're training for the marathon, the mileage you were doing had low intensity inputs, but then you had a lot of moderate to higher intensity inputs to increase that training load. So you can do more volume if you remove some of that training load in the moderate to high intensity, which with your time frame between now and December, it's short enough where I think you should probably abstain from moderate to high intensity as much as possible. Okay. In exchange for more mileage. That makes sense. Yeah. And just get really specific. Like you don't have to, like, remove it all together. But you could do a super minimal input, like if you wanted to do something like an abbreviated short interval session, or you probably would be better off with something like a lactate threshold type thing. So like, you know, more like a long interval. But you could do that intensity with short intervals if you wanted to, just to kind of keep that leg turnover there and kind of minimal input, sustain some of that fitness to some degree. But I think like, 1s you know, the big thing is probably convincing yourself that that eight is like an achievable goal. So you go in there positive as much as anything that makes sense. 1s I don't necessarily love runs beyond three hours unless like, you're going to practice race day specific stuff. So sometimes the way I'll look at that is like, let's do like let's do a couple longer runs. It wouldn't have to be back to back days either. I think you should maybe do that once or twice, just to kind of get a feel for how you feel on that second day and get an idea of just like, oh yeah, I can. The perspective of knowing you can move a tired body is helpful, because then you know that it's mental. When you get that tired body at some point and you're like, can I do this, can I not? You're like, oh yeah, that's right. On that Sunday morning I did three hours on tired legs. I know I can do this. I just got to fuel and hydrate and stay focused. So I like to think of that as a good value add from a mental standpoint. And three hours isn't so long that we're like at a point where like the margin of diminishing returns have been met to the degree where like now you're just kind of out there, like getting low quality for the input and then taking future training off the table in a large degree the way it would if I sent you off for like a six hour solo run, in which case then you're probably taking the next day off. The day after that, it's probably going to be really low quality, if not another day off. And then by the time you get around to wanting to run again, we'll probably have missed training to the degree where even if that six hours was done at the quality we were looking for, you could have done more than that in that time frame and got better cumulative volume at that goal intensity. Yeah, I incorporated a little bit more of those back to back sessions for my 50 miler earlier this year, and that made a huge difference. Again, with confidence too, of just knowing what it's like to run another three hours the following day after you just did three hours yesterday. It's a huge confidence boost for sure, and that I'm sure from a physical standpoint, obviously it teaches your body to recover faster and not break down so quickly. So this is very helpful. Well and then practicing fueling too. Yeah. Because you might talk about that I actually listen to your podcast from Chicago I think like I mean you were you were super dialed. You clearly practiced it and it obviously worked great. I would say, like now 100 K isn't that much further or longer in the sense that I think you would have to deviate too much, but since the intensity is a little lower, you might just want to. And if you have perspective from this with the 50 miler, I would say like trust that over anything I'm about to tell you, but you might be able to do just a little less fuel and avoid potentially just feeling like you're kind of putting in a lot because like, you probably felt fine in just under three hours. But if you start, like going up. You. You might feel like you're putting a lot down the hatch, so to speak, 100%. Um, and when you're aerobic, you're primarily fat burning, correct? Yeah. So like for, for if you don't cross your Arabic threshold, which you probably won't for the race. Not in any meaningful way anyway. I mean, you could, I guess, but like you don't you won't spend a lot of time there, but you're looking at like at worst, probably like a 5050 split from fats and carbohydrates. And that would be like someone on a moderate to moderate high carbohydrate diet. Um, so when you think about that, like the inputs you're going to need at that point with like, you know, good glycogen stores heading into it isn't going to probably be as much as it would need to be if you were running at an intensity where that's starting to skew really heavily towards carbohydrate, and the marathon is like one of the more oxygen demanding events out there. So it's like one of those was just no way around it. Like, you want to try to get in almost as much carbohydrate as you can get in and tolerate. So that was actually one thing from Chicago. I think I only got down. I think I mentioned this in that podcast. I think I only got down like three gels. The plan was to do a total of five throughout the race, so I missed two of them. Basically, I completely just split one up because it was not going down. That was it. Like mile 12, I want to say. And then another one at like mile 18. So I actually said no, I got that one down. I tried to take another one like 22 and I was just mad throwing the gel on the ground. But my last gel was 18. So the last eight miles, basically the last 1s 50 minutes, I didn't have any fuel or no extra fuel, I suppose, which I guess because you're getting what your glycogen stores for about an hour or to an hour and a half typically. Yeah, you'll, it'll depend. So the way to think about that is you'll have a situation where once you start dipping below like 50%, that's when your body starts ratcheting up the perceived effort. And that's when you start noticing, like, why does it feel so much harder to run this pace? But yeah, you're probably looking at like. 1s If you're doing some fueling, you're probably looking at like closer to two hours before you start. Because, I mean, actually, I thought you were eating more. I might have been remembering that wrong. Because if you were only doing if you only did three gels over the course of the marathon, you might actually want to do a little bit more than that for that was the goal. Yeah. So like I mean for the and for the 100 K um just because like, well first of all like you're going to have a lot easier time doing it. Right. Because the intensity is so much lower. It's just so much easier to get in fuel when you're running that slow versus trying to. Yeah, it wasn't even my stomach. It was just like my mouth, like I wasn't because I was breathing so hard and like my heart rate was so high that like, just the logistics of it, it was I don't know what I think it was a mental thing more than anything. Um, because I don't know, I think I just was sick of the Morton Gels too. Maybe. Like, I use them so much during training that I was like, I got to take another one of these things. I could have been that, but I don't know. You did drop A608 at the end, though, so that's true. It's probably unlikely that you were too depleted at that point. That's true. Um, yeah. You did a really, like, thorough job of loading up before the race, though, so you probably went in about as topped off as you could. You could get to. It's just, you know, that's just something you don't have to do during the race then as much of because you have it already there, do you need to say for Brazos? If I just say I'm going to be 100% aerobic, what I. Need to carb load as intensely because I was doing 600g per day for three days. Oh, it's a good question. Yeah. So I don't think it hurts to do that. Where you might want to deviate is the morning of. So the way to think about it is like you'll eat dinner the night before or whatever your last food is. Then you have this overnight fast essentially. So your body is going to increase its fat oxidation rates to some degree just from not eating for that period of time. So you wake up in the morning with this, like an opportunity to kind of maintain that or accelerate it a little bit more. So the way I like to think about it is when you get into ultra stuff you can still eat the carbohydrates those days leading in if you're looking to kind of top off your liver and muscle glycogen. But then in the morning, I think you might want to stay away from too much carbohydrate there and just kind of keep those higher fat oxidation rates so that when you start the race, your body's encouraged to burn fat, even though you have those stock glycogen stores. And then if you wait a little bit into the race to start fueling, you'll have kind of ratcheted that stuff up a little bit more. Yeah. And then you're just not going to fight as big of a ratio of carbs to fats for the remainder of that day. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I, 1s I know that you're interviewing me technically. I want to ask you a bunch of questions. That's totally fine, but do you? I talked to Mike McKnight about this, and he tends to do gels or like the artificial, you know, like a drink mix or something earlier on in the race and then progressively move towards solid foods. What's your take on that? Yeah. So there's going to be there. I think there's some good starting points and there's going to be like a bunch of individual stuff. So like I would say, the number one thing for pretty much anyone to start with is think of a combination of things like fluids, gels and solid foods. So you sort of have a contrast there. Then from there, think about hydrating and fueling, nibbling and sipping. So the more you can do small amounts spread out, the better from both a fluid and an intake standpoint. So I think people run into more issues when they are taking in like large quantities at once, and then they've got kind of this gut bomb of just like, oh, now my body's got to shunt a bunch of blood to the digestive tract to kind of process that when you're trying to also get oxygen to your muscles and if it's warm, also cooling. So it's like we have this finite resource. And now you're asking me to do that type of thing. Right. And the way to think about it is if you keep moving, your body is not going to stop sending blood to your legs for the oxygen delivery. Your body's not going to stop cooling because you'd pass out if it did that. It can shut down your digestive system though. So then if you do too much, that's where people will get kind of an upper GI issue, where it sort of just stops that process and then just kind of sits in there. So I would say to some degree, like I like to be a little more kind of less polarizing, where I'm doing all of one and then all of the other and just kind of go back and forth, because I think that also helps with palate fatigue, too. So you guys said, like you got sick of the Morton gel. Yeah. So I'll notice that with long races, if I'm doing something like liquid and sweet flavored, after a while you're just like, ah, you know, so I'll have something like crunchy, salty, savory to kind of like cleanse the palate, so to speak, or the extreme way to think about it. If you ever watched the man versus food stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's that one where he was doing like an ice cream sundae challenge, and he was like tapping out. And then he brought over some crispy, salty French fries and some of those all of a sudden had, like reset his, like his, his appetite signals, and he could start eating the ice cream again. That makes perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like just kind of keeping yourself almost interested enough to continue the process. Um, you'll learn some stuff about yourself, too. Or they'll be points in the race where it's just like, it just feels better to, like, sip on some calories or I'm craving some salt or something crunchy, and then you just kind of want that. So you can definitely kind of lean into your intuitions a little bit during those points in time, too. Yeah, it seems like it's a good idea to have a baseline of something to to try and go off of, and then from there personalize it to whatever for you, for whatever you need. Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So what I do remember listening to, and this is maybe what I was thinking about versus the race itself was during your training sessions, you're doing a really good job of fueling during them. It seemed like, yeah, yeah, I tried to simulate race day as much as I can, like wake up around the same time I'll be getting up on race morning, try and start the run if I can, around the same time that the race would start just to get like used to eating those foods early in the morning. Usually it's really hard to get solid food and stuff like that down in the morning. So getting used to that and then just going through the motions and 1s making sure I have a good, solid plan going into the race just because, again, my very first marathon, I didn't do any of that. I just like buying gels. The week of the race, I was like, oh, this should be fine, right? And yeah, so I think that helps me a lot. Just again, from a mental standpoint of getting everything, getting all the ducks in a row during training and dialing that in and just simulating race day as much as possible. And then, yeah, I like to experiment with a lot of things as much as I can throughout training like. And for some of the long runs, I would just do liquid calories before the run, and then the next week I would just do solid calories and then figure out different ways, like how my body would react to that, or what was easier to get down if I'd notice any differences during training. And then over a 14 week period, I was able to slowly, through the process of elimination, get rid of things that I didn't like and just lock in on those ones that seemed to work every time I used them. That seemed to help quite a bit for me too. Yeah, I would definitely lean on that. So you've sort of done like usually during when I get to like the long run development phase of training for an ultramarathon, I'll start kind of bringing more food into the workouts and stuff, and it'll be just exactly what you said, practicing what I want to do on race day and try to figure out, like, all right, let's reconfirm what was going to work from this time, from the last time. Just make sure everything is still like humming, humming along the way. I expect it to. And then, you know, sometimes it's just like I'm going to try something a little different. So a lot of times my solid food thing will range from one race to the next. So I'll just get interested in one thing or the other for a specific race, and then I'll just kind of put that input in there during those long runs. So I'm practicing, but it sounds like you've been doing that and that'll just be something you might want to play. Although depending on I mean, I know you did some long runs that goal with goal marathon pace in there too, but. If you did just some like non marathon based long runs, that might be a pretty good perspective from a relatively close intensity kind of how those products are going to sit in your stomach for something like Brazos, or if they sat well during that, it was probably a little faster yet. So then they'll be, at least in the beginning, pretty rock solid, I would imagine. Yeah. And I've over the years started to get better at doing solid foods when I first started getting into running and I would try and incorporate solid foods, but like would not happen. And then over time, I've become more acclimated to getting solid foods in, and I feel like it gives me more energy to it. I mean, it's probably more calories, obviously, so if I can get it in solid foods, it seems like a big help. I haven't spent probably enough time figuring out exactly what solid foods are the best. I mean, outside of like aid station quesadillas or something like that. Those usually sit pretty good, but I like incorporating a little bit more of that. And so for Brazos, I don't know what the aid stations are like there, but I'm sure they have a lot of that. They've got a ton of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's actually a good point, because one thing I'll sometimes do when there's a race, when the race has been determined and you're starting to think about this stuff, is actually look and see what they have on their aid station on the website. Because if there's stuff there that it's like. I'm just going to. If you're kind of, like, indifferent, it's just like I've got a lot of options I could try, and I'm not really feeling too compelled to pick one or the other. You may as well pick stuff to have on the aid station table, because then, you know, it's logistically you're going to have access to it the whole time. Does that course, I think this is the first year they've done the 100 K I think so, yeah. But do you know it's a looped course I think. Right. You do several loops. Yeah. So it is what it is. Let's say 16 and two third miles or something like that. So you'd probably do four of them or maybe it's yeah I think it's six maybe just shade over 16 or something like that. Is it kind of a similar setup to like Rocky Raccoon? Yeah, it's a lot like that. So there's like one kind of main hub people can hang out in. And then eight stations throughout. Yeah. And the aid stations are really easy to get to, to. So yeah. 1s Nice. I'm super excited. This is like I've only done a couple of ultras and those are very different from this much more mountainous. So it took a lot longer and a lot more hiking I think. But this I'm excited because it's just so new to me. I've never done a race. It's different . I can run the whole thing and it's this long. Yeah, it's one of those things where it goes by faster because you're moving quicker, but then you are kind of just hitting that same mechanic over and over again. So like that is something where it's like and that's where kind of the back to back long run will be helpful. Just kind of feel like, how does my body actually feel moving at this pace when there's when it's kind of been getting hit by that same kind of pace and mechanic for a bit? Where did you wear super shoes when you did yours last year? I wore ultra vanish carbon. Okay. That's one thing I want to try and figure out so I can spend as much time training and that type of shoe. I don't know if I'd wear carbon shoes for a long time, but at least I have an idea of what I should wear. Because I guess, like you said, it could be a game time decision based on what the course conditions are. Yeah, yeah. If it's dry, then I think you're probably fine with the super shoe and that probably would be a preferable one. So I had a Ken Pierce. He ran it last year and he said I think he wore the Hoka Speed Goats because I asked him. I was like, are you going to wear road shoes for this? And he's like, I wore the Speed Ghost last year because there's like one rocky section. But I was like, I don't know him. I'm curious what your take is on this Rocky section. Yeah. He speaks about. That's funny. Yeah, I would say like on a course like that. Like and for most courses, actually, whatever she's the most comfortable in your foot is probably going to be the move just because you're out there for longer. So you want something that's going to feel pretty natural on your foot. That makes sense. And then did you just do like a handheld bottle and swap it out like with another one, or how did you go about that? Yeah, I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I had handhelds pretty much the whole way. And the way it's set up is you have like the start finish area, but like the other aid stations are just like a mile drive away. It's kind of like it's not like a loop. It's just like this weird, kind of like small loops that all kind of, like, meshed together, so to speak. And there's one kind of a little bit longer out and back. So like, you can, you can get access to bottles and the aid stations aren't that far a party there. So your best bet is probably even if you're totally uncrewed, you could probably be better. You just find probably carrying a handheld and just filling up at each age. Did you do it alone last year or was it Nicole out there? She was out there. Yeah. So I'm actually going to be out there this year. So yeah, I've got a couple coaching clients that are racing it this year. So you can throw some bottles at you. Yeah, I need it. I'm going to try and talk it over there with me. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah I'm so excited to try all these logistics out because it's all so new. And again that's cool. Running is like running a fast marathon. You could do a 100 miler through the mountains or you can do a fast ultra. There's so many, so many things to learn. And each race requires different preparation, which is awesome. There's another question I was going to ask you about the race. You did it. It was like 13 hours last year, I think I saw yeah, what was it? Yeah, 13 something I think 1350 maybe something around there. What pace did that come out to be? It's like seven something. Yeah that's a good question. Yeah I actually is it I think it might be you know 1s it might be low eight. I think it might be low eight. 2s I'd have to. How was that pacing calculator? Because, I mean, that's almost a minute slower than, like, your world. So my fastest Hunter mile was 648, and I was on a track, right? Yeah, I blew up pretty bad in Nebraska. I left, like, if you look at my splits, like I probably gave back. I mean, I had some, I had some, like, pretty rough miles at the end. There like ten minute pace type stuff there that really ended up on the average pace. I think I was probably moving between 7 and 730 pace for a huge chunk of the race, and then just didn't quite have a good strong finish there. So 1s that skewed it a little bit. But how big of a difference do you think it made from like doing that 100 miles on a track compared to I don't know what your relative fitness was at the time, but comparing like 100 miles on a track like that to something like Brazos? Yeah. 3s So I guess the way I would say it, if I had had my pet at Center Fitness at Brazos last year and then the weather was the same. I'm probably looking at something closer to like low 12 somewhere in that neighborhood, because, I mean, it was pretty humid, so that was a little bit of a hit. 2s But it was still 70 degrees, so it wasn't like the worst you could get, especially after like the summer we had this year, right? 1s I'd like to. I'd be shocked if I was. I'd be more than an hour slower than the Pettit Center, even with that weather, given how dry the course was. Had I been in that same kind of fitness state. So. So it's still very fast. It's very fast. Yeah. If you in terms of like I mean, because technically it's a trail, you have a debate about whether we should draw the line with trail and stuff like that, but it's technically a trail. But between that one, when the weather's good there, it's about as fast as you're going to find. Tunnel Hill is probably the fastest. Where's that one? That one's in Illinois. Vienna? Um, I ran 12 ways at Tunnel Hill. That's another one I want to do again at some point, because I think that's closer to an 11.5 hour course. It's just weather's almost always perfect and it's just straight out and backs two straight out and backs. Basically there's a small little hill but it's on a rails to trails bed. So it's like maybe a 2 or 3% incline and it's only for a couple of miles and then you come down it to finish. So it's like if you pace it right, you have like this little bit of gravity assist there too. But that video you posted the other day of you chafing Brazos, I was going to say, was that Brazos partially responsible for some of those ten minute miles? At the end of that video, I was laughing at your pain. And like, because I've been there before like that. It's such an uncomfortable feeling. No, it's the worst. Yeah. So if it gets humid like that, that is worth knowing is just like having. 1s Reapplying is the move because I've got a good setup for anti chafing stuff. Like in terms of what I do that works well. But I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't calibrate it well enough for the humidity for that duration of time. I kind of had the same protocols I used in the dry weather and it just wasn't up for the task and the humidity just lost a lot of that stuff quicker. That's gotta be one of the worst things if you have everything going great in your race and then chafing comes up. Yeah, of all things. That's what's going to slow me down and you're sweating. So then you try to do any sort of topical cooling and it just rinses it over and it's like, yeah, you pay for that mistake over and over again. Do you tend to chafe more when it's humid or. Yeah, okay. I hardly chafe at all when it's dry. What is it? Do you know the reasoning behind that? Yeah I'm the same way. Yeah. It's just that the wet skin rubbing is going to create more. It's more like catching it I guess. And the other thing too is like when you have any sort of blistering or chafing, usually it's a combination of heat, moisture and friction. So if you can control one of those, then you really minimize the potential for that to be a common issue. So if it's dry out, then you're just not going to get that moisture. The same way you might get friction, you're going to get heat heats the hard part. There's really no way around it. Like especially if it's stuck on your feet because then you're in shoes too. So then moisture control can be something that is worth trying to play around with. If you can 1s swap socks and shoes and stuff like that during a race, or typically I usually don't, but I always have the option there. So that's what I usually tell people, is I wouldn't plan on doing it just for the sake of doing it, but have it there. So like if you decide and you might have a situation like here's here's way where I'd maybe plan it, if there's a race where you know you're going to get really wet and then thereafter it's going to be relatively dry, that's a great time to switch, because now it's like you're going to be able to benefit from that versus a day where it's like muddy, wet the whole time. And he's like, you change into this new pair of shoes and you're just back to the same thing. And that's literally a big horn in a nutshell. My first year I did it. My feet. I think I had just fallen trench foot. Basically the whole bottoms of my feet were pruning and like skin just peeling off. It was like one giant blister because there's so many creek crossings in its muddy, and it's the whole course like that. And so I swapped shoes and socks. It was probably too late. But again, it was like catch 22 or like the same predicament is like, well, I can change my socks and shoes, but they're going to be wet in five minutes again anyways. So it's like, how do you even know how you'd prepare for that? Or if you can prepare in any way for mud and. Wet feet for hours and hours. Yeah, there's I mean, there's all sorts of technology out there. There's a company called Dry Socks. I can give you a pair if you want. They have this, this, this technology where they, they actually do two things and some of their higher model socks, they actually have like this Teflon coating on the inside. So it helps with the friction. And then they also have this fabric where 1s the inside pulls moisture or. Yeah. And the outside repels the nose the other way the inside repels moisture in the inside like attracts it. So it's basically pulling the moisture off your foot. That makes sense. Yeah. So your feet stay a little more dry. So they're trying to they're looking at it through that kind of that three prong thing where it's like we've got heat, we've got friction, we got moisture. That's when the trouble occurs. So they're trying to remove the moisture as much as they can. And then with the Teflon stuff with like a little bit of the, the rubbing if they can. That makes sense. I've had a lot of luck with that product for toe related stuff. Anyway, what was the name of those ones? Dry max socks. I started using these ones for trail running and ultra stuff. They're called exo skin or exo toes. Have you heard of them? Yeah, someone told me I should use those so my chafing was all like midsection chafing and like, yeah, they make shorts too. Yeah. So someone told me you should check those out. I was like, I'm gonna check anything out at this point. Yeah, the toe socks are great. Obviously helps from, like, your toes rubbing together and stuff. But I think in Gingy, I think they make the toe sack. Probably more than one model now. They were always the ones that had it originally. Yeah, them. And then exo skin. They're wool socks. Oh, they have them too. Okay. And the toe socks. But those are great. I think they're. I don't know if wool has that same kind of drying. Aspect to it or what it is, but there's something with it preventing blisters or chafing, I think. Yeah, yeah it might. I know wool is good for staying warm when you're wet, right? So you probably won't have to deal with that at Brazos, but it could be useful at a different race. But go through the night at some of these in your wet. It's like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm hoping that the heat training from this summer will kind of carry. I don't know how long that actually lasts for. It'll last for another six weeks or not, but I mean, try and get out in the heat as much as I can over the next six weeks. Yeah, it tapers off quickly, but it's super easy to maintain. So all the only input you really need is and this could be like outside of the summer, you could get this. Let's say it was winter and you're training for a hot race. Really all you need is about like 2 to 3 weeks, 20 minutes, three times a week in a sauna after a workout. If you don't have to work, you have to have your core temp up a little bit. So it goes from like 30 minutes to 20 minutes. So what a good protocol is essentially this time out, like just hit the sauna for 20 minutes, three times a week if you can, and after a workout and then you'll maintain all of it. Do you have a sauna here? No, I got to get one. I have a cold plunge. Yeah, I got to get the sauna though. That's like the next key I've been going to on it for, for workouts. So they just redid their inside so they have a new sauna and a new cold plunge setup. So I was waiting for them to get a cold plunge in there because I haven't been to the new setup they have. Yeah, it's pretty sweet there now. Yeah, they've got three cold plunges and I can't remember. That sauna might have already been there, I can't remember, I hadn't used it because I was like during the summer I joined at the beginning of the summer. So like I was just like not even going to be I was not interested at all in getting this. It's like, I get plenty of this right now. Yeah. Going up. Yeah. Now that it's cool enough, I definitely want to get something. I don't know. I need more space. They take up so much space. Yeah, but those big barrel ones are pretty cool now. I think, like plunge, the brand came out with their own version two. Oh. Did they? Okay. Cool. Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, it'll be fun to see what you do at Brazos. I'm excited for it. Everything coming up, I guess? Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. 1s Hopefully I provided some sort of value to somebody out there. Yeah. No, I'm going to do a whole bunch of episodes with people who are getting into running for running and ultra running, I guess probably a little more of a skewed towards that, since that's what I like to do the most of. But it's just there's so many new people in the sport, and from just such a wide range of stuff, I would have never expected to see the range of different people getting interested in it. So it's going to be fun to chat with everyone, to kind of figure out what is drawing you guys out to this? I mean, you've been in it for how long have you liked, I know you ran in college and stuff. How long have you been running? 2010 was my first ultra. Okay, so you've been in it because the first ultra, I guess technically it was like the 80s, but it didn't become mainstream till now when you start getting into it. Right? So actually the ultra running goes back even further, like trail running is relatively new, but they had ultramarathons in the 1800s. Yeah. They know that they used to sell at Madison Square Garden. And they do this thing called pedestrian ism where they would be betting on people. And you know what? It got really popular. And then the bicycle. I think if I remember this, the bicycle killed it because they started switching to that instead. But it was just like people, they're left out. They're like betting on these people. I guess it was probably all sorts of prop bets and then also like just weird duration type stuff. But yeah, they have, I mean, the record keeping was terrible. So like, I'm not sure when the first official record started getting taken, but how have I never heard of this? It's like, yeah, it's a wild Kentucky Derby for people basically. Pretty much. Yeah. Well, that's what some people are saying is like, if we want ultrarunning to really get to the next level, he introduced betting and then it will blow up. Yeah. It seems like it's growing like crazy though. It's so cool to see. And people, you know, like campaigns and Goggins and stuff, like they're just blowing up the sport, which I don't. You might have a different take, but it seems like a good thing getting more people out. Oh, I love it. Active and, um, more money and more attention to the sport. More opportunities. Yeah, yeah. The way I see it is like it's gonna grow fast one way or the other. So like, any inputs that accelerate that, it's just like, cool. Yeah. Do you think I mean Leadville now? I mean, have you been there in the last couple of years? I haven't any, it's like one of these big ones, it's like the Boston Marathon of hundreds. It's like it's so commercialized and hyped up, which is cool, but it seems so different from something. What I imagine Brazos Bend is probably going to be like. Or it's more traditional at Brazos. Yeah, yeah, and I'll be curious to see how that actually plays out, because right now the big commercialization push is around Ultra Trail Mont Blanc or Utmb. So Ironman Triathlon bought Utmb a couple of years ago. So they've been kind of standardizing, commercializing and buying up a ton of old like popular races essentially. So now they have like this. Ecosystems that's hard to operate outside of because you have to like they call them stones. You have to collect a certain number of stones to get into the big one, the UTM races. So I mean, that's a polarizing topic in ultrarunning. People are like, they love it and hate it or love or hate it. I guess my take is like, let them do that three ring circus. And then if there's demand for the mom and pop type events, then it's super expensive to do the UTme to do like 2 or 3 races just to get in and then go over to Charmaine and race it. I mean, we're talking about like, you could spend ten, $20,000 easily to do like, oh my gosh. Yeah. To do like a racist to get in and then to do that that weekend itself. So there's going to be a, there's going to be more people that want to do the sport that's just going to be a price tag. They're not going to they're not going to bite on them. So that just incentivizes these smaller races like Brazos or like the race I'm going to the Javelina 100 huge event. The Air Viper running. They're a big organization. They have like 50 some events, but they've maintained a lot of the culture and a lot of the kind of fit and feel of what you'd expect from an ultramarathon. So you see that too. You see that there's definitely an appeal for that side of the sport still. And I think we'll see that continue to grow as well, just kind of alongside. So YouTube might be the first thing that someone sees. But then when they get around looking about how do I actually participate in that? They might say, oh, but there's also this 50 miler an hour and a half from my house. Maybe I'll check that one out first before I start thinking about Utmb. Yeah, I was doing some cool stuff. I did one of the races in Colorado earlier this year. It was 50 K, but definitely like for being a brand and a company that's putting all these things together and they're bringing more media to it, which is cool. It still has that very like mom and pop feel to it, which is cool. I saw they just did a piece on you for it was like an interview with Jameel, right? Yeah, yeah. The media side, which is almost its own entity now, is really they actually go to other races now too and put on like live streams and things like that. So yeah, just wait till the drones get really efficient and the Starlink gets good enough where you can actually report from the entire course. Because sometimes that's the hard part is like there's people who are willing to go out there and like to bring you the content, but. It's like, oh, they have no signal out here. Yeah, the Starlink that was all the races I crewed at this year. They were all using Starlink in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Like you guys have the internet out here. It's crazy. So, I mean, again, it's cool. It's bringing more attention to the sport and hopefully getting more people into it, which is cool. Yeah. It's crazy. So you're at a good point to take it all in. Have you done anything besides Western states? Have you done any mountainous ultras? Yeah. So I've done western a couple of times. I did a San Diego hundred. Oh that's right. What other one? For 100 milers. That's basically it. I haven't done a ton of Crazy Mountain 100 milers. Do you have any desire to do more of those, or do you want to keep doing the flat and fast stuff? I want to do more mountain stuff. I would say, generally speaking, I like to keep track of the rotation. I haven't typically left it there as something where I'll peak for 100 milers a ton outside of Western and in San Diego, but if I do well at Javelina, I'll take my spot at Western and make that my main race for the first half of the year. I do think I'm going to probably get in a little more, because some of the mountain races or a little bit past, I like the running aspect of ultra so much. Going much more extreme than Western isn't always as intriguing to me, because then you get so much more of a hiking component into it. But that could change, to be honest. Like the super shoe stuff has made it more intriguing to me because it's been somewhat protected from that. And I'm not so much of an anti super shoe person that I would be like, all right, I'm done with runnable stuff anymore. But to some degree it's like if I had had my way, I think they would have they should have regulated that stuff more. But you know, even for marathons or. Yeah, or I've got a theory. I think if any brand other than Nike had come out with that technology, it would have just got regulated out of existence. Really? Yeah. Nike's is too big to be too big, and they kind of own the sport where it's like they basically bankrolled the Olympics and like, yeah. So it's like once. Once they had the product, it was like to some degree it was going to probably exist versus like, you have all the we have precedent with other sports like cycling obviously is allowed quite a bit of tech to come into the sport. I mean, to agree the sport is based on tech. So there's that. And then swimming went the opposite direction. They had those speed suits that they had for a while and then they eventually said no, this is too much of an advantage. So they cut them out and running seemed I mean, I think there's good arguments for the super shoes where it's just kind of a continuation. My biggest gripe with them isn't the actual improvement of tech, because, I mean, the records are going to get broken anyway, so it's like, why not just kind of speed it up a little bit? My biggest issue with them is like, and this could get solved over time, but there's such a range from one person to the next. I think it's like when they came up with the first 4%, it was like an average of 2 to 8%. So it's like if you're the unfortunate person who is 2% versus eight, like, I mean, that's the difference between you could be a gold medalist at the Olympics and also falling off the podium at that point. So it's like I understand that, like, you know, the argument will be like, well, we have like, why don't we go barefoot. Yes, that is a hard thing. It's like, where would you draw the line? Maybe low carbon plates or. Yeah, I mean, I don't even think the carbon plates are really the big mover. Those. I think it's the foam. Really. I know they have the stack height limit because it's 40mm I think. Yeah. But just. Yeah. Is there certain I don't know what ingredient in the foam that makes it or a certain compound. Yeah. So what it is, is it's the first I mean there's different there's different types of this now, now that other brands have gotten into the mix. But the first was that PBoC foam that Nike came up with. And essentially what happened was before that. From a performance standpoint, you wanted as little as you could get away with. And the really the barrier to entry there was getting your feet to a degree where you could tolerate that. So you're like 26 miles, 26 miles with these guys, run a sub five minute pace. That's a beating on your feet. So to do that with a minimalist shoe or super low profile racing flat was a hard sell, but you know, you could strengthen your feet and kind of do it. But no one was going to wear a max cushioned shoe at the front of a race. That foam, what it did, is it it's it. The way it returns energy is efficient enough where it's actually better than like the racing flats that people were using for the marathon and, and more cushioned. So you sort of had the benefits of a cushion where it was easy on your feet but performing better. So this is like one of the arguments that you'll hear people say is the marathon went from this kind of race of attrition, whereas everyone goes out at this kind of pace that's kind of on the line, and then who's going to survive now? It's kind of like who's going to accelerate through because their legs have been a little more preserved, and it's turned a little bit more into kind of like a ten K type of a feel than it maybe had been in the past. Um, but yeah. So I mean, it's an interesting thing. I think it's probably something where the foam. I'm glad they put some regulation, because before it was like the shoe that they were going to use, that they actually I think they actually used it for the sub two hour like exhibition race. I believe that one was 52mm. And I think they had like 2 or 3 carbon plates in there. So it was like a spring loaded. 2s That's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm glad they didn't just let it go completely off the charts with that. But yeah. So my biggest I guess my thought is like I understand like technology is going to play a role to some degree. But. And then there's going to be variance from one person, because you could also make the argument like, well, Kipchoge was born with these attributes that other people don't have. And so to some degree it's like there's all these different things that you're, you're getting. So if someone can if someone just responds better to the super shoes, then that's just their benefit, right? So I get that argument to my thought would be to minimize the ones you can so that the ones that you can't help don't all add up to like this extreme thing. But I might just be too old. Yeah. No, I mean, there's a good point to it. I mean, I think about that, like playing hockey growing up, like the sticks now are like they're all carbon fiber. So they're incredibly light. But like 30 years ago they were all wood. They were like four times as heavy. Yeah. It's the same with the skates. Like the skates were, I don't know, maybe not like old steel and like these leather boots and basically and it's like now they're super lightweight and all this stuff. So it's like I think sports when there's technology involved, it's just like that's what humans do is they evolve everything. And I don't know, they just keep. Innovating and making things better, more efficient for us. So I don't know, it's hard. Like I don't know where you would draw the line at. Exactly. Yeah. And at this point, it's one of those things where I try not to complain too much about it because it's just like, it's not going to change. Like they're not going to go back. And I mean, I guess they could swim. And you know, when you said skates, that reminded me, do you remember that you might be a little too young to remember this, but they had those clap skates back in the day. There was like one Olympic Games where the speed skaters had these skates where the heel detached. So I never saw that. I can't remember how the physics worked with this, but I think it was something to a degree where when they kind of lunged forward into their like pattern of their speed skating, the blade stayed more like something with contact of the ice. It made it more efficient, interesting. And they, they stopped. They don't let them use those anymore. I guess. Now I don't think they do anyway. Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard of that. Yeah. I think it was just one Olympic Games that had them. Yeah. And then after that they put a rule in place. Yeah. That's again I feel like that's the hard part with any sport that involves any kind of technology like swimming, that makes sense because it's like, I don't know how much technology you could add. It's like buoyancy is big, right? I guess that makes sense. And running. I feel like it all comes down to the shoes. I don't know what else you could add potentially. Um, but yeah. EPO. Yeah. Yeah, that's. I heard one of the better arguments I heard with the super shoes was like someone said, well, all the like, at least we're going to clear out all the EPO records. Yeah. How many? I don't know, this could be controversial, I guess. Like. Do they test this to all these top people for like growth hormones or in ultrarunning? Yeah, like performance enhancement stuff. Yeah, that's a big topic right now because it's very unlike unregulated. We have some testing like I've been tested after like all my records and stuff like that, but that's about the extent of it. Who would come to test you? It's WADA okay. Yeah. What is that? I don't know, World Athletic or world Anti-Doping agency. Oh, okay. They run it through us US track and field essentially. So like if I, if I would go to. 1s So the pet center when I broke the world record for the hundred miles in 12 hours, they had a testing agent, a US ATF testing agent on call for that in case a record got broken during that event. So then afterwards I had to go and do all the testing stuff. So I mean, there's some Western states tests now to that's like one of the bigger trail races. There was this system called the court system, which was basically a joke, I guess, like I didn't really like it was more kind of over in Europe in it for the ultra on blank, but there was a bunch of issues with it. But yeah, it's definitely something that needs to get more standardized to be on par, because the reality is like when someone gets caught after a competition. My first guess is they they made a mistake versus they were cheating because that's just something that you like. Like if someone were to like with these guys who are inevitably people are cheating right now, they're doing it during their training and they're doing it away from when they're going to likely try to get tested. So the only way to really control for that is random out-of-competition testing. So like if someone decided, hey, I'm going to start cheating for this, like a 6 to 8 week period of time, and then I'm going to taper off of it before my event so I don't test positive. Well, someone could show up at your door and test you and you wouldn't know. And then you get and that's how these people get caught. Right. And yeah. So and then it's kind of a cat and mouse game of finding something that isn't detectable or they're not testing for yet versus finding out what it is. So now they have biological passport stuff where they have your. So this is why you've probably seen some of this where they'll have someone like, oh, they just discovered that so-and-so is doping in the 2012 Olympics. Yeah. So this is stuff where the technology for testing things has gotten caught up, where now they're going back and they're testing samples that they were. So you do have this thing now where you like. Even if you think. All right, I'm ahead of them. I'm ahead of the system. Well, you might be for now, but in four years you won't be. And then they're going to ping you, so, like, enjoy it while it lasts, I guess. Interesting. Yeah. So it has gotten pretty sophisticated, but none of that has really gotten to ultrarunning in a big way. So that is something that needs to happen as more money comes into the sport. 1s Yeah. The only random test I've ever had was at World Hunter, KS in 2014. I was rooming with a guy whose name is Max King, and he's been doing so much stuff like both track and field, ultramarathon, marathon, all sorts of stuff. So we were rooming together. And at that time, I had just broken the 100 mile American record and 12 or world record, and Max had all sorts of accomplishments. So like we get randomly selected, of course. And so we had to go down and do like the testing protocol stuff like, I think it was like three days before the event or something like that, but that was the extent of any random test, because after a race, I just assume if I break a record, I'm going to have to I have to produce a sample and and get tested. But yeah. What do you know if they like world majors they test like those elites for, like marathons. Oh yeah. Yeah they're probably on a rant. They're all probably in the testing pool so they could show up and test them. The hard part is it's so real. Or the Anti-Doping agency works through the difference like essentially you have to have the country on board because like if they're not doing their due diligence then like it just gets in trouble. This is what Russia got in trouble for because of the Icarus thing. Yeah. Yeah. So they were kind of bypassing the system because the state was on the state testing stuff was like, yeah, they were in, in on it. So that documentary is crazy. I know it's pretty wild. Yeah. So Kenya is under some trouble right now, but kind of for a different system. I don't suspect that Kenya Anti-Doping is the problem. The problem with that is these agents essentially where you have these men and women who are like. Unknown, but incredibly fast. And it's like this agent goes in and says, oh, well, I can turn you into a professional athlete, essentially, and cash in on that because they're going to a percentage of it. But these people, I always wonder how many of these people actually even know that they're doing something wrong half the time, because they might just be getting told what to do. Essentially, to some degree, if they're I mean, we were just talking before we recorded Tipton was like a goat farmer before he became the world's fastest marathoner. That's so crazy. So it's like, yeah, you can. It's like a difference. It's hard to look at it through the American lens the same way. And it's just yeah, it's wild. But they get a lot stricter in terms of testing with that stuff. Yeah, that makes sense I know I remember I heard from like the whole Lance Armstrong era, like when he was, when all the tour de France, like, you have to go down the line to like 24th place for the to find the first clean person that they knew of. It's like he was probably just doing a better job and not getting caught. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's hard because it kind of reminds me of the super shoe thing, which I brought up . It's like if everybody's doing it like, where do you draw the line? If it kind of evens the playing field to some extent, I don't know. It's hard because it's like all these gray areas basically. Yeah. Yeah. You'd probably have the same debates if you just said like, all right. Let's just unregulate because you'd have that's the other thing is like because when Lance is arguing kind of was like, well, everyone was doing it, but you're going to have hyper responders to everything. So like everyone , if every professional athlete got on EPO, there would be a range of benefits from one to the next two. So then it's also, you know, there's that side of that same debate of are you the 2% super shoe person or the 8% super, super, right. Yeah. If you got the bad hand and you're just screwed. Yeah. Might be. Yeah. Dang dude. Talk about running all day with you. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the moral of the story is enjoy the sport so you don't have to worry about that. Exactly. Do you have a benefit from doing it either way? That's right. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, before I let you go, where can people find you? Yeah, Instagram's probably the number one place to reach out and connect. My handle is Jeremy Miller. And there's a dot between the E and the R on Miller. But just look up. Jeremy Miller should be the first one on there. Hopefully. Yeah, you've got a great Instagram account, so it's fun to see all the stuff you're putting up out there. So hopefully everyone will give you a follow. Yeah there. And then I've also got the podcast. The Jeremy Miller podcast had Zach on there a while back. YouTube channel posts like vlogs, long form content there and yeah, thanks for having me on man. This is fun. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. You're going to be my first official. 1s Let's see why people are coming into ultrarunning. Is that the name of the series? Maybe I should refine that a little bit, but I like it. Let's see who's coming to ultra. Yeah, I like it now. I like the series. That's a great idea. And it's cool. I feel like again, you're going to hit maybe a whole nother audience of people and get more people on the sport, which is always awesome. Yeah, hopefully. Heck yeah. Thanks again. Dude, this is a blast. Yeah, yeah. Take care. Have a good one.