Episode 407: David Roche - Leadville 100 Mile Historic Win & Course Record

David is the 2014 USATF Trail Runner of the Year at the sub-ultra distance. He is a two-time national champion and three-time member of Team USA. He graduated with honors from Columbia University with a degree in Environmental Science and received a master's degree and law degree with honors from Duke University. He is the co-owner of SWAP Running with Megan Roche, and also co-host with Megan for the SWAP podcast.

Endurance Training Simplified Series

Zach’s Low Carb Endurance Approach Series

SFuels: sfuelsgolonger.com code: BITTER5 ***FREE SAMPLE PACK LIMITED OFFER***

Janji: janji.com code: Bitter10

LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/HPO

deltaG: deltagketones.com - IG: @deltag.ketones code: BITTER20

HPO Sponsors: zachbitter.com/hposponsors

Support HPO: zachbitter.com/hpo 

Zach’s Coaching: zachbitter.com/coaching

David: swaprunning.com - IG: @mountainroche - X: @mountainroche - Strava: David Roche

Zach: zachbitter.com IG: @zachbitter X: @zbitter Substack: zachbitter.substack.com FB: @zbitterendurance Strava: Zach Bitter TikTok: @zachbitter Threads: @zachbitter

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Welcome to the Human Performance Outliers Podcast

00:07:18 - The Value of Doing Hard Things

00:14:03 - Strength and Training Approach in Ultra Running

00:20:54 - The Importance of Aerobic Threshold Training

00:27:37 - The Power of Running as a Sport

00:34:26 - Improvements in Efficiency and Performance

00:41:22 - The Importance of Openness and Curiosity in Ultra Running

00:48:21 - Fueling Strategies in Cycling

00:55:13 - Different Approaches to Nutrition in Ultrarunning

01:02:12 - Exploring Caffeine Usage in Races

01:08:57 - The Uncertainty of Exogenous Ketones

01:15:42 - Pacing Strategy and Prediction Accuracy

01:22:50 - The Strategy of Finishing Strong

01:29:44 - A Hot Start at the Canyon 100k

01:36:46 - The Boundaries are Being Pushed

01:43:41 - How Zach uses the HPO sponsors

Episode Transcript:

David, thanks for taking some time to come on the show. It's so good to see you, Zach Love what you do in the world. I've learned so much from you over time. Love the podcast, so it's an honor to be here. Yeah. You know, I'm really excited to chat. I think, you know, I've, followed what you've been up to and just your influence on the sport. I would say, for quite some time. And it's just really cool, I think, to see you build a community around kind of your interests, your philosophy and your coaching podcast and everything that goes with it and get people motivated to get out there and challenge themselves, but also feel comfortable doing it. I think that's the way I would describe you from my perspective, if you're not easy to the degree where you want people to be, you know, be light on what they're capable of. But you're also kind of blending the, the, the welcoming side of things just really nicely so that they feel like they have a spot to get started, at least, because, you know, everyone's going to be coming in from a different spot. Yeah. I mean, I just want athletes, humans, everything to have all of this fit into a broader range of self-acceptance. And like if this sport ends up tearing you down, it is not worthwhile. This is something that is silly at the end of the day, like a lot of things we do in life. And, I'm just hoping that, you know, through athletics, through the failures of athletics, not just the successes. We can reach a place where, like, we know we're okay, you know, like, and eventually we are enough and eventually, like, yeah, we're amazing. We love ourselves. and, you know, I'm on that journey, too. So, you know, this race was so cool. Leadville 100. But, it has been built on the backs of dozens of failures that didn't happen on that day. It could have. And through it all, I learned that, like, win or lose, good day, bad day, I'm enough as I am. And that type of lesson is what I hope to just like, impart on people and hopefully represent in the world a little bit too. When people do meet me or interact with me, it's like, you know, we're allowed to disagree. We're different people. We come from different perspectives, but through it all, we're sharing something which is life's hard, it's complicated, it's impermanent. And that is a time when it's like, yeah, maybe we shouldn't all be like hunky dory hugging. But at the same time, like, let's give each other a little bit of a tailwind. Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. I think one of the, one of the things I always tell listeners, because people who listen to this podcast often, like a lot of them do run and some do ultramarathons, but there's also just a fair bit of just health and fitness individuals as well. And I just think the most interesting thing about the last couple of years is just the growth of people trying out ultramarathon running, and that maybe would have never otherwise decided to do it for one reason or the other. And one thing I like to always share is like, and it sounds like this is maybe how you approached Leadville, which is just like, if you can get to the starting line and just absolutely implode on race day, but still look back and think, you know, that was the that was a really worthwhile use of my time, then keep pursuing it, because then you found something that's a big value add to your life. Yeah. And just doing hard things is freaking amazing in anything in life. I love running or athletics and sports. I'm a huge sports fan because at the end of the day, sports, you can distill life down into this bite sized morsel and take a big old frickin bite of it. and that's so cool, because through that, like, yeah, it's 100 miles, but you learn so much in the same thing in the five KS I did when I was starting out. Like, you learn so much about life and who you are, and by the time you're fricking 40, you've lived so many different experiences that you wouldn't have lived otherwise. So whether it's sports, it doesn't have to be running can be lifting, it can be walking, or it can be something that's not with your body at all. It's like, just push yourself in it as hard as you can, even if your last place in it. I don't care where you finish. and I think at the other end of it, you'll come out like a wiser person. And so, I mean, that's why I love it. And I think that's one reason that, like, if you look at coaches across sports and think about Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich and basketball people like that, they all kind of talk like little Buddhas, you know, like spiritual beings. And I think it's partially because when you live this life long enough, you've seen a million deaths. but they're not actually death. The only actual death is death. So, coming out the other end of it you're a little bit tougher for it. Yeah. No doubt. Well, speaking of different sports, did you have a background in football, I think, right. Am I remembering that? Yeah, yeah. So, I went to college at Columbia, which is not a good football school, but I went there to play football, and quit. it was not for me at that level. I learned, I grew up in a rural area, and yeah, I was good there, but. And I was big enough. I was, you know, I could bench press two, 25, 12 times because I know we got a lot of listeners that can lift a lot. Yeah, I was a strong guy. I was a lot bigger as a lot, lot bigger. but after I quit that, I realized that I always wanted a lifelong sport, and my dad had been an endurance athlete when I was growing up in cycling. And so it was just like going in with both feet. And the wild thing, in retrospect, is just that, like, you know, I remember doing my first five KS and finishing 198th and being thrilled with it because it was better than, you know, my 227th place finish the week before at New York Roadrunners races. And, you know so I've been at the whole range of the sport. It didn't come easily to me at first. and that perspective, I think I always hold on to today, I always will remember when running a mile around the block was really hard and, you know, so I don't take it for granted that I get to do this. 36 now, I don't know how long my prime will be about athletics. And while I'm in my prime, I want to shoot some big shots. Yeah, well, I think it's safe to say you're at least approaching your prime based on Saturday's events. But, hopefully, hopefully for the rest of us, you are ultras are great because, you know, the prime just gets extended out. Like, you know, in baseball, they're hesitant to give contracts to people after age 25 nowadays. but for me, you know, going up to 100 miles, I'm like, I just get better at this stuff. You know, I just the muscle fiber typology just gets more tending towards slower twitch muscles. My mitochondria become stronger. so this sport, there's a reason that you see a lot of 40 plus athletes excelling at it. And so thank God I'm not doing, yeah, you know, 800m on the track or playing baseball. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually an interesting topic is just in general like what is the the timeline for sort of your, your prime I guess within ultra running, especially when we get into the hundred mile. Well I mean now we have to 100 miles starting to feel like the introductory to. I don't want that to be the assumption by people because I think there's plenty of value and the, the 50 K's, the 80 K's, 100 K's and things like that as well. But as a sport kind of grows and people start getting interested. You do see more like 200 mile interest, multi-day stuff and that sort of thing. And and yeah, I mean, I just think you're spot on with that where you just don't need or the speed that you need to retain to be able to develop as a 100 miler or beyond is just different than, than shorter endurance events to the degree where you could look at just the relative experience you have at age 40 versus age 25. It's like, yeah, you probably bounce back from some crazy stuff a little quicker at 25, but you're probably not making as many mistakes at 40. You've probably like whittled down your approach to such a degree where you're just making fewer mistakes on race day. And I think we'll continue to see top level performances in the 40 year old category. And I think we can break age curves. It's something I've seen in coaching more and more, is that a lot of the reason that athletes have age cycles in endurance running and endurance sports in general, is that peak power output within the muscle fibers themselves goes down. Make sense? There's inertia in that, but it doesn't have to. the limitations. Yes. At velocity of VO2 max over actual performance, like performing at five K's will slightly go down and you're not going to see an Olympic champion. That's this age. But what you can do is as long as you're able to maintain the peak output, which you can do, like via very short things, we're talking 20, 32nd type, hill and hill strides, things like that. Then and then combine that with things like lifting like squats. If you're maintaining your peak power, then the actual thing that starts to go down once you hit 25, that peak power metric, you can maintain or even improve slightly. And then in the background you got the aerobic development, which that just is more area under the curve as you get older. And one thing I've seen in coaching is that there, yes, there is a particular drop off that happens over like menopause for women or, you know, hormonal changes for men that happen in the late 40s. But around that time, both before and after, you can keep improving. so, I mean, for me, my first 50 K was in 2014 and it was done on a whim. It took me ten years to get to 100 miles. and, you know, I'm glad it did because I learned a lot in that time. I got hardened to the miles, and I'm hoping that if we're fast forward in ten years from now, people will be looking back at what I just did is like, just the start, but, Yeah, betting on that max power is the key. Yeah, that's actually maybe a good jumping point. I was going to ask you about just some of your training leading into Leadville. I think there's maybe some surprises of people who haven't followed your immediate, kind of hadn't followed you while you were preparing for it, but then haven't paid attention to what you've been saying after finishing as well. But I want to start with the strength work. Like what kind of, what is what what role does that play in your preparation for something like Leadville? Yeah, yeah. So for me, when it comes to strength, I keep it real simple. I do a couple sets of squats twice a week. Plus this, these routines we have online. If anyone's curious, they can look up, ultra legs or speed legs, just free, resources online that are basically simple bodyweight type exercises. That's all it is for strength. Just reinforcing it enough so that it works for me. And I'm talking squatting. Is this hilarious for coming from a football background, but 135, ten times? A few times like that for a few sets, which, you know, obviously, like when I was 16. I would laugh so hard and stick my head into a, toilet bowl, give myself whatever they call those things, stuffed myself somewhere else. so strength work isn't a huge part of it. It's just a background influence. And then training wise, I don't do the volume of other people that might have had these types of results historically in ultras, like, I mean, I'm not a historian of the sport, but, what people are saying is, you know, pretty flattering about where it stands historically. And, you know, a lot of those athletes were doing huge volume. and I don't, you know, I train 8 to 12 hours a week for aerobic system. I really focus on building speed. My goal over the course of the summer and going to the start line of the race is if I get to that start line, and I feel like if we were at sea level, I could run a four minute mile, then I'll be good to go in 100 hours. So essentially we're taking a little bit more of a speed oriented approach to it. At the end of the day, if running can take less energy because my ceiling is a little bit higher, then I'll be more prepared to face the unknown of race day. and different things work for everyone. Maybe different things would have even worked for me. And the coolest thing about endurance sports and why I love coaching is not because I want to see what I can do. I want to see what humans can do. and getting to participate at myself as an athlete is so cool. But when I'm 80, I'm hoping to still be participating as someone that is like watching all the people pushing the field forward like Zach has, like Zach has pushed it forward so much and a different perspective from a different perspective, but just as valid. And those principles I have also taken in and in little ways like while I'm might be notorious now for the number of carbohydrates I take during my races, I also do plenty. I mean, I don't talk about this publicly because there's risks of causing, you know, uproar. But I do plenty of runs with zero carbohydrates, you know, like there's because I'm trying to, you know, you can optimize everything at once. And that's something that I've helped learn understand from Zach. And so we're all just kind of standing on the shoulders of giants. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think for one, you made me think of, I think this was two years, year and a half ago at the 100 mile Road Championships. They, you know, they have all the age categories. I mean, they have the age categories at every race, I guess. But like at this particular one was interesting because you get to the 80 year old age category. And I would assume in most cases, if you're 80 plus and you're rolling up to 100 mile race, if you finish, you're winning that category. There was four guys between like 81 and 84, and it was just so fun. They did they did like a profile on that particular aspect of the event. And it was just fun to see, like, oh, well, he did his first hundred miler in 1973 or something like that. So yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll hopefully be one of those guys in, in, I guess over 40 years from now. But that'll be a fun, long journey if it if it makes it that way. That's my hope. I mean, when I quit football, I just wanted to be a lifelong athlete, you know? So if running is taken away from me for any reason, it'll be something else. you know, I don't care. I don't really care what it is. It would be kayak or something. Stand up paddle board. but I just think there's something about waking up every day and having a purpose that ties to your physical nature. That is so helpful in a world where it's just easy to be in your heads, especially in an online world where we are subject to so much freaking noise that having something that's just visceral and nasty, and all of the things that human bodies are, but also beautiful and uplifting like that to me, is what is most fulfilling about all sports. And, you know, I'm just like, so it's just so cool to do this 100 miler and explore a new frontier. And I hope to keep exploring new ones. Yeah. I want to go back to kind of your, your, your setup, because that was one of the topics that I wanted to chat about because you, it does sound like you do like what we would maybe consider a lower volume approach with, with ultra running. And this has always been interesting to me because I think this has been around, for a while, this kind of wide range of approaches. I remember, like Ian Sharman one year, I think it was 2018, we were at the Western Stage training camp and, you know, the Western States training camp, you cover 71 miles in three days. And we finished that last day and I'm talking to Ian and he's just like, oh, that's the first hundred mile week. I hit this entire build. And we're like, I think six weeks out from Western states at that point. And he's like, that's probably the only one I'm going to hit to. And I remember thinking, well, I was like, okay, well, he's you know, at that point I think he had had 8 or 9 top ten finishes in a row, including a third place finish there. So it was clearly working well for him. and it was kind of opened my eyes to like, you know, there's, there's guys doing like these mega miles, there's guys like Ian doing lower mileage and somehow we're more or less ending up in the same spot at the end of the day. or I should say, maybe the way to say it is, there's representation for all these different approaches on, on the podiums that we see. So, yeah, I find that interesting, that like, you know, just in general that this sport that. Maybe intuitively, be something. This is actually a conversation. I'd be curious if your, your, your experience with coaching clients too is like, one thing I'll often get is someone will look especially at the early stages of a training plan. They'll be like, where's the mileage? I thought I'd be doing like 5 hour or 6 hour long runs on the weekends. And you're like, yeah, right, right. It's like we're 20, 20 weeks out. So the way the way I sort of approach kind of my, my philosophy is like, we should spend at least two thirds of your training assuming we have like a reasonable time frame, two thirds of the time, just becoming a good runner and doing long runs that are extended past like three hours at that point are sort of going to be stealing from tomorrow in a lot of cases, or dropping in quality to the degree where we're not actually making you a better runner. So let's get let's check that. And then if we deviate from that to do some really long runs to get, you used to like core specific pacing and what your nutrition feels like at six hours versus two hours and things like that, we can do that, but we need to do that. On the foundation of a really strong runner in the first place. Yeah. Do you see that with your coaching clients too? Do you get, like pushback or questions about where are all the miles or where's the volume? Where's the eight hour long run? Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, we all have athletic insecurity in in ultras. The way that manifests for a lot of people is being worried that they're not running enough. and aerobic system does matter. Like, everything I'm going to talk about today has been rested on 18 years since I quit football of building this up. Right. So it's not happening in a vacuum. And it's important to recognize that. But in this build, I did one six hour run, which was a race in July, a 3.5 hour run, a couple, three, three hour runs, and then everything else is shorter, you know, because, like, I'm covering a lot of ground, but I'm covering it pretty fast, so it's not going that far. and I think what people just need to ground themselves in is like, what are we actually trying to adapt? Because, yeah, if you think about it outside of physiology, you can be like, well, yeah, I mean, you're going to be running 15 hours at Leadville. Shouldn't that be, you know, eight hour training runs? You need to get used to it. And it's like, well, what happens in eight hours of a training run? Nothing good, nothing good. Because if you're thinking about the aerobic system, the aerobic system is basically going to get every adaptation you could ever dream of. Around two hours after that, you're starting to think about, fueling logistics and then, most significantly, how your body handles the muscular breakdown of the consistent movement in motion. And for that, a lot of that just comes from for a race like Leadville. So uphill, downhill. and so you combine all that and yes, the chronic load of the aerobic system matters, and I've had 18 years of it, so I'm pretty confident there. The acute load is mostly just about preparing the muscles themselves for some of the damage that downhills can do them, or just the damages of being on your feet that long. If you're on a flat race, which also add up because of eccentric muscle contraction. So. Like for me, I think basically what longer long runs do is they just make you slower. And at the end of the day, all of these races end up being a math equation. even though I'm a touchy feely guy and a touchy feely coach, I'm trying to solve a math equation, which is how can we push as hard as we can while maintaining energy availability, glycogen availability for that athlete? and that means that to do that, we want their zone two aerobic threshold to be as fast as possible, because if that's faster, they're burning less glycogen for the same efforts. And so for for me it's like, well if that pace needs to if my zone two paces need to be in the five minutes per mile area 530 or whatever, then I have, you know, I can't afford to get too much slower. So I want to try to minimize whatever breakdown stresses I'm doing to the minimum amount possible. so that hopefully I can show up to the start line. And if they told me it was a mile or A5K, I'd be okay. Not because that speed matters, but because the ratios that that speed determines of where then my zone to personally will sit ends up being what determines how hard I can go, how fast I can go. And in this case, you know, chasing a course record that like, is by one of the best athletes who's ever lived, who has the highest VO2 max I've ever seen personally in a runner. and yes, he was in a different era, so I have an advantage there. Like, I have a lot of nutrition advantages and, you know, training theory and shoes most significantly. But I'm going to need every ounce of help I can get because he is better than I am. even though I beat his record, he's better than I am. But maybe I have some advantages when it comes to solving that equation. Yeah. It is really interesting. I think we're definitely on the same page where I think like the real big indicator when you get into the hundred mile distance is like what is your pace at your aerobic threshold. Because really like the consequence of things like fueling and just you know the, the exponential fatigue you're going to take on by crossing over that frequently is I wouldn't say it's a no go zone, but it's a zone you want to kind of stay, stay away from like crossing on a, on a, on a regular basis. If you want things to likely go well for you on race day. So it just makes sense. If you're faster at that intensity, then, you know, any effort you give is going to produce a slightly faster pace. And and then then it's just yeah, then it's just fueling and executing and hydrating and all the other stuff that goes into the variables that get you to the finish line at these things. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, everything works differently for different people. Like one way to solve that equation is to be so aerobically efficient, that you can basically go all day. And that's kind of, you know, the Kilian Jornet Courtney de Walter, I mean, granted, Kilian is also the fastest guy out there, but that style of ultra training, which is awesome, I don't have time for it, unfortunately, in my life, nor would I stay healthy, probably because I have a tendency towards soft tissue injuries like muscle injuries when I do. If I ever tried to do 20 plus hours a week, which they can do week in, week out, they're the best of all time. You know, I'm not I'm not trying to compete with them necessarily. but, you know, in the context of my coaching and, you know, we coach have coached winners of Leadville, coached winners of Western states and KSI and Europe and, you know, dozens of US national champions, people at the Olympic trials, all of that. And what we find is like, yeah, I mean, the same principles work whether someone's racing A5K or 100 mile. and you just kind of have to understand how that athlete best solves the equation. Like where does their physiology, kind of converge? And so my skill set is not in running really high volume and sustaining it. And my skill set is that like, powerful. Still, even all these years after football, I'm pretty powerful guy. I can, you know, do like, pretty good speed. I have pretty good, like, aerobic efficiency after all these years. And so for me personally, solving it meant just, you know, slightly fewer miles. But, you know, it's exciting because there's so many different ways to do it. And that's the coolest thing about science is when you combine training theory and training science and just science about physiology in general, the sky's the limit. Yeah. No doubt. Have you worked with anyone in the past where they have a high propensity to get injured with speed works, and you've had a little more, assuming they have it available to them, like a more volume based approach and less speed work. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, coach athletes that are over 100 miles a week pretty constantly. But even for them, we'll do usually a lot of hill work on to make because like hill work is less impact forces. So for most of the listeners out there, like if you're newer to running, you should be doing most of your speed or speed type stuff on uphills because it's just less impact on your body. and I constantly want to get back to that power framework, because for most athletes, I like to think of running as a power sport. It is how much power you can put out per stride. And, you know, the problem is a lot of the freaks that we derive training theory from, you know, the superstars who we all might know, they're so powerful at baseline, they're so good that they barely need to think about it until they get older. but you know, our framework is even for the freaks, which we're fortunate to coach some of the best of all time, like Grayson Murphy, who's won a bunch of world championships. Like for those athletes, you know, they can build that power to like, that's where you start to see these non-linear gains, where they're like Z2 paces get faster and faster and faster and faster. and once that happens, you kind of like, get the snowball rolling downhill and some great things can happen. Yeah I know I've one thing I've learned through my own experience. and to some degree this is specific to me. But if I do too many flat ultras and just too many flat races in general, I sort of hit like this, like stagnant phase where I need to kind of just separate myself from that and focus on, I mean, I guess I wouldn't have to, but the way I do it is I separate myself from that and train for something that's more steep. And regardless of whether I feel like I'm going to do good or not at that race isn't really the the the goal. The goal is to kind of get some of that, that strength that you're going to get from running uphill and some of that very terrain that kind of addresses a lot of those things you mentioned by just doing the running aspect of things on those type of trains. And every time I come back to that, I always think, okay, well, I'm going to have this like longer phase to get my pace back down to where it would be at my zone two on the flats. And it's it's never the case. It's always like, oh, I actually think I upgraded a little bit or I'm better off now. And it's just, you know, it's one of those things where I think, like, especially as I get older to like, I, you know, I'm not sitting on that same kind of strength reserve that I would have had just from being alive essentially in your 20s and doing some active stuff or, or the other way I sometimes think about it is like I'm so far separated from like, team sports and things that would introduce me to a lot more kind of power, explosive type movements just through play. Now I have to be mindful to, to introduce that into my own lifestyle now so that I don't don't lose some of that, or I stay on top of some of that and it doesn't negatively impact not doing it doesn't negatively impact my progression. And as a runner. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're one of the most economical athletes that's ever lived on flat ground in particular, you know, like that. that's it's remarkable. and you start to think about trade offs here, that that type of flat ground economy, might partially be dependent on, you know, most likely if we took a muscle biopsy of your leg, like, we'd see a level of slow twitch fiber recruitment. That is pretty wild. I'm not like that. You know, I come from a faster Twitch background, and I feel like most athletes, actually, they have these limitations at the top end that just need to constantly be developed. So like when I say hills, what I'm thinking about usually is like people pushing hard on these, like I'm hitting, you know, the equivalent of like three 30 minutes per mile, great adjusted pace for 20 or 30s like the actual pure speed, pure power. that I think is actually appealing to a lot of people because, it's fun to a certain extent, like running up the hill really fast feels like recess. But, yeah, you know, constantly, constantly reinforcing that, I think ends up being one of those kind of cheat codes. Because if you do it over multiple years, for me at least, like I, the only ubiquitous thing in athletes we coach are these strides. You know, it's like maintaining top end output. Everything else can kind of vary from there. Yeah. You're, you're pretty vocal about the stride side of things where I think you do strides like pretty much every other run. Am I correct about that 3 or 4 times a week for sure. Is that how many like what are, what are the stride kind of look like for you. So usually 4 to 8 of these which are 20 to 30s long. for me now at this age, they're usually on uphills because flats are a little bit of a higher injury risk. and just ease into them, get going, start to get close to hitting top speed but without sprinting. So you're not, you know, flailing your arms like you're running the 40 yard dash at the NFL combine. you're trying to run with your long distance form, but make it as fast and powerful as possible. So, you know, getting up to those pieces that are quite fast, like for athletes, the types of pieces that they might race in 800 meter if they ever did, or a mile. and then just, you know, easy jog back to where you were. Do it again. you know, 1 or 2 minutes of recovery and do those at the end of runs. And that type of thing is just trying to constantly reinforce this neuromuscular biomechanical ability to run fast, because running is not just, you know, you're not just a pair of, like, lungs with legs. There's it's so much more complicated how the brain modulates all of this. And so, you know, we're constantly trying to reinforce that. In fact, study came out just the other week. That was one of my favorites ever. This was actually done on hockey players, which is kind of cool when you think about the analogies across sports and the human body. But what they had these hockey players do is 22nd accelerations like this, very similar to strides. And then they did a four week washout period. So four weeks of the intervention, four week washout period. And the people that did the strides, had fundamentally changed hearts. So their cardiac output increased pretty substantially even after the washout period. So the the accelerations they were doing caused their heart to pump more with each beat. And it was an adaptation that stuck. so it just points out that, like, there's central adaptation factors that are kind of weird and don't make much sense. But that's the fun part of solving these physiological puzzles is there's a ton of interacting variables, some of which are positive like that, some of which are negative, like, yes, there's a much higher risk of faster twitch muscle fiber recruitment, and you're trying to balance it all. Yeah. No that's a good point I think. yeah. Generally speaking I think it's a, it's a good input to have in your training if you're looking to even have a scenario where you're kind of adding more speed work to your programming, if you're doing strides a little more frequently, you're sort of closing that gap a little bit, too. So when we talk about, like the injury risk of higher intensity stuff, I think, or just speed work in general, I think, you know, keeping strides in the rotation is going to be something that helps, keep you in a better spot. So you're not, like you said, flailing around too and efficiently out there when you're doing your first speed work sessions. It's the wildest, okay? It's the wildest thing in studies. This is something I cannot be an evangelist enough for. because I think often, especially now, that VO2 max is all the rage, especially amongst probably some of the listeners to this podcast who might be outside of like the training theory margins of running that I am like they're maybe coming from different sports or listening to Andrew Huberman or something like that is when you introduce these in studies in a number of studies. Now, back this up. What ends up happening is that even if it's all you're doing, you'll see an improvement not in the raw VO2 max number, but in how fast an athlete goes at that number. So they'll see 4 to 6% improvements in someone's like, let's say five K pace just from doing this intervention for six weeks and that is just bonkers. It boggles the mind because it just means the body is using your energy more efficiently. and I don't know, one of those studies in particular did something that was pretty wild and maybe relevant here too, is they used a glycogen depletion protocol. So some of these athletes did it on zero glycogen. And the reason was because they wanted to take muscle biopsies and use that to isolate where exactly the adaptations were coming from. And what they found is that the adaptations from these were coming from the slow twitch muscle fibers themselves. So for some reason, it causes the muscle fibers that make you a better runner to be stiffer. So by doing that, you essentially just have it's like upgrading your bike from, you know, one of the $1,000 ones you might get on Craigslist to one of those $10,000 bikes that just snaps under your your legs, your body. And we're still not 100% sure why. and basically everything in training theory is like that. We're kind of still trying to understand it, but when I toe the line at Leadville, when I'm doing in advantage, I have is that 19 years have passed since Matt Carpenter set that legendary record. And we now understand the body, you know, like it's the equivalent of 500 years more of physiological understanding. And so I'm trying to ride that wave. Yeah. That's really interesting. I want to ask you a little bit about kind of the speed work protocols that you use when you're placing those into your training program. Are you targeting like, like let's say you're planning out a week or a series of weeks. Are you targeting like VO2 max and threshold type intensity stuff with your speed work? Yeah, definitely. So I'm doing those strides on easy days, usually. So just to cap off my easy days and then I'm doing speed work almost every week. So by speed, I mean, you know, VO2 type things, ten K effort, that sort of effort, these like ten K effort for me at this stage is pretty quick. So I don't want to go too much faster than that in training or I might get injured. So, you know, anything from 10 to 15 to 25 minutes of intervals. always three minutes or less. with moderate with like enough recovery. and then threshold. I'll do like twice a week, let's say maybe, maybe a little bit or not. Twice a week. Twice. Once every two weeks. which threshold is like one hour effort, let's say. I'll do that on long runs. Sometimes I'll do it as intervals. but like threshold for me is more of a supportive mechanism because I view it as buttressing the aerobic system, whereas the speed stuff is basically the non-negotiable, where I need to keep that going. And then as the ultra gets closer, I take out a lot of the speed work, because at that point, like it's much less important, and then bringing the threshold much more to get my aerobic system going. And at the tail end of this cycle, I did all of the biggest threshold workouts on the uphill treadmill. just because they were so big that if I did them outside, I would probably get injured and uphill treadmill just can control them for me. So we're talking 12 by five minutes. 20 by three minutes. you know, really big beefy sessions that when I did those and I posted them on Strava, I think anyone who understood the numbers that I was showing got it. Got why I thought the course record was possible, even if the broader world ended up being shocked by it. Like, I think that was the moment where they probably were understood, what was possible out there for me? Yeah. Yeah. No. Your training was spectacular. I think it's just like a really interesting case study of like just like preparing for 100 mile race. And then when you have a performance like you did obviously gets a little more interest from people. But then it's like kind of, you know, we we look at it as a celebratory thing, but it is also kind of a proof is in the pudding for your concept, to some degree to it where it obviously it just becomes hard to argue like, well, if you did this differently, maybe he would have ran 14, 59 or something. Yeah. I mean especially especially with my like, yeah, I'm good. And I definitely have talent. But like compared to the best of the best that have ever done it like Matt Carpenter. No. You know, just realistically like I haven't shown it at least. and so, yeah, I mean, there was definitely time left on the course for me, but I don't think, like, you know, I'm the one to really crush the course record more. I think someone will, I think, sooner rather than later, because I believe in this community But yeah, I think, it was nice because, you know, we've gotten a lot of pushback over time about I've never run 100 miles or so. How can I coach 100 miler? Nor is my wife Megan, who's a like eight time member of team USA. But how can she coach it when she hasn't done it? But our athletes have excelled, you know? and it was just kind of nice because like, you've probably seen Zach, I, I've on Twitter, I've started talking about it again like I stopped posting on almost anywhere because I was just like, I didn't want to deal with having to feel like I was going to deal with people telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about, you know? which is like a lot of people face that online and, you know, but now I'm like, well, for at least a little bit, come at me, bro, for just at least a little bit. Yeah. I, you know, I have to apologize a little bit because I think I probably poked the bear a little bit with that one online too, where it's. Oh, no, you're the best you have. You have been so supportive for so long, Zach. You believed in me forever. And yeah, we like we have slightly different approaches on certain things, but I can't underscore enough how much I have learned from you and how many of your principles I've then incorporated into how we coach, how I think about training myself. So fuck yeah, sure. No, I totally appreciate that. What I mean is, like, you probably would like to move past that narrative to some degree and, you know, people like me bringing it up doesn't necessarily help that, but it's just one of those things I wouldn't say, like I, I wouldn't say it was anywhere near like a consensus of people wondering like, oh, well, you know, I mean, obviously you have a successful coaching business. There's people who believe in you and trust in your approach without you going out and crushing 100 miler and into in reality, had you gone out and just finished Leadville, you sort of squashed that narrative to a large degree too, because I think when people look at it through that lens, they're sort of looking at it through through a lens of. It's there's experiences you have in the hundred mile distance that are unique enough, where I think people just have a little bit of whether it's legitimate or not, a little bit of like self-assurance of like, okay, I'm working with a person who knows what I'm going through at mile 80 and, you know, knows I'm going and that sort of thing. And I don't necessarily feel like that's a great, like a great kind of maybe it's something we need to just dispel in the ultrarunning community to some degree, because I think it's like, I think the experiences are probably unique enough that it's probably a sort of a silly thing, but then there's probably elements of it where we are in a sport where we're extrapolating forward a lot of science and a lot of information to try to get the right answers for these things. That to some degree, experiences and things do carry maybe a little more weight than they would in like, you know, training an Olympic five K athlete where we've turned over so many of the rocks in terms of what's going to work and what's not going to work, that, you know, there's there's a much narrower channel that you probably need to operate within before you start sounding crazy and being a negative influence on the person's progress. yeah. I mean, to build on that, though, I think hopefully for anyone out there like you don't need to be aware of what what we're referring to to get that. Like it was hard actually dealing with the types of things I've had to deal with online for a long time when we're just trying to put love out into the world. yeah. And like, my reflection on this is like, I'm never, like, one. Use your voice out there. trust yourself. But two people do this because they do not understand what they're talking about. Like not ultras are not special. Like, ultras are amazing. It's the most uplifting, cool thing in the world. But. If you understand fast running, you would never, ever make that criticism of somebody. like, the types of things that I have coached and done on tracks are so much more complex and so much more difficult than nailing 100 miler. 100 miles are so hard, and it's a total crapshoot. And it could could always be a bad day. But like running is running and we should uplift curiosity, openness to learning. Like I have learned so much from everybody in this field. and certainly we should reject people that are close minded and say that there's gatekeeping in fields like this. you know, I think it really hurts everybody because it prevents new people from getting into it. And I shudder to think about all the young coaches who might never have spread their wings because they were worried about similar criticism. thankfully, you know, not don't pity me. Like, I've been successful and I've had a lot of really a lot of fun doing it. but I just think the reflection point for me now is, like all along I started to buy into a narrative that was based in the insecurity of others, and thus I became insecure about myself. And I hope the lesson that people see from that is just like, you're amazing. Go for it. Try it out, spread your wings. You'll be good as long as you're open and curious to learn. Yeah, I think we do ourselves a disservice in the ultrarunning community by being an absolutist, because it is. There's there's still so much to learn. And I think it's cool that in the same regard, we've come a very long ways in the last decade, in terms of like what people do, that is likely going to yield a better result that we can probably safely assume is is a positive thing for people to practice and and follow from at least a starting point standpoint. But yeah, when you get into a sport like this, I think if you're just if you're if you're really rigid in your, your approach and your, your absolutism is, is so refined that you're, you're blocking people from getting in, you know, that that's where I think there is a problem there. and you're certainly a solution to that. So it's the most beautiful community in the world. but I think all fields have the same type of thing, you know, like, I don't know. I guess my thing is, like, the more voices, the better, the more conflicting. perspectives, the better. Like, that's where growth comes from is evolution is all about the competition element, but that the competition element in this world doesn't. It can come from a place of love, like there's not a winner and a loser. It's just kind of we're all trying to push a boat in the same direction. so yeah, I mean, that's that's my goal. And that's why I love human performance outliers. It's like, not only do I learn from running, I mean, my fueling strategy was informed in how I trained for my fueling strategy was informed by competitive eating training. It's like I'm learning from all different types of training. Like you have to if you're, you know, truly don't know where the human limits lie. Yeah. No, you're spot on, I think. And that's that's a great topic I want to chat to you about too, because one thing you posted about that I think caught a lot of attention was your fueling strategy for, for Leadville, where, you know, I was I started following this topic, well, specifically with like the hyper fueling, like probably about at least a year ago. But, you know, you started to see like, people starting to push the limits on what we would have expected to be doable from a digestive standpoint. And then I think there was an interesting data set after Western states where, there was I think they collected pretty much I think it was at least nine, if not all ten of the top ten men. And then they collected at least half of the women's top ten and what their fueling was. And I mean, we were seeing these people hit like these numbers of like, I think Hayden someone else was a little higher than Hayden. But, you know, Hayden was also kind of on the radar for me because at Black Hand and he had like 109g, per hour and then you come out and you're doing like 120 to 130, which is a little closer to what I think we're seeing the cyclists do, which in my mind was like, that's probably a little too far for 100 miles from a from a digestive standpoint for most people, because if the cyclists are getting away with it, the runners maybe have a little bit of a higher bar to clear from just the the mechanics and how that's going to sit. But then you did it. So it's like, I love that, I love it. Yet. Also, the subject caveat, exactly like you said, that to do that, I have to keep pushing. because as soon as I stop pushing, I'm not going to be oxidizing at the rate that I need to, to make that feasible. So, you know, it is playing with fire and I don't think going longer than 15 hours or whatever, it makes as much sense to try that. so again, you nailed it. What I'm motivated by really is the world of cycling. So professional cycling to me is the ultimate endurance, experiment, because you have athletes who are training at the very limits of what's physically feasible, and the margins are 0.1%. Right. Like the margins between me and Matt Carpenter. Someone posted on Instagram that it was a 1.6% difference. I haven't done the math on that, but that in the scope of endurance training is a big difference. Like a lot of things could contribute to that. You don't know. But in cycling, if something causes a 0.1% difference, it's going to rise to the top. just given the nature of the sport, which has been terrible in the past, because there have been cheaters, but hopefully now we're looking at like a more like a cleaner sport. And in that case, like, why is everyone in cycling getting stronger? And if you talk behind the scenes to professional cycling coaches and I try to reach out to them whenever I can, they're just like, David. It's the feeling, you know? and yeah, maybe sodium bicarb plays a role like I did take sodium bicarb before my 100, maybe post-exercise ketones play a role. I take post-exercise ketones 2 to 3 times a week. but at the end of the day, they're pushing such high, literally their wattage, their power output is so high and there's no jarring. So they're seeing what is possible in at the tour de France, Victor Campana won a stage one, stage 18 this year, and he did it doing 132g per hour as a very unexpected winner. And to me, that was the moment where I was like. All right. I'm trying to do something that I have never done, which is 100 miler, at a pace that probably very few people expect I can do. just historically. And to do that, I'm going to have to try to do something that maybe no one's ever done. and so, you know, n equals one, right? Like, talent goes all different directions, like some people have. VO2 max is a talent. Maybe my talent is that I can take in a lot of gels like, yeah, that's a talent too. And I don't like we have to recognize that that could be my that could be from my parents. Like it could just be genetics or it could be from football. You know, I had tons of protein shakes when I was 16, so maybe that played a role. yeah. You've been training the gut from an early age. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, also, though I've practiced so much like we call it slurping where, you know, I think most people when they take a gel just kind of like sip it on there. What I do is I take one of these liquid gels and I just squirt it past my palate so that I don't have the involuntary, like rejection of sweet foods that you can sometimes get. Everyone's different, but and even with that, ten minutes after the finish, I was straight into a barf bag. Right? So, I was probably very close to the razor's edge. but my guess is that's where, like, most of these hard records are going to happen. Is that the razor's edge? And also, who knows, maybe at 75g an hour? I would have been fine. You know, it's just it's hard to know, like, I think after the fact justifications might be simplifying it, but it was a lot of a lot of gels, a lot of gels. I can never I'm going to not look at a gel for another month or two, probably. Yeah. No, I can imagine, like, well, you know, when you posted the numbers, I started just, you know, running the math a little bit on my with myself or with, with the kind of like what you did in the stuff that you put out there. And it's like if you're hitting High Zone two and then flirting into zone three occasionally for someone with your workload, you know you're putting out probably close to a thousand calories per hour from a metabolic standpoint, maybe a little less than that. But like, I mean, there's probably hours where you are hitting a thousand. And if we assume you're up to your aerobic threshold and then flirting past it at times on some climbs, if you're following a moderate to high carbohydrate diet, you're going to have about a 5050 split between carbs and fats. So for someone with your workload, you might need 120g of carbohydrates to defend that. So the the funny, the interesting thing about this topic I find, is just if we take you and we take the person who cross the finish line at the very end of the of Leadville, we almost have a two weeks of time. So you ran 100 miles. They ran 100 miles. Both of you probably worked as hard as you possibly could for the time you were out there. And. And you and you minus the extra, just like non running related time. Or I shouldn't say non-runner related, but the additional time that they're going to have other metabolic processes add to their metabolism. We can just like roughly say like you're almost two x ING their, their workload. so for them they may actually need as much energy intake as you do. They're just distributing it over 30 hours versus 15 hours. So then there may be 50 or 60g per hour. So when you look at it from and those are the two extremes obviously. But when you're looking at it from a workload standpoint, if you can pinpoint your ratio is a faster carbohydrates at that intensity, the fueling picture starts to make a little bit more sense in terms of what's going to be required. So I do think like, you know, given the way that you've described what you're doing, like that was probably a risk worth taking if your goal was to break Matt Carpenter's record and then, you know, you got to roll the dice to some degree at that point. Best description ever. You are so smart, Zach. Like exact same rationale, like same numbers almost to a tee that Megan and I used as we approach this. Like I haven't done the metabolic cart tests, but I know from I measure everything in training that I can. I know I'm pretty confident in all of this. And yeah, I do actually try to work on my fat oxidation efficiency. though again, not something we talk about publicly, but I, I've done 20 plus milers without any fuel in this build and I'm good. I can do that. Like I can run 20. You know, I can probably run 40 miles without fuel in this, you know, six minutes, some paces. But, when I start pushing in these races, like my efficiency, I don't do any of the dietary stuff that might change those numbers. So we're dealing with that type of ratio. And, I think that there might actually be, you know, as you've pointed out, opportunities to mess with that ratio for male athletes. like Kilian, for example, Kilian Jornet, best to do it, best ever to do it, wrote a training manual last week. And one of the things he talked about was how he uses fasted training within his training, and a totally different way than I do. but, you know, when the goat's doing it, you can't can't argue at least how it applies to the goat. So I think there are margins. I do say, for the female listeners out there, like, you got to be careful with the endocrine system because, for women it's a totally different ballgame. But. For men like this is a new frontier. And right now we're at the very infancy, infancy of this field in terms of understanding and an applied way. And like I think what I showed is that maybe for some athletes, this applies a little bit more than we've assumed in running. And, you know, others have too. most notably Tom Evans. He's he's been pretty open about his numbers. He won Western states last year, I believe. and I can't wait to see where it goes because I don't know, like, part of me was, was thinking while I was out there, if this was a 50 K, what would happen if I took in 150g an hour? I could do it. Should I do it? Probably not, but should I? Maybe. Who knows, maybe it would be worth trying just to see. Yeah. Start a conversation at least. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well it is. It'd be cool to see if you got a metabolic metabolic heart test just to see where those ratios were at, because I think this is where the topic gets interesting for me. you know, because I do follow a lower carbohydrate approach to my own nutrition. not a strict ketogenic one, but I'm sure like my ratios of carbohydrates to fats differ from yours quite a bit in my daily nutrition and like I've gotten the metabolic cart test done. So actually, when I ran 1119 for 100 miles, I had gotten a test done that suggested that the heart rate at which I was likely going to race at was going to be around an 80 to 90% fat side of the ratio there. So I built my carbohydrate input, which is right around 40g. 40g was what would it be like? It was like the ceiling of what I thought I would need based on those numbers. And I knew 40g wasn't going to create a digestive issue in most cases, because it was a climate controlled facility. It was a 55 degree. So I was like, this is like the the least likely place to have a digestive issue if we're looking at heat as a is a driver for that to some degree. So I just kind of said, well, 40 I can no, I can get away with it's going to defend what I need and it works great. But you know, that's a different you know, there's just different approaches that get to that where, you know, if I was following a high carbohydrate diet, I'd likely have been I mean, my workload that day was, I was averaging nine miles per hour, so probably about roughly 900 calories per hour or so. And, you know, if I was closer to a 5050 split, then I would have probably needed closer to 400 500 calories per hour in order to kind of hit that same standard. But, the question becomes there's trade offs in that too. Yeah. What happens when you like for example, on flats I it probably wouldn't work for me as much. but on hills because, because the workload wouldn't be as high, because, you know, you're in for a good example. You're such an efficient athlete that your actual muscular output at nine miles an hour is pretty low for you. Like, you're you're sufficient. but if we push you uphill, you're starting to have to put out more pure wattage, let's say, like it's not equal. Right. Because, the and then at that point you're starting to get all right, maybe those equations start to change and you start. So the cool thing about running is there's all of these different disciplines within a two. And then we're talking different stories as well. It's not just like oh well the outputs, the outputs, the output. It's like no, it's actually kind of complicated. and then you get in the mountains and everything goes to shit. yeah. So and I mean, you know, there's all sorts of things that can change the equation. Yeah. I mean, I've read your everything you've written basically on this topic to try to understand more and more how it works at the very limits of human performance because you know, you are not you do not exist in studies like there's one Zach better. and thus you are a study. And so I've been trying to follow the Zach Bitar study for years to, like, understand that world, because I think it's important. And, you know, like, all of it kind of goes into the like amalgamation of what's going to create the champion 20 years from now. that's crushing all of these records. Yeah. Yeah. And we do have that sort of scenario to where like I think and both of us have been open about this. I'm just a little bit more like in the, in the rear view mirror to the degree that my records have gotten broken. But like, I think like you and I are both kind of similar in that like when we broke our records, we were very aware, like, okay, well, it's just a matter of time before these go down and whatever process the person or people that do it are using will be micromanaged and hyper focused upon and may become the thing for, for however long it takes before someone does it differently and eventually will refine it to the degree, I think, where you do have a little bit more of a narrow type of, scenario where at the very tip of the spear, there's not as much maybe diversity in terms of what people can get away with and still be winning these things. But, we're just in a really cool part of the sport where that learning process is still occurring to some degree. Just like evolution, species diversity is a key part of an evolving system and that's what I want. Let's celebrate it. More people doing different things. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about from a like an input standpoint was your caffeine intake. So I actually have. Yeah. So like when I was listening to your recap, which I should just make a quick plug for that, like for anyone who's really interested, you and Megan both kind of sat down for, I believe, about two hours and just unpacked so much of what you went through that day, and it was it was such a fun listen. And I was joking with Nicole about it afterwards because I was I told them, I told her, the script, if you just put a script of that podcast and I read it, it would take me three hours and it took you guys two hours, so. Yeah. No. So it's it's a it's an acquired taste. Hey, if you go to listen. Thank you. If you like it, subscribe click follow. If you don't like it, don't leave a one star review. Please. Just just. It's okay if it's not for you. We're we're a little weird. That's cool, I liked it. I thought it was great. And it was just. It was. It was early enough where it was raw but you clearly had thought through the process ahead of time and you executed on it. So there was a lot of just things that it didn't really matter if you hadn't sat down and digested it all because it was just there. It's like what you did versus what you planned. and, and one of the things that stood out to me, though, was you went in with a, with a sort of a protocol of you were going to maybe get around 800mg of caffeine over the course of the race. You ended up with 1400 milligrams. So tell us a little bit about how that happened. So. Okay. obviously caffeine is an academic performance enhancer. it depends on your caffeine processing genotype. I know mine, so I know I'm a caffeine responder. and thus I know it helps me. And I've used it in races to know it helps my fatigue resistance, which is the golden metric for ultra performance. How much does your body fade from your peak output after a certain amount of load? After a certain amount of workload, usually 3000 kilojoules, is the watts used in the cycling literature. It's kind of how I like to think about it too. So I know that caffeine works for that. And so I was like, all right, I think the literature generally indicates that up to 800 you can be okay with if you have this genotype. And we've seen it in cycling. And then I got out there and you know, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And the way I was getting punched in the face is that I sometimes found my brain becoming a little bit less motivated and just a little bit less excited. And, you know, it's hard to stay focused for that long. And then I would take 100 milligram caffeine gel from precision Fuel and hydration, and all of a sudden I'd be like, I'm ready to take on the world. and then I got to mile 22. had a lead, was was going for it like the race was on at mile 22 already. And I told Megan, you know, give me another one. And she's like, all right. She she's a doctor. She is the best coach in the world. She's so smart. She gets it. And then at other aid stations, she kept giving it to me. And basically our theory there was that. You get one shot at history. This is a calculated risk. The risk would be toward your GI system or your heart. You got to be careful with your heart. but, you know, I ended up paying off, like, literally the last one I took. I remember thinking before it. Is this altitude sickness? Like, what's going on with me? And then after it, I remember thinking, I'm just happy to be here. so, you know, it, it added up for sure. And not something I'll ever recommend to an athlete. But I do want to be 100% transparent about everything I did for this record, just because I think otherwise. If you only tell part of the story you're looking at, you know when you're trying to like be open like this, you don't have to tell any of this story, but if you tell part of it, you're lying. And so, you know, for thinking about who comes next and how they did it, I kind of want people to know that the way I did it involved a lot of caffeine. and, I mean, it helps encourage studies to like when I look at, like, the caffeine research, like, there is some like to some, maybe you know more about this than I do, but like, there's there's some mixed messaging in terms of just the way it gets metabolized. So like you taking in 1400 milligrams of caffeine, sitting here versus you taking 14mg of caffeine over the course of running 100 miles in 15 hours could be quite a bit different in terms of how your body's processing that. So like, it's possible that if we look at some of the research that you're just it's getting cleared out of your system a little quicker because of the, the, the output that you're producing to. And that may be opened a door that allowed for 14 versus 800. Yeah, and maybe it was a little low or two. I think it's hard in the heat of battle to get all the numbers right. Yeah. It's rough estimates. Yeah. And so that's the thing too. It's like, well maybe it was actually a thousand. And I just got in my head, you know, because like I'm kind of an anxiety bubble in life. And so, you know, that night when I can't sleep and then the next night when I can't sleep, I might have just, like, started to like, you know, catastrophize about the caffeine. And now I'm good. so, yeah, I think the cool part about, you know, exploring the edges is sometimes you got to explore the edges. Yeah. Yeah. Well I explored the edges on accident once I did I was doing the Tunnel Hill hundred mile in 2018 and I had been using this this, this caffeine supplement for, for training and stuff and I was gonna use for race day and it was like a, it was a pro, it was a prototype. So I was given I was told to had 50mg per little packet. And so I planned on 50mg. It turned out it was actually 100mg. So I went from like a 500 target to 1000, and I did get some digestive issues from that. So there is going to be some individual variances. I mean, I should say, I assume that's what I got. It wasn't like terrible. I ran 1208 that day. So it's not like I was like a DNF from digestive issues, but I was having some bathroom stops that I typically wouldn't have had, and I think it might have been just like, a little bit of extra caffeine beyond what I was able to get away with, personally. But we're going to have a range in that too, where, you know, a thousand for you. Maybe different than a thousand for me. Yeah. And if you just do a 23 and me test, if you go down into your actual data that they give you, you can cross-reference that with studies that are on caffeine metabolism. So different gene alleles then can be used to understand whether any caffeine is safe or 200. You know. So for me it was like oh I'm actually one of those people that maybe, you know, who knows, there might be no upper limit. and I don't have that much caffeine in my normal life, but I have enough to be confident that, like, it won't cost too much of an issue. but yeah, it was a journey. It's journey into the great beyond. That night after I finished. I do have a caffeine question for you in general, because I've been thinking about this and I think I have a guy coming on the podcast to chat about this who maybe has more information on it, though, where I think of just like the caffeine research, where if you look at just, I mean, there's some new stuff, but generally like there's, you know, a target of, say, for a performance dose of caffeine is like 3 to 6mg/kg of body weight. And I look at that through the lens of like, okay, well, they're likely there. They're likely looking at that through more of a traditional endurance sport versus 15 hours out on the Leadville course for 100 miles, where I'm curious, like, I think there's maybe a path forward where or there's maybe two paths forward that I kind of think are maybe usable for people. And one is like, all right, let's lean on that, that, that research and say, okay, well, let's say you hit like a low point, or maybe you're out there for longer than you were and you're going through the night and you're getting kind of that sleepiness, and you hit the performance dose But from my experience, when I hit the performance dose, it's like almost a little too much incentive to run fast to the degree where I start getting tempted to go beyond 100 mile intensity. So then I look at it more like the way that sounds like you're describing as like a cognitive assist, where it's like, okay, I'm losing my focus. The perceived effort is creeping up a little bit, and I can go a fair bit under the performance dose and kind of recenter that. So then there's another path forward, I think, without looking at it through like, okay, I've got like a few opportunities to hit a performance dose of caffeine versus doing a little bit more of a microdosing process more frequently over the course of the the race itself. Do you have any thoughts on that versus like what you did or what you see? Other clients that you work with do with caffeine usage and races? He had me at microdosing. no. Just, Yeah. You know, I think even the performance dose, you look at those studies, you go down into them. You know, it's not very scientific. That's kind of random. there's there's people that go up or down on both. I think this is a place where, you know, applied science, just like how people do it, is the most instructive right now. So a good example for me is I've been inspired by the multi-day athletes I coach. So the coach athletes that go, you know, 48, 72 even farther hours, on these big routes. So two primary ones being John Kelly and Damian Hall. So John Kelly, many time finisher. Barkley one of the best endurance athletes ever. Same with Damian Hall. Absolute legend over in the UK. we've gotten to experiment on caffeine and I've learned from interestingly in that process, it's kind of like the competitive eaters thing with the fueling is I've learned from, Navy Seals and Special Forces people, and how they consider caffeine when they're in sleep deprived states. and what it ends up coming down to usually is that they try to time these, like, variations in the humans in the body's natural cycle based on, you know, where it is during the day, but it comes down to individual preference and variation. And there's only one way to learn that. So yeah, I think it's kind of a new frontier as well, because I do think that especially when we're talking about pure fatigue resistance, it's the miracle. Like is having the right amount on board, but too much is also like injuries. So, yeah, it's a it's a tough balance to strike for sure. And one that like, I don't know, I think we're going to be constantly but trying to strike. That being said, I do not think I'm going to ever take that much caffeine ever again. Yeah, yeah. Even if I'm going for a bigger court shocker, I don't I think that's a yeah. Yeah, it's it's just really interesting to hear all this stuff. so you were I think you mentioned kind of what you were actually on your I don't know if you said it on the podcast, but, or on this podcast, I know you said it on yours was just like you were using kind of a variety of different carbohydrate sources during the day. It wasn't like one product, but it sounds like it was mostly liquid gel based stuff. Yeah, yeah. So precision phone hydration, they're milk caffeine gels and then their electrolyte pills. So they are not electrolyte pills, electrolyte tabs. They make a just a tab thing that you put in your drink. then scratch for all my drinks, which is just a sports drink mix which was at the aid stations. but also it's my favorite thing in the world. So it was great that it was there. And then the bulk of my calories came from science and sport beta fuel gels. they're liquid. They're where the name slurp comes from. It's what a lot of the cycling peloton uses when they're not sponsored by anybody. And we're sponsored by the feed, so we're free to use whatever we want. So, yeah, science and sports data fuel gels probably formed the backbone of like 75 to 80% of the calories. Interesting. Did you you mentioned that you had been using some exogenous ketones. Did you not do that during the race? Just after the race? Yeah. Absolutely not. I think the research on that is actually poor and especially as it relates to performance. That being said, we don't know about ultras because you can't really study this that well. but the main way they're being used in like cycling, let's say nowadays is afterwards. So post-exercise ketones is a fascinating topic. and I was a skeptic forever. They seemed weird to me. And then I started talking to these cycling coaches and hearing about what's going on. And the theory and cycling is that at first they would take them during thinking it was helping, but was actually causing is these post-exercise adaptations that were unrelated to taking them during that during they might not even been helping at all. So it was kind of a confounding variable getting mixed up. And so after, though, some really interesting studies came out last year that showed that it caused a around 15 to 20% increase in natural EPO production after exercise. So that increases your red blood cell concentration. Very helpful. for endurance athletes or any athlete. But then also they did some really interesting intervention studies where athletes were given these protocols where they retain trained two times a day, six times a week to insight, overreaching, which is the state where your performance actually decreases. and the athletes that had ketones could not be overreached, and they were able to essentially train very hard without having issues. and this post-exercise. So for me, I was doing it 2 to 3 times per week. So not doing it as much maybe as study protocols or the cyclists because, it's pricey. I don't want to. I don't have that much money. yeah. But, yeah. Like just before this podcast, for example, I hopped on the bike for a few minutes, and the first thing I did when I got off was just took a ketone shot. for that reason, just to get. And I also think there might be some unexplored benefits in the post-exercise realm as it relates to aerobic system and things like that. Like, you know, I started taking Post-exercise ketones like last year at this time and this last year. Like objectively. You look at my endurance results, it's gone kind of bonkers. and you can't really ignore sometimes that maybe that's causing some sort of epigenetic signaling, something that is being hasn't been studied yet that might be significant. You know, if we're looking at this in the future. Yeah, yeah, we're definitely still in the infancy in terms of what we know and don't know with exogenous ketones. I think like generally like my current thought is that the strongest stuff is in the recovery side of things. So I think like, yeah, if you're going to pull the lever on it and you're thinking like, how do I minimize my input, but try to get the most benefit out of it? That's probably the way to go. I'm really curious about the difference between ultra marathon specifically, like really long ultra, where you're going to be zone two or lower versus like traditional Olympic distance stuff because, I had Brendan Egan on the podcast and he was he was telling me kind of a similar thing where like when we look at like moderate to higher intensity stuff, they were actually seeing some performance dips from the participants who had the exogenous ketones during that. And then they noticed with like the longer stuff. Then they started to maybe have some benefits in some studies. I think there's some contradictory studies as well. But like, you know, so like for me, you know, when I see that, I'm like, well, let's give it a shot and see what happens and, and play around with it just like. It's also weird, though, because, you know, ketones in particular causes your body to enter this state of ketosis. So we're doing a hack on human evolution. So human evolution gone on for forever. And to reach this point with how we enter ketosis and when you can take just a shot and start to push your body to produce all these ketones, you have all these ketone bodies, we don't know what comes on the other end. And so I do want to caution people, and I always try to do this, that because we don't know there are risks as well. And a study came out last actually a few years ago that did not get much attention, but has mirrored what I have seen in coaching that since I become a slight proponent of this. For some athletes, I have seen more pieces of bloodwork with abnormally low testosterone levels, both in men and women than before. And so what it seems like to me, and what the study found something similar. and so what it seems like to me is that maybe we're seeing a little bit of an endocrine system disturbance here, which makes sense, because going into ketosis naturally might cause that, and that impacts some people and not others. And so just like or maybe not, but it just points out that like whenever you're starting to do weird things also goes for sodium bicarbonate, which is all the rage right now in endurance sports when you're doing weird things that are illegal like that. And, you know, sometimes in studies the more immediate impacts, but the longer term impacts can become a little bit more uncertain. And so you're essentially conducting an experiment on millions of people. And that is a little unnerving. Also very exciting and cool and interesting but still unnerving. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's there's there's plenty of cautionary things to go along with any of that stuff, I think. But, yeah, it's an interesting topic. I'll be curious to see kind of how all that evolves over the years and what we learned. Yeah, we'll probably find some things like, well, we were dumb for doing that and we'll find other things like why didn't we apply it for that as well. So playing out. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's been like that forever. Yeah. one other topic I just wanted to kind of touch on with you was your, your pacing strategy. And this one caught my attention right away because for one, it was like a masterclass in prediction where you predict, I think was within like 26 seconds of your finishing time. Yeah, I predicted 15, 27 and I was 15, 26, 34. Wow. Yeah. So you clearly gave it some thought and kind of unpacked it to a degree where you had a plan and then you execute it and it just it just worked. So like when I see that, I get interested. I mean, this topic in general I've been really interested in over the last few years is just pacing and ultramarathon running. And I would say when I first got into ultrarunning, I was pretty confident in that. Like, there's some level of attrition that you just have to count on. That's going to mean like the best path forward is some degree of a positive split versus like an even or a negative split. Then I had the fortune or misfortune, depending on how you want to look at it, of negative splitting. My fastest hundred miler. So then I started thinking and the experience was different too. It was like I felt it was also a race where like, I felt the strongest at the end. And so then I started thinking, well, maybe that's the experience I should be looking for. I shouldn't be looking for this. Okay, I'm holding on for dear life at the end. But versus I'm accelerating through the finish more or less. And then it became a game of like, well, how accurately can I predict? Because if you're going to try to even or negative split something, you have to be able to accurately predict you. And I fallen victim to this so many times since then where it's like, well, I've put this standard for myself and it's so easy to say, okay, I want to hit that standard or better, but maybe I'm not there. And then I try to do something that is like a pacing strategy around that. And it's just, you know, I've been doing this long enough where I've probably refined my potential down, at least to a fine enough degree, where, I'm going to have to have a really, really good day to exceed what I've done in the past. And when when I'm off by a little bit, that could mean like, I'm the calculations are all off at the end of the day, but the way you described your hundred miler sounded a lot more like kind of how I felt when I did the negative split. But when I look at your splitting targets, like you, I think you came through 50 miles and like, was it like seven hours and like 10 or 15 minutes or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had like you I wouldn't say, I mean, as far as ultramarathons go, that people probably look at that and think that's a pretty even split race, but it is a positive split. So I'm kind of curious about just like the thought process behind that. If you have any opinions on just positive, even negative splitting and maybe just a little bit about how you kind of decided to kind of go about it the way you did. Yeah, I basically to summarize it, I don't think any. Record or whatever that's going to stand for more than a year is ever, ever, ever going to be a negative split in ultras. I think it's all positive splits because it gets back to that equation. We were talking about where, you know, if you're essentially trying to push that like high Z2 level, what ends up being the limiter is to your substrate and your mechanical system will start to break down, while you're pushing the same level. So if you go out easy enough that you're able to accelerate off it, you're just going to be going way to you're going to be losing so much time on the table that you don't need to, because the only way to accelerate off that pace is to be mis balancing the glycogen equation at the, at the start. and I think that's mostly played out like the people that are notorious for negative splitting ultras are no longer at the front of the packs. Really. and the races are most like the old conventional wisdom used to be at Western states, for example, the race started at 62 miles. Now it's like the race starts at mile zero. similar with Leadville. Our first mile was six six minute pace, you know, like six minute pace at the start at 10,000ft. and, you know, so for me, my thinking is like, you know, one, the quicker I can finish, the better. But two, there's no reason to wait, that, you know I'm going to fade no matter what. My muscles are going to get to fatigued to keep pushing, even if I'm able to maintain a good GI system and everything else logistically goes well. And so with that in mind, like, you know, you got to use what the muscles have while they have it, while still playing around on the right side of that, equation. So, for me, as I approach the race, like I had been on some, most of the course, especially the Hope pass section, which for those that don't know, Hope pass is just a brutal mountain in the middle of this course, you know, thousands of feet, very steep. And I knew where I could do that. I knew I could run, I ran every step of Leadville, including the parts that were, you know, really steep at altitude. I knew that I could do that. I knew I would, theoretically. I mean, I didn't know shit, but I thought I knew that, you learned along the way that you could. Yeah, I learned that my assumptions were correct. and with that in mind, I kind of knew generally. What. Like I could do at those effort levels, even on a fatigued body. And then it was just about like cross-referencing with history and being like, you know, I actually think that, like the conventional wisdom that this is an unbreakable record is not only wrong, it's like really far off, you know, like, I think that this record can be demolished. I mean, I don't want to say 60 minutes is demolishing, but in our world, you know, it's fun to use hyperbole. and so, yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, my 1527 was just a lucky guess. because, you know, first timers luck. but it all rested on the idea that, like, especially early in the race, like, I knew I could be running, you know, 620 pace into Outward Bound at mile 22 pretty comfortably. I knew that coming back at mile 70, that I'll be able to run 630 pace again, because that part is actually really fast. And I knew when to pass. I'd be fighting for dear life just to jog up it at a really slow pace. And you put all that together and like, sometimes a broken clock's right twice, you know, is right twice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think really the, the, the intriguing thing to me in terms of like maybe a shift in my mentality about race pacing from what you've described and kind of is just like, how are you feeling at the end of that race to where like it seems like when you came through, May Queen, with 12.5 miles to go, you weren't like holding on for dear life. You were smelling the barn and really looking to get in there. And, but that being said, yeah, I was going slow. I was going slow historically, like all my record was made up by then. in fact, all my record was made up by 37 miles. How how weird is that? Like, and that was a calculated thing. Like, you look at the on Strava, you can do compare efforts. And so I created a segment for Leadville because I wanted to understand how I raced. And. Until McQueen. Like, you know, I was I mean, I was gaining time, but like, Matt Carpenter is the best ever to do it. He took your strategy, you know, of like that. You're talking about of trying to finish strong. And he finished so strong. I took a strategy of like, hey, time is time. I don't care if it comes at mile, ten or mile, you know, 90. and, you know, from mile 90 on, even though I was uplifted and felt fine, my body was so tired from the effort and, you know, had those burps coming up, but, yeah, I, I was going pretty slow, you know, I didn't gain any time over second place. Adrian McDonald was an amazing athlete from there to the finish. but it didn't matter because I was already 30 minutes ahead. so like, basically, I think an ultra is the weird part is that sometimes we've overvalued time at the, at the end because we're worried about blowing up. And I'm like, well, if you kind of understand and have enough fuel on board and do all that and we're not worried about blowing up, then a time in the minute in the first ten miles is worth the same amount as the minute later. And even more relevant for the way I raced. What happens if we're talking 20 minutes in the first 37 miles? That's worth so much more than fading a little bit at the end. And yes, I did fade at the end, but that fade was, you know, five minutes, four minutes or whatever. So it gives me 16 minutes in the end. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean I want to have you and Nick Curry on here to debate this topic. But I mean and I love have you listened to any. I haven't listened so much, but I'm aware of it and I follow it. But you know, Nick Curry is not like, going to like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a smart way to race for him in certain contexts. But I bet it could go faster. Like and I say that just because if you're negative splitting an ultra you could go harder. It just by the equations we're talking about. Like there's no human body that has ever existed where there's not a there's not they can avoid muscular breakdown enough that they're able to put out enough power late in a race to be balancing that equation properly. you know, and so there's extra meat on the bone there. and, you know, I'm saying that about one of the best guys ever, but or the point is, like, I think he's one of the best guys ever. I just think he's even better than that. Yeah. well, I hope you're right, because it means I got a faster time in my in my future. Yeah. For sure. And but also, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm wrong, you know, like, I'm trying to be provocative. but definitely the way we coach it, you know, definitely the way we coach it. Like the more that we see ultras unfold. And I think if you're following the sport over the last couple of years, we've seen this the reason that times are not just dropping at the front, you know, it's not just court records going down. It's like the scope of top ten's top 15 is like the people that are really investing themselves in the sport. and then all the way to the back of the pack, the reason times are getting faster is people are understanding that what happens if you race these without fear? We're starting to learn that the body is capable of things that seem insane. And yes, it all just gets back to that equation, that equation you mentioned. So hopefully earlier. but basically if you get fit enough, you balance that equation by going fast. And what happens after you go fast is eventually you go slower, but you'll have made up so much time in the interim that it's going to be worth it. Yeah I think what, where where I would look at it. Before you're. I think I'm maybe I'm much more open now to like a little bit maybe of more of a healthy positive split as being optimal. I would say before I would look at it as like negative splitting is maybe not optimal either, but there's probably some percentage point on either side of even where it's going to be, like the loading zone for your best day. And, you know, maybe that's a couple percentage. So then like maybe then like if I make your argument, it's a positive split. But then the question is to what percentage point is going to really produce your fastest time? I think like, like one of the things I want you to talk to Nick is because Nick has like a, like an equation that he's built out that kind of adjusts for courses. Because this is the hard part with this, it's like, you know, I have this really perfectly controlled environment that I can look at from it, where every step is exactly the same. Essentially, I do these two courses. This could break down on flat courses for sure, because at that point you can be so efficient that there isn't that breakdown I'm talking about as much. You know, you're not like you use, you burn nothing at whatever pace you're going, like these incredibly fast paces, you know, you're so good. and then things start to get a little different, you know? so that, that that's one place where it's like, huge caveat. Yeah. I want to say the, the closest I saw like what we would consider a top in the sport performance to getting like within a reasonable range of even was probably Courtney D Walters Western states I think based on Nick's like Nick's spreadsheet breakdown of like the distribution of pacing across that course. She had like a 1.9% positive split or something like that, which is still positive. But, you know, it's getting pretty tight there at that point where I think if we look at I'm not sure what Katie, she's was I'm not I don't think that's been run through the program that Nick has yet. Or if it is, I haven't seen it. She usually goes out. She usually goes out hard. She does. She's one. She's one I've learned from, you know, she's one that I think's been at the cutting edge. She's one of the first people that's been like, let's go. and the canyons this year, the amount that she went out hard, I was like, oh my God. and it was eye opening and seeing it in person, I was like, all right, if I ever do this, I'm doing what Katie did. Like, yeah, that's the way to race nowadays. You know, I just think and I think we're going to see it more and more. I think that, like and maybe not at Utmb because again, so much like on one end you have little breakdown on flats, on one of you have so much breakdown that you just need to try to survive, essentially. but in between, I don't know. I just think, you know, trainers have been cutting themselves short for, for, for quite a while, and that's starting to end now. I mean, you know, so many athletes now are just like every major race, every golden ticket race. You know, they're going out like, yeah, carries on freaking fire. just to stay in the lead pack. And then it's about who doesn't blow up as much, but everybody is fading. you know, even the ones that end up winning. Yeah. It could be a scenario where, like, to thread the needle required to win. You have to take the risk and then like, if ten guys or ten women do that, then it's like 1 or 2 are going to survive it and have that day. And then like you kind of just got to wait for your turn and just keep taking a crack at it. And that might be the way to your fastest time. Whereas if you take a more conservative. Yeah. Sorry. I was gonna say take a more conservative approach. You might be, like, near your potential more frequently, but maybe never actually touch it. Yeah, well, I mean, I would say, yeah, I'd say that's true. But you look at Black Canyon 100 K this year, Golden ticket race, went out hot as hell. hugely deep, you know, like 40 deep of professional athletes. I would say the first person that race conservatively that was anywhere near the front was probably 16th or 17th. In the old days of ultrarunning, they might have been second or third. And I think that that like essentially shaped the way some people think about the sport. And and I don't necessarily agree, though obviously it's the best way to race for fun. definitely wouldn't that when it's just to get across the finish line, you know, joyous and you know, if you don't care about 5 minutes or 10 minutes, which is not anything in an ultra, you know that. Who does care? but, you know, in coaching so many professional athletes nowadays, especially in the pre-race call, it doesn't sound that much different than the pre-race calls I'm doing with athletes that are racing at the Olympic trials on the track, as crazy as that is. It's like, it's a wild time and I think it's going to it's a wild time that has reshaped every course record. And the reason Leadville was so intoxicating to me and special and the idea of it was because it was the one record left, and I knew it was going to be just by statistics. It was obviously going to be broken sooner rather than later. I'm very lucky it was me breaking it. But I have zero doubts, that, you know, five years from now, we're going to be looking at a different record, maybe even next year. and I'm excited for it because it's going to be, you know, something I can learn from. Yeah. I mean, it would be cool to to get Leadville amped up to kind of the competitive pressure we've seen at Western states. And I think, like for someone like for someone like you going in and breaking that course record that maybe excites people to say, hey, maybe I'm the next one. And it's there's something about a, I think a close proximity record that kind of maybe inspires the immediate generation to kind of maybe say, if, if, if him, why not me versus somebody who's like, just like a ghost of past that has like this legacy status already achieved. so yeah, I think I mean, yeah, it'd be cool to see like Western State style field, YouTube style field at Leadville for a few years and and push, push, push the time down potentially. Yeah. It would be so cool. Not that it wasn't competitive this year. It was very competitive. But, you know, I think Western states and YouTube are definitely the big the big ones for the most part. Definitely. You know, I mean Adrian is one of the best in the world. it was second and I just got lucky. I just got lucky to be in front of him. I think he could break it for sure. break my time. but, yeah, the depth of competition of, like, saying, hey, let's put 15 or 20 of the best in the world at this activity on the start line and see what happens. That does, you know, iron sharpens iron. and it's possible like we'll see. I let other people prognosticate and, contextualize things. you know, I think it's I'm so. Prevalent, prone to cutting myself down and my own accomplishments. but, you know, maybe. Maybe so. In other words, maybe my performance was this historic performance. Maybe that will be the way it ends up shaking out. But I think that we're going to see some I think someone's going to be inspired by this. Like one of the one of those like, you know, Wamsley type guys. That is so good and I admire so much, and I can't wait to see what I mean. I'm not going to race it, but I'll be there to cheer. I'll be there to help them, crew them, to kick my own, my own good, my own ghost ass is what I want. I want my own face to be crying in shame for how badly they got their ass whooped. Yeah, well, I mean, no one can take away from you the fact that you were the one that pushed that event a notch further than it was before. And, you know, like you said, I mean, I don't suspect it's going to people are going to come and start obliterating it. I think it's going to be like small steps going forward from here. which you know, puts you in some pretty, pretty high regard within the sport's results and where you'll ultimately stand. The big conclusion for me, though, is I am confident on this one point. It's going to have to be somebody that's fast, like fast in a raw sense, you know? and there are people out there like that, like like I said, Jim Walmsley, his name, Jim Walmsley, is fast. Truly fast. you know, fast, just like absolutely monster. I have no doubts even that he could be an Olympian on the track if he had trained his whole life for it, though. Maybe there's some, like, form issues that he would need to work on. Who knows? But he's that good. I think it's going to have to be someone that, Yeah, that's their stride. Does their stride. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. So I think that's pretty much all the stuff I wanted to hit on. I mean, you shared, like, so much great information. It's been fun to kind of chat, but was there anything else that you wanted to share? Oh, you know what? I did think of something on your podcast you were talking about. and we've touched on a little bit kind of briefly or flirted with a little bit with, just like the women's side of the sport, like Megan is starting something. Is it Megan and you or just Megan and some some other people, I think. Okay, well, tell us a little bit about that. Oh so cool. So it's called huzzah! So right now, if you're listening, go to the Huzzah Hub. and if you can link to it in the show notes, they can just click there, hopefully. it's this new initiative all focused on health and science for female athletes. It's so fun. It's so unique. You'll see it right away and you'd be like, wow, no one's done anything like this. and, you know, maybe the most interesting thing, actually, and I'm going to write a post about this eventually is that my training style for this race was motivated by female athletes. usually it goes the other way, right? Like we're talking the the research trickles down from male athletes and then eventually the female athletes. For me, I have seen athletes that are competing at the top level, like some of the athletes. I coach Allie Ostrander, Anna Gibson, who are doing cycling and lower volume and all of this and understanding where I was in my life. I'm like, you know, I trained like a woman. like, like, like more traditionally in the sense And so these things that Megan are doing with Hazara, like, have been the fundamental backbone of like what led to this result. And so that was the big change I made this year. I was just like, I need some of that feminine energy in my life. and so it's just so cool to see Megan spreading around. Smartest person I've ever met. Go check it out now. Yeah, I mean, I think it's awesome. I think we've had a we've certainly had a gap in terms of like how we present like sports performance and recommendations, in an even way for, for women and what, what may and may not be different. And that just means just more questions that are unanswered, for that half of the field. And, you know, I think Megan is a great person to probably chase after getting more information or the information we have available to people who want it. And then hopefully that pushes for new research to be done specifically on women and find out more about what doesn't works differently and what works the same. It's so exciting. Yeah. I mean, I think the boundaries are being pushed in every way. And Meghan's pushing them in terms of science and like performance. And it's like incredibly exciting. Like if you're excited by sports, you should be so excited by ultramarathons because we do not know what humans can do yet. It seems like we do. You know, a lot of people thought Matt Carpenter's record was unbeatable. A lot of people might say mine won't be broken for a while. I guarantee you that's wrong. We are at just the infancy of understanding of what humans can do. And that to me, it's like one of the coolest. Like, how wild is it that after, you know, billions of years of life or, you know, hundreds of millions of life on planet Earth, we're starting to find this one creature that seems to have been created to do the most insane feats of endurance you've ever seen on two feet. So I can't wait to see what happens. Yeah. No, it's a good time. I can't wait to. Yeah, like the next decade. The decade after that and the decade after that. Just see where the sport goes. Because it's like you said, it's going to continue to grow and progress from a performance standpoint. And I think also a participant standpoint, which is a really fun thing to be able to share the sport with new people and keep people out there on the trails or the roads or just running for a long time. Hell yeah. It's the best. So if you're out there, get out there. Bet on yourself. You never know what happens. And so, this has been a wild, surreal experience. And I just like hope. Everyone knows that. Like, sometimes, you know, it can take decades to find out what you're capable of, so just keep showing up. I do have a Leadville story to share with you that I think was is funny because it's kind of like an inspiring the next generation type of thing where, Nicole was out there. So actually, I'll start from the end, but like, we were at the golden hour finish where, you know, people are coming in on that last hour to where it gets cut off and, you know, like, this is like a really interesting spot in ultrarunning, I think, because, like people, there's sometimes more people at that than there is watching the winner. Just watching these people just barely eke out their the cutoff. And we're standing there watching and this like group of maybe like a dozen high school kids come over to Nicole and they're just asking her all these questions. And I'm just like, afterwards I'm like, what? What did you do that got those high school kids? Because I mean, this is like Leadville local high school kids. It wasn't like she was like volunteering with them or anything. And they knew who she was ahead of time. And she's like, oh, you know what? Like when I went up to, the mile 50 turnaround, I came up to the aid station and I think they had just seen a bunch of people coming through with poles, packs and all this gear, and I just had this one handheld, and this one girl looks over at me and she looks at her friend. She's like, Holy cow, she's raw dogging it because she just had one hand-held water bottle. So they went and found her after the race to kind of see how it went, because they just thought it was hilarious that she was out there with. And in one of the more remote spots on that course, with just a handheld water bottle and nothing else. Yeah. Oh, man. We're all about raw dogging it over here. That's great. Yeah. Another thing I don't I wouldn't recommend people do that approach with one water bottle, but Nicole is a little more of a minimalist when it comes to some of that stuff. So yeah, I mean, I just did a running belt, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't have much either. No. Yeah. They had probably just seen, seen a lot of packs and poles at that point and thought it was well in their mind probably went to like anything they had prior experience with ultrarunning. They just assumed like gear on gear on gear and not always the case. If you got to go to crew, you don't always have to carry that much. Yeah. Different strokes for different folks. Awesome. David. Well, before I let you go, let the listeners know where they can find you on socials, website, podcasts, all that stuff. I'd love to share that with them. Yeah. So some work, all play podcasts. That's the main place. Go go there. Click follow. Give it five stars to and then Strava search my name Mountain Roach on Instagram. and yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Love you all. It's an honor to talk to Zach. He's one of my all time heroes in the sport, as you could probably tell. kind of surreal to be talking to him in this manner, too. So, Zach, thank you. I appreciate it a lot. Right on, David, thanks so much.