Episode 409: Caffeine Performance & Golden Trail Series

David Hellard is an ultra marathon runner, running journalist, and host of The Bad Boy Running Podcast. In this episode we discussed the excitement around short fast trail races, media and opportunities in the sport of trail running, and caffeine protocols for athletes.

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Chapters:

00:00:00 - The Experience of Racing and Community Bonding

00:11:52 - The Fascination of Ultras and the Evolution of Broadcasting Ultra Races

00:17:43 - Growth of Ultra Running in Europe

00:23:52 - The Rise of Running Communities

00:30:01 - Transitioning to Trail Running from 5k to Half Marathon

00:35:56 - Transitioning from Road to Trail Racing

00:41:59 - The Changing Landscape of Careers in Podcasting and Running

00:47:58 - Race Battles and Athlete Strategy

00:54:06 - Strategic Racing Decisions

00:59:45 - Balancing athlete training and racing instincts

01:05:47 - The Importance of Balance and Perspective in Training

01:11:41 - Caffeine Usage and Athletic Performance

01:18:05 - Caffeine Dosing Strategies for Endurance Racing

01:23:58 - Caffeine Options and Insulin Levels

01:30:02 - Strategically Using Caffeine in Racing

01:35:47 - Human Performance Outliers Podcast Discount Offer

Episode Transcript:

David, welcome to the show. Oh thank you. Yeah. Great. Good to have. Well, we've interviewed about six weeks ago on my podcast now it's the return leg, so. Yeah. All time I return the favor. Right. But really excited to be on. You've had some amazing guests, so I'm not often in front of the mic. Yeah. No, it's going to be fun to chat with you. I think you've got some interesting insight into some topics that I've either touched on briefly on the podcast or maybe neglected to my own, my own, just like lack of, jumping into certain things that are, you know, there's so many things to talk about nowadays. You find things that you're really interested in that you just like. Hi. You wonder, why didn't I get into that earlier? Or, well, I wonder what took so long to kind of unpack this sort of thing. So, it'll be fun to have you on here and chat a bit about just your background in sports and running cold and trail series stuff, which I think is a really cool element of trail running and ultrarunning. I know you got a background in obstacle course racing and things like that, and then maybe we jump into some caffeine, research type stuff as well today. Yeah, I mean, great, that sounds all of that is a huge amount of background in and actually my background as a runner and my kind of experience is probably less relevant now compared to what I've learned just from being a podcast host or interviewing people or observing athletes. Because while I think I gave my ability, I think I did well in maximizing my results, actually, my level was never that high. I just was pretty good at kind of polishing a turd more than anything else is how I'd put it. So. Yeah. I mean, you're probably like most people where your introduction to running involves some type of road racing or marathoning. I find that to be, well, maybe not always the case anymore with all training, but it does tend to be a common feed into that stuff. So did you kind of get into running through some, running clubs or road racing type stuff in the background? In your background? I was the Harrier who were a social running club that for quite a while were like the biggest club in the world. I probably not that anymore, but very much social running and then started down the marathon route because the company I was working for were putting in a team for charity and loved the process of training and. It was probably the only thing in my life that had structure. I'd say so likes the fact that compared to many other things, you're almost in complete control of how good you get and obviously like doing well, but for a long time was focused on marathons and getting a good time until I felt I'd nearly topped out at that stage of the mileage I was doing, and then got drawn into that obstacle race explosion in the mid-teens. I loved that wave. but he was always a runner who did obstacles rather than someone who actually had any ability technically on obstacle races, and had no desire to be in a gym. There weren't really the number of locations now where you can train easily. And so quite quickly it was apparent that the sport was demanding dedication and skills that I didn't have. And so I moved to ultra and from that point on really did events that I thought were because of the podcast that I thought were going to be interesting, or we're going to give stories or experiences more than. Just training for a time or a result, per se. so that was probably 2014 through two, 2020. And then since then, since they're a long term injury that I've recovered from. But I'm in a band now with a young baby. Realistically, I know I'm never gonna find the time to actually get to any level that I'd be proud of. So it's more about just keeping themselves healthy and feeling like my body's not completely giving up on me. And I love doing sessions purely because I love the experience of sessions. I think you feel better after them than any other run, but I'm not really. I don't think I'll train for anything until my son's a lot older. So that's kind of my nutshell of racing. Along the way. I've managed to win quite a few marathons or obstacles, a few ultras, but mainly because I've been very good at picking ones that aren't very competitive or going far afield to races that are experiences rather than credible competition. and I've, I've my, my trophy case is far bigger than my, my actual ability I'd say. Yeah. You know, well, ultra marathoning I think lends itself to sort of that mentality to where it's not necessarily a sport where I mean, there's definitely a side of it and that side is growing. It's growing fast from just competition and, you know, bettering your previous performance and things like that. So there's a performance angle there. But a lot of it also is just kind of more like a really long big, like group run or community run to some degree, where everyone's kind of hanging out before everyone's hanging out with whoever's around them during. And then in a lot of cases, everyone's sort of hanging out after. And it sort of does feel like, you know, there's a little bit more to just like, what was the experience, what was the story, what happened during that event that stuck out to you? That makes for an exciting story and things like that. And it's got this interesting component to it, too, where there are some things where you just can't really explain properly if you haven't done it. So then when you are with someone, it doesn't matter if they were the last place finisher, the first place finisher, you know that they both kind of went through that. So it's just like there's this, this unspoken kind of understanding that, oh, now you know what it's like. Let's talk about it and let's hear about it. And there's value there where I don't know that they have that same aspect in kind of tradition, like Olympic distance running or marathoning, where there's like that kind of camaraderie amongst the entire field. And that's kind of similar sense of accomplishment or sense of, yeah, overcoming certain things like that. Yeah, completely. Because, say you spoke to Kit at the end of his run, his sub said, how was it for you? You knew you knew how it was for him. He ran exactly as you expected. He got slower and he fought through it. Whereas if you spoke to Killian at the end of any of his teams, I'm sure there are tails in all the top ten finishes that are things that completely went wrong. Things that they learned, things that they changed. And yeah, you're right, Ultra's got there's so few formulas to it and so many different approaches in nutrition and training, in ways to attack it, attack a course that it, it does mean that you have this there's a story in every race in every auto race ultimately. Yeah. That's actually interesting too. I just actually had David Roche on the podcast prior to, to our, our chat here today. And you know he just won and broke the we were chatting a little bit before as well Matt Carpenter. But what a lot of people considered one of the more unbreakable records left on the men's side, which is Matt Carpenter's Leadville 100, and hearing him talk about like his training approach, his nutrition approach and everything that went into the the that day for him was like an interesting lesson for me because there were things that he did that I would say, I don't know, that I would trust would work for me to try to find my best performance, but they clearly worked for him. And I know from coaching that they do clearly work for other people. And I think that's one thing I've learned the most as an ultramarathon running coach. It's okay to have a philosophy. It's okay to have beliefs and really firm starting points, but eventually you're going to run into somebody who, for whatever reason, you need to deviate from that from their own kind of experiences out there, or you just end up banging your head up against the wall. And I think one thing that ultrarunning offers, and I don't know that this is just because of the wide range of distances which in, in themselves are going to require different approaches. But even with specific distances or durations, if you want to say it that way, I find some, like you said, some kind of like wider windows of just like what can be done to to maximize your experience or get you from that finish line or to that finish line. At the end of the day And maybe this is something that gets narrowed over time with more research and more, more participation and things like that. But when I compare it to, like, you know, the marathon or any Olympic distance, it seems like that channel of success is traveled through a much narrower path for most people relative to ultra running. Yeah. And even because we interviewed Courtney in March or at a similar time, and she was talking about her nutrition strategy and she can nail it in one race, in the next race, none of it works. And this is when you look at her performances, and it seems to be so consistent that you almost think that she must be on top of all these areas. But she was saying how she'll come into it. She was doing 200 miles and just came onto the stage. She just wanted to eat tacos and suddenly wanted coke or. And that's the element that we're so far. Because even for nutrition at ultra it feels like your mind plays a large part of it and that doesn't happen in other aspects. It's all physical. And so that means that even as science starts to figure out elements of it, it's never going to know how to train the brain to want something at a certain time or no longer. Dislike of flavor, or associate an element of something with a terrible time in a race and therefore reject it. And that's what's, that's why I also think it is so, so incredible. Although, having said that, I missed the Golden Trail. Now I find ultras amazing as experiences and storytellers, but what is not so yet because you don't necessarily understand anything that's going on when you watch an ultra, even if everything is behind them. Behind the facade is going wrong. Yeah. And that's actually an interesting topic in and of itself too, because I think now that we're getting a little bit better, I mean Utmb probably was the big catalyst to this where they sort of were ahead of the rest of the sport in terms of how they broadcasted. So I mean, you have like this incredible long period of time that really nobody's going to sit there and just tune in for the duration of the event, even even the fastest people, you know, they're not going to sit there and watch YouTube for 19 hours, but they fill it with so much interesting stuff with like, athlete profiles, storytelling, things about the event, things about the different segments where you do find, like if you do hang around for a bit, you sort of walk away learning something or hearing something interesting. And that I think really helps kind of, advance the sport a little bit from the olden days where it was just like you kind of had to have a basic understanding to know, like, oh, so-and-so's in fifth place now. And I just saw that on my Twitter feed and. But you don't really know what to do with that information. What does it even mean? Or is it even important to you versus something else? Or you have enough downtime between, you know, Jim Walmsley making a move in the canyon or killing, making a move at Utmb or something like that to talk about, like a profiled runner who's not in the top. That's maybe a little more relatable to the average viewer. And I think that side of the sport is something that, if we see kind of continue to develop, it's just like this long stream of content that can get either repurposed into shorter packages or just entertain through side quests essentially throughout the entirety of the event. And that, I think, does make it a little more approachable to the degree where in the past when I would talk to people like, how would you get an ultra running? Like, oh, well, I had a friend who was doing it and I crewed them and I thought, wow, that looks really interesting. Maybe I'll try it now. It's kind of like you can get that experience, but you can also say, oh, I was watching the YouTube live stream and I saw like so-and-so story like that. And it was like, that's incredible. Maybe I could do it if they could do it. And it's just an interesting time. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's always hard to know the impact of life for, I think especially internet life where you have to go and search for it doesn't appear in your feed that easily because, as you say, like one new tab is two series of Game of Thrones. To think I must change a whole series of Game of Thrones like that is that it has a huge amount of drama. And but especially like the, I worked with Martin as he does go on trial presenting but also UTme and I'm amazed that some of the Utmb races he'll commentate by himself. And you think how do you do that? I mean even like racing for 20 hours, 24 hours is difficult, but at least there's a base rate of just simplicity of movement. Whereas having to talk for 20 hours and to keep an audience engaged where often not much is actually happening, and particularly it's hard to track. The different places outside of the top. Kind of 5 or 10. I think that's one of the challenges with the sport, it seems to be driven by participation mostly, and people earn a love for it because they appreciate just how fast and how hard what people like Killian and, and Courtney are doing. But how do you then bring people into the sport without them having to experience it? Because actually you're having to experience 50 K as your routine. That's quite a big bar to get passed through to then find the love of a sport. And as obstacles go, I mean, other than maybe horse riding where you have to learn to ride a horse, there aren't many others where it's that the barrier to entry is substantial. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely an interesting component to it. And I think it may lead into some of the topics we're going to talk about today too, which is just the Golden Trail series and maybe what that has to offer. I always did find it interesting coming from a background of like, you know, high school and college. I ran track and cross country, which, you know, introduces you quite well to some of the shorter endurance events. And then like, you know, if you're going to kind of go along like the more traditional running, like, like the traditional running trajectory, you're kind of find yourself doing a marathon eventually, it seemed, but there's a lot of spots where it's kind of like, oh, I'm kind of interested in seeing how fast I can run A5K or a ten K or a half marathon. And things that I find that like, are these like distraction points? Distraction is definitely the wrong word. But like, you know, these points of interest that pop up along the way that are more about how do I improve where in the ultra world I see this, I see that component, but I don't see it as strong. I see it more. I see a lot more of the like, oh, I did the 50 K, what's next? You sort of like I've unlocked the 50 K. Now can I do the hundred K or 80 K and then 100 mile or you know now we have multi-day events and things like that. And I do wonder if that will be something that is kind of like a sustainable, a growth point for the sport, or if it's something where at a certain point we have to sort of like, all right, let's step back here and recognize like, oh, there are shorter options to in fact, there are trail races that are less than 50 K that are quite fun to do. And, you know, you can get that experience. You don't necessarily have to like to throw yourself into a 50 K if you've never run before as kind of like your entry, there's a lot of stuff that you can do to sort of get yourself invested into the lifestyle a little bit from a shorter distance anyway. I think it's so different in Europe to America because of participation, participation numbers in races, because trials are so much harder to put on in the states. The permissions are far more restrictive. And I think that's one of the challenges of the shorter distances, is you're not going to spend a huge amount of money to travel across the country to do a half marathon in trail, like an hour or a two hour run, say. And so whereas in Europe, where it is a lot cheaper and a lot easier to put on mass participation trail races or even small races without having to do a lot of work and travel easily. I think it will be easier to grow that lower level of ultras and lower level of trail, because you can just get in a car race, a sort of $40 race and be back. whereas my understanding is a lot of American races, because of that price point and the field size it means that, which is why the price is so high. You almost need to feel like it's an epic achievement to be satisfied with. With that as a weekend or to commit your money to it. And so I think that does drive you up to the next distance, because the more epic, the more value for money you get. Yeah, that's a really good point. If you know, I do. There are a few race organizations like that I'm aware of now that they've gotten big enough where they sort of started out as ultramarathon organizations, but have started plugging in like five K, ten K, half marathon, marathon distances because they already have the structure there. So they're like, we don't really have to get any more permits to do this. We don't really need to have additional aid stations, maybe a couple, volunteers and things. It's not a huge leap to add those to it, since the structure is already there and they get people to go to them, but they do tend to be more local people. It's not people coming from out of state to do the ten K or the half marathon usually, and I think that's probably a good way to sort of here in the States, this is it's like you said, this is probably a geographical thing from a cultural standpoint to some degree, where, you know, for ultra running in the United States, it may be that those shorter distance add ins are like ways to build kind of the local community around that area a little bit from people who are going to jump into those and then eventually get them some exposure to some of the longer events. If they stick around long enough to watch us slow people finish, and, and and can maybe decide, oh, you know, maybe I'll try one of those one day and then who knows where they end up. But what we're seeing in the UK in particular, there's almost a decimation of our races at the moment where road races are becoming increasingly expensive and hard to get permissions for, and so the there used to be a plethora of, of every town would have A5K, a ten K, maybe a half marathon often run by the local club. And those we've all folded, we've seen even in the southwest of England. I think there's 27 different races folded in the last year. And the challenge now seems to be, even though the sport seems to have grown massively, the new people coming into running seem to be more interested in a social community rather than races, but also because I guess there's a Utmb that has been sucking up so many race participants. But if you're going to do something like, the R UK one is the Snowdon Utmb race and that is it's such a big race, such a hard race that if you signed up to it as thousands have, you're going to need to be spending your time traveling out there to get to know the course. It's serious training and so there aren't enough volunteers, and there aren't enough extra weekends for people to then do their local races, their smaller races. and so it's, it seems strange where traveling seems to be stronger than ever in some data points, but actually we're having a complete collapse of our race organizers and even really strong community organizations where you think this is shielded from. Changes in economics or external factors because the participation levels are so engaged in. The volunteers are so almost drenched in the culture of this community, but even some of them have been going out of business. And that's almost all of this, this contradiction in the sport is as it's been growing in some ways because of the growth of YouTube, it's been sucking in all the participants. And so it's a very strong sport, but really like a damaged race community. Yeah. That's interesting. Are you seeing that like people who are training for some of those more like higher bar events to try to prepare for just due to logistics and terrain and things like that? Are they spending their time so they're spending their time training versus going to some of these local races? Is there a culture like training camps that are popping up then for those events that are more core specific? Einstein, I don't know. To you, I'm the only. I've seen training camps, but they tend to be just because of people I know, like Damian Holland and people that are putting their own training camps on as ways to that, because there's there's been a growth in coaches, which I think is primarily driven through influencers on Instagram, where it's, it's a good way to monetize a following. But also, now that we've reached the point that a lot of athletes in the sport are at the professional level because contracts have gotten better, prize money has gotten better as well, but it's still not quite enough to support many athletes. Even if you look at Utmb be, you know, if you win Utmb, you've got 20,000. Not bad. you live in Norway, you're going to be taxed on that. You know, John Donovan wins YouTube. It's not taking much home from that. And this is the biggest race in the world. So we've seen more of a growth in coaching. And that then has, I think created these training weekends as ways to layer something on top of that. But. It didn't seem to be a huge number. And that's where in the communities themselves, they've seen a huge growth in social communities, run out of breweries or run out of cafes or, you know, meeting meat because this person is an influencer, has now formed their own run club, and everyone goes along and it's a safe haven, or it's a dating, hub. So we've got lots of those. And then we've got people in Oxford who tend to train by themselves. It seems the UK has a huge number of running clubs. They tend to focus more on roads and marathons. Your cross-country to five KS. but it's not really leave much space for the trail races that aren't destination races. People seem to be slightly happy to sign up to an epic challenge that they can focus on as their bucket list for the year, and talk about down the pub and everyone thinks incredible, but far less likely to go and run a marathon in the the New Forest, or go and do a race that no one's heard of that maybe is equally as hard, or actually could have far better provisions and like amazing community, amazing aid stations, great atmosphere. But because it hasn't got the kudos around some of the bigger ones like in the UK, things like lakes and the day you've got your South Downs where you've got your art and nutrition competition. and so those are the ones that are suddenly falling away because there's just not the interest in it. And, and even the struggling with food to get volunteers because the vast majority of the kind of community run. Yeah. It's an interesting theme I think like the storytelling or the, the, the, the pub bragging rights or the water cooler at work, bragging rights, type of a side of things. I had a buddy who was like, we would joke around about this because he was like a 1355 K guy, like very fast. But you know, he's not going to the Olympics. He's not going to make a living off running five K's, even though he can run the five K faster than pretty much everyone on the planet. Mine is the very best in the world. And it's like, yeah, he's like, if I went to work and, you know, one of my co-workers came back from the weekend for running 100 miler, finishing somewhere in the middle of the back of the pack. And they have this buckle. They'd go and they say, oh, I just ran this hundred miles over the weekend. Everyone would be like, wow, that's insane. They're like, you're you're next level. And he'd say, he could say, oh, I just ran a 1355 K and no one would even know what that meant. Yeah, completely. And so the person is on the the person who's got the buckle, maybe Trained a few times a week and rocked up and hasn't dedicated any of their life to it. Yeah, it's and that's that's the huge difference actually between North America and, and the UK is that you've got this unbelievable collegiate system of, of the ability to just pump out so many fast track runners who can do five KS, and then it seems to just vanish. And unless you become a, unless you're, as you say, a pro or you somehow find ultra running, there doesn't seem to be a home for you. Whereas in the UK no one's runs at school or university and you then have these running clubs that emerge almost when you've injured yourself playing a different sport, or you start to put on weight and then people get into running that way. So there's a very different way into running. And that then means we've got very different experiences of what we're looking for, for our races and our communities. But yeah. And if you're that, that, that sub 14 five K guy. What do you do with your time? Because you could try and win some half marathons, maybe. but you haven't really got a community because part of it is kudos. But actually part of it is having a friendship group that you can enjoy in your passion. And so if you haven't got that community to train with, but training by yourself is can be pretty heartbreaking. And also you're relying purely on interior and internal motivation. And that is often very hard to keep on producing year in and year out. You know, that kind of intrinsic motivation. So yeah, it's a real challenge. And do you know Andy Wacker? He's put together with Grayson Murphy. Yeah. Like what they've done with trail teams seems to be doing amazingly well, where suddenly we're seeing each year a huge new wave of collegiate track athletes suddenly being converted into trail runners. And then the jump from. A5K to a 12 half marathon. It's still a big difference. but actually the mileage people are doing to be a good five K runner is enough mileage to get you in the zone for doing a good half. you just need to learn a bit of training, a bit of hills, and we're seeing people like Ana Gibson, who she's just come off the back of a a 1500 meter season, ran a 408, and then within three weeks has transitioned to doing Sierras and our 31 K race where she came seventh, eighth, which blows my mind because the race was almost as long as our weekly training mileage. But if you've got that speed and that background of running year in and year out, it is easier to do. And so I think we're going to see in America because of things like trail team and the rise of these middle distance trail races in terms of sponsorship profile that actually your friend who's that track athlete, if they wanted to could find a route into it, into trail running without having to suddenly run Utmb be. Yeah, yeah. That I that is a big bar to get into too, because even if you look at somebody who's like top tier enough in the marathon to maybe make a career of it, at least in the moment, and, you know, they could jump over in, in theory, just dominate some of these longer ultras. If you look at just their fitness relative to what we've typically seen in the ultra running sport, it's like they sort of have to make their name through a big race to some degree in order to get themselves into that. So like, it's something where it's like, if you're someone who's say you're like a 212 marathon or something like that, so you're sort of on the outside looking in you, you maybe have some partnerships, but it's probably not something where you're going to be like retiring off of for sure. You're you. I mean, you've got the fitness to win most ultramarathons. And if you get the skill set, probably do quite well at some of these big hundred milers. But do you invest the year or two years to really get there and find yourself on the podium to the degree where some brand picks you up, picks you up and says, okay, now you're an ultra marathon runner, now we want to brand you that way, and now we're going to pay for that. They may not have that flexibility like it's just an interesting kind of gap in. Like resources and just like paths forward that make it incremental enough so that people can sort of test the water and figure it out before trying to, like, kind of bet the house on it, I guess, and then hopefully it works out well for them the way it has for guys like Jim Walmsley. But, we'll see how that changes. I think some of them like what you mentioned, some of these like races that are just a little more close in proximity to the intensity that they're used to racing. If we can get like a better pro community around that, I think that is like a really good feeder into it. And you find yourself it's almost like here in the United States, we did have this big gap like we were talking about before, where you'd have all these great collegiate runners finishing, and unless they were identified as like an Olympic hopeful, which was a super small percentage of them, they're kind of left with nothing. And most of these folks were like, you know, they're college graduates, so they're actually looking to start a career. And it's like, do I take this like 15 K shoe sponsorship and like, you know, a part time job at a shoe store in order to chase this dream when I also have this, you know, degree in something that's going to pay me like a reasonable amount of money. And it's like the choice, I think, is pretty easy for a lot of people in that situation. And it's not chasing their running dreams so much. But, we have seen more development team type stuff pop up and that. So I do wonder if there'll be something like that or an appetite for that in the US where, you know, you can sort of like a trend transition over into like a trail side of things. That's shorter duration, get your feet wet, establish a community, establish some partnerships, and then eventually work your way up to maybe something like YouTube if you decide you want to go there. Or maybe the profession will grow to the degree where you don't have to. You can just say, hey, I'm a sub ultra trail runner and there's a career here for me. Yeah, but then it's still dependent on where you live as well, because you may there's so many states in America that you're not going to get good elevation and good trail and so on top of that, then. Well, are you also prepared to move to Boulder, Colorado, or to, you know, these places in the mountains that often are very expensive anyway because they're beautiful locations with lovely skiing. And so you put that on top. but that's, that's where that's just the area that now is great, actually. And I, I can't think of, I guess Pikes Peak is the same. You know, we've seen some athletes turn up at Pikes Peak, some American athletes who haven't been on a traditional trail and do very well because the ascent, for example, is all uphill. You've got the altitude to deal with, but you're not going to have to. It's far less punishing on your legs, which is one of the biggest challenges of transitioning to trail and so. That's where almost if there was a governing body, you'd want to try and focus on these big races, create these big races that are seen as the poster boys that allow for that transition. Because Sierras are now we call it where the road meets the trail, because, you know, a marathon runner could come and potentially run well. And while they may not win it, they you know, we saw just facts. And from Kenya this year he was a 209 marathon runner. And he was leading up until the 20 K mark. because he was just so fast he could climb up like a champ. And as soon as he got over the top, could then put the gas on Kilian. And so there are races in trails in trail at that, that, that mid-distance where you can establish your name, but as you say that you need to almost have a it needs to be a big enough race that sponsors are looking that sponsors suddenly think, oh wow, this is someone who I can see could become very good overall at trail, and there aren't really that many races, and particularly not in all countries as well. Yeah. I wonder how much of a problem, at least in the United States it is. Here is where we had the structure in place where like if you're a runner in college, you will do track and cross country if you're distance. But cross country has basically become a sport of let's find the flattest, hardest packed patch of dirt and then just run a 10-K or an 8-K on that. So it's like, you know, it's not really like a feeder trail, short distance trail the way it maybe was historically or could be with more traditional courses. And I wonder if something like that would be just a better, a better differentiator. So it's not like, oh, the person who won the ten K cross is probably going to, at the very least, podium in the 10-K at nationals for college here. You might have very different athletes at that point where in order to win cross country, you have to be different enough from the person who wins the 10-K that you're not even a storyline of a podium finisher for one or the other. You can kind of pick. I wonder if that would be something that would be, again, you're probably dealing with logistics with that as well. Where it's here in the US, it's a lot easier to find a flat golf course and put a cross-country course on it than it is to find an area where you can make any sort of very terrain out of a course, to a degree, where you're going to service, like all the collegiate programs in the, in the country. Yeah, although it's always easy to find an absolute pile of garbage and just run people through it. Which yeah, that's like UK cross country is horrific at times. It's some of the most incredible racing. But you're, you're just brutalizing. And of course where you're just, it feels like you're running through swamps and they just managed to find you running through a riverbed. you then just shred through the stuff that looks like no one else has ever been down it. but even within that, all of our club runs have we look at people like, who have just come forth in the Olympics. You know, he's done very well at cross-country, and our marathon runners are our 10-K runners. A lot of them were still very good at cross-country. And while there, maybe just because you're good at track doesn't mean you'll be good at cross-country. You're still going to be, you're still going to beat people who aren't quite at your level. it doesn't seem to separate the athletes that significantly. But always with these things, it comes down to money and profile and. If you can raise the profile or if not, it's either going to be sponsorship or television rights, really. And we're seeing so many brands now come into the sport compared to previous years that actually, I mean, we, are saying part of the reason why the prize money is still high this year because of healthcare or maybe hocus pocus saying that because obviously it reflects very well on them to be seen to be supporting the community. But you didn't used to have Brooks and Asics and Nike and those brands pouring money into trail. they didn't even have trail shoes, a lot of them, until relatively recently. And so all this extra money hopefully will mean more races can actually give prize money and give that platform to allow athletes to come in. And, even now, unless you're one of the, the very top of your, your golden trails, your Utmb races, there's still not a lot of money in it. when you take out travel expenses and. and the fact you don't have that many opportunities to actually make money and actually you probably want to put some money aside given that you're, you're not really building a career. So I think even when a lot more money comes into it and we see it with athletics, there's, it's still from the vast majority of Olympians, not many of them are actually comfortable. They're still scrapping around to try and make a living. Yeah. It is interesting. I remember when I had my first athlete contract that was of any consequence. It was like the first thing I thought was, you know, this is great. This is helpful for now, but I'm not going to be I'm not going to be earning this when I'm probably even 40 to some degree. and there needs to be a career after that. And it's like, do you bet on just making connections within the sport to the degree where there is a more traditional job waiting for you, or do you even want to go that route, or do you start building things around yourself? I mean, fortunately for me, like as the sport grew and as I got into it, things started popping up. That would have even been careers before, like when I was in college, if someone had said like, oh, you know what, maybe you should think about becoming a podcast host. I would have been like, what is a podcast? And and like, nobody would have been getting paid to do them at that point in time anyway. But now you can, now you can start a podcast, and, you know, there's good enough metrics that you can draw from it where you can get support for that. and then like if you're doing things like coaching and things like that, it gives you an outlet to kind of share that information and those programs with people. So yeah, it's kind of somewhat to it's a sport where if you really like, if you leverage your quote unquote 15 minutes of fame from some results, you got into some other passions that you have then, then you can maybe build like a post-career career type of scenario. and it's just easier to do that nowadays. So I wonder how much more we'll see people get into the sport, because there's just better career paths for them post running. They don't have to think of it as like, well, if I'm really lucky and can put in ten years of high quality racing, I'll, you know, some. I'll meet someone along the way who will think that's cool and give me a job afterwards. Yeah. And even within companies there's community managers, there's athlete managers. There are so many more. Brands out there, and so many more roles within brands that bringing on an athlete to actually do those roles make sense. Because even if an athlete isn't necessarily as skilled as someone else, you know they're going to work hard, you know they're going to be focused on results, and you know, they're going to love the role or the community. So yeah, there are a lot of careers going out of running. But, even in Poland, the Tata Sky, I was talking to an English girl who she was before it was canceled in fourth place and a huge talent. But she's training to be a doctor. It doesn't make sense for her to come and race many races and, like, she'll never be a full time trail runner, because the level of commitment to do that, specifically from the UK, where you've got the lakes and you've got some Munros in Scotland, but actually it's it's still pretty small compared to hill that mountains in Europe and America. And so, yeah, she's an incredible talent. But actually there is no. It's so obvious that it would be a bad decision to actually not become a doctor or to sacrifice for the sake of a running career. Which 1st May be fun, actually. The likelihood of injury and, the, the long term guarantee is, is really variable. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot more predictability within her path as a doctor, both financially and from a development standpoint. It's been drawn out over and over again. Whereas like, you know, we're still new enough with ultrarunning to where I was like, we just don't have a lot of retired ultra runners that are, you know, in a, in a spot where there's like you can see like, oh, this is what person this is what the person did from the beginning to the end to where they officially retired. And that's what I could expect if I do it. We're still sort of inventing a lot of that on the way as the sport evolves, I find. And, it's interesting. It'll be fun to see what kind of things happen. But I did want to get into some specifics around Golden Trail, because I think this is like a really interesting piece to the sport that I know I haven't talked about a whole lot. And here in the United States, it gets a lot less attention than maybe some of the other races do. So maybe for some of the listeners that are kind of more like that, want to share with us a little bit, what are the kind of the specifics of Golden Trail? So yes, the concept behind the Golden Shell is to bind together all of the best trail races in the world. the most exciting, the most prestigious, the most, the ones with the most heritage at the kind of half marathon to marathon distance with the intent of creating a series to crown a world champion, but actually to create a televised product that can grow the sport. So the two hour window is seen as the perfect time. So say you did Montblanc math and you could join halfway through the race. And we do have a catch up. But I guess the big difference between it and ultra, other than obviously the difference is that of the distance. Sorry, is that seeing a battle in the shorter distance races is so much more exciting. You know, when you see Kilian at Utmb run down the, you know, off Mont Blanc, it's impressive to see how he runs, but it's not that exciting because he's still not going flat out. Whereas if you have a half marathon and people are. Properly locked in battles and having to, rather than rely on just slowly pulling away because of bed and nutrition, or being less tired, actually having to make moves and attack, and to use their skills and deploy their talents at different times. It makes it so much more exciting to watch. And so the whole ethos behind it has been trying to create something that's the most viewable form of trail running, and I think they're getting well. We're getting pretty good at creating that. Some of the races now they're trying to change to to have loops to force different terrains to force different battles. But we've seen with them, I mean, Sierra is an hour, one by four seconds where Kilian was leading. He got overtaken by just that. He then overtook just that. Then Filemon came from behind, overtook it like it's proper battles where you're seeing athletes on the edge. And on the edges they can fall at any time or completely blow up, whereas in ultra it tends to be more athletes will slowly fade away. so that's what they've created. And it keeps changing slightly each year. And it went to Asia for the first time this year. We've always had two races from North America and then four races in Europe. And the idea is that athletes can, in theory, do one trip to either Asia or Europe or America to get the two races to their home races and then have enough to qualify for the final. And, that's been going since 2019. I've been on board since 2020. And yeah, it's amazing to watch because they spend a lot of money on camera crew. They have film crews throughout the race who are filming it live with camera runners or gold medal Olympus Olympic mountain bikers. Genuinely, that will follow the lead men and women. And so you're always seeing what the race is And you can. Really get into the heart of what it's like to run at that pace. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because I think like one of the more I remember like specifically there was a video once that popped up, it was the North Face 50 mile, championship event in San Francisco, which was billed as one of the more competitive 50 milers on the trail side of things in the country. And one year, Zach Miller and Hayden Hawkes had this, like down to the wire battle where they finished within two minutes of one another. We're just like gutting it out back and forth all day long, basically. And, Jamal Curry, just followed them on the trail for a while with like a GoPro and pulled out maybe like 15 to 20 minutes of just like raw footage of these guys going back and forth in the heat of the battle. And he put it up on YouTube and things just exploded. And it was just like, oh, yeah, we actually haven't seen that yet. Like we haven't, we've seen updates. We're like, oh, well, Zach Miller came through mile 38 and then Hayden Hawks came in two minutes after. And that was the extent of it until you see the finish line, which at that point, you know, even a two minute gap looks big because like you just see one guy crossed and you wait a little bit, you see another guy cross. Yeah. But when you actually see them out there, you know, pushing, sweating, passing and just like moving through this, making decisions and stuff like in live time, you get that, that kind of excitement, that adrenaline as a spectator. And I remember when seeing that, I'm thinking like, man, if we could get to the point where this is something you can actually get on camera, it's going to really generate a lot of interest. So yeah, like you said, you get like mountain bikers out there or probably drones now following these guys, catching some of that stuff. Now it's not even just, oh, let's wait for the YouTube clip to see how this actually played out. It could even be something where it's like, let's actually watch this happen as it's happening, and then see the finish happen within seconds of one another. Yeah. And you're seeing some unbelievable performances and proper battles. Just thinking of Mont Blanc, Remi Bonnett and Lester Lasry from Morocco. They were locked in battle. And Remy is one of the, if not the best climbers in the world. And they went without going back and forth, and you could see they were trying to figure out how to shake the other one off, and they ended up running up the ski slope where Remy was looking at his watch. And he said to me afterwards, he always knew he'd be able to drop out his scene on the climb. And then he kept on trying to do it and he couldn't. And he was climbing at 2000m per hour. So if you think of a VK being a 30 minute, VK is insanely quick to be doing that in the middle of a marathon towards the end at altitude. It's insane. And then suddenly Elysee breaks and drops him on some of the technical descent and the camera's have to like swoop to go with them. And, we saw a similar thing with the women's, where we had five women together. And whenever they went down, due to 3 to 5 times World Orienteering champion would lead at the front and, suddenly you've got, like Sophia, a locally Olympic skier trying to just hang on her coattails. Maude Mathes, former champion. Off the back, and then it gets to the flat bit and suddenly it all changes. And so you get these proper battles because you have specialists in uphill, downhill, flat, technical. Each race is almost a series of different chapters, and suddenly the race twists because now your technical person comes in, your technical skill comes in, or it's a downhill that, you know, this person's not so good. And so yeah, the footage of it is crazy and it's still improving as well because while we try and link it all up, actually you don't always get the live, live stream perfect and you can't film every section of the race. And so you get the battles at the front. But there's so many battles throughout that top ten. And instead of an actual race where the gaps seem to get bigger and bigger and bigger, it's something like a half marathon, a marathon, and things like race pace and race management is so important that you're seeing changes all the way through the field right up until the line. Yeah, that's a really good point too, because there is a whole nother layer of complexity that adds to the strategy of how you're going to raise something like that. And I remember thinking it might have been a marathon. It might have been the Olympics, actually, not this year, but the year prior where Kipchoge was at a spot in the race where he made a move. And like, afterwards, it was like, well, he made the move because he knew he was going to push up to the point where this is all the faster that I know I should go. And at that point in time, he knew he had won, because anyone who comes with him at that point isn't going to be able to sustain that. And they're going to probably blow up because he did early enough in the race where no one was going to bounce back after that. So it's like, unless someone is just like, you know, this unknown, he probably had a like, you know, a breakdown of everyone in the field and where their abilities were at for the most part. But like, you know, he kind of knew like it was just like that was that whereas you have a scenario like you described where you know, you might be that much stronger than someone else on the climb, and therefore you say, okay, here's where I'm going to burn some matches, because this is my strength. But if you're the other person, if you're the technical descender who's maybe not quite as climbing, you probably see that and, you know, like, all right, well, I got to let them go here because if I burn a match here on one of my weaker spots, it's going to cost me on my strength. And then, you know, you get to the spot where you should be able to make up that ground. You don't have anything left because you burnt yourself up doing too much when, when you shouldn't have. So it just adds like that, that really interesting layer of complexity where the strengths and weaknesses are going to be such in a lot of cases where you know you're not going to have all of them, you're not going to be the best at every aspect of that route. And even not quite as much as cycling. But if you're going down a technical descent and you're following someone who's incredibly technically gifted, it becomes easier for you because you can follow their line and they're doing all the work having to choose the foot placement, deciding where the trail is going left and right, what the shortcut is. But you can sit back sometimes and not quite control it, but you're expending less energy. But you might also be able to cut the corners because you suddenly see they've gone wide. And actually the trail now cuts in. And so depending on your strategy, you may work as a team where we've seen, for example, Remy and Lucien in last year's final were working together when Patrick Jenner is the world champion. but he was world climbing champion. He was leading. And so they were working together where Allison was taking on the ups, and then on the downs where we would tuck in behind. And so it does change quite a lot what happened. But because. It becomes increasingly hard to run very fast downhill once your legs are gone. When you have races where there could be two big climbs to big descents, you can't commit too early because if you tenderize your legs, you just can no longer attack. And so you're right. You're right. Like choosing when to expand your matches is part of it, but also trying to draw people into. Expending their matches at the wrong time or getting them to to suffer at the wrong moment could then have an implication later on in the race. And so we're suddenly seeing all these different race strategies coming in as proper tactics. And, and it means it's so much harder to predict who is going to win. Going to Sierras. Now, we suspected Kilian was going to win, but in the women's it could have been one of six runners. And actually it was a complete unknown who turned up, who won the whole thing. Just crazy. Yeah. It's like the men's 1500 at the Olympics this year where it's like, if you run that race ten times over, you have a different winner every time. Probably. It's that level of excitement. It sounds like. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's a really good, good analysis, isn't it? Because. You've got your sprinters, you've got your, your people who are happy to sit behind. And do you go off on a time trial early and try to make everyone suffer because no one really wants to do that, but that might be your only chance of winning. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating stuff. So how many events are there in the Golden Trail series now? So this year there are eight races and there's the final in Switzerland. Although the Polish race was canceled because of thunderstorms and lightning storms. So at the beginning of this season you're having to finish eight to qualify for the final. You write eight highest scores. But now they change the rules. So only three counts towards that final. So it's quite hard to build the season out because you're aware that everyone wants to do a lot of people want to do a race at Utmb. So we'll see a lot of golden travel people do an ICC, maybe a CC. And so the challenge is how to make a series. There are some races in the calendar that everyone wants to do, like a gamma or a Mont Blanc or Pikes Peak, but you can't necessarily have them all. And, offer enough opportunities so that if an athlete comes from America, they want to do Sierras. And now. So then you need a race with either side that's not a marathon. So they can do two races in a, in a kind of a ten day stint. So part of the challenge of building out the number of races is how to balance the distances and group them to make it have less environmental impact. But actually for athletes, I mean that they can meet the number of races needed without it becoming a complete logistical nightmare or training nightmare for them. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting component too because you have that crossover too. I mean Kilian is probably the best example of this where he might do the Utmb 100 mile and also be participating in something like a Golden Trail race that is shorter in duration. So, yeah, you want to make that. You don't want to ruin the storyline by having athletes come in gasp, because you put the key events too close to some other big marquee event that you know is going to pull from that field. So to some degree. So there's a lot of logistics and I'm sure on the planning side of that. And just probably just making sure athletes don't get injured as well, because we've talked about those financial pressures on athletes. But then there is also FOMO. And, you know, athletes want to race as often as they can, typically until they might go through an injury and realize they need to balance it. And so there is an element of trying to protect athletes from their racing instincts as well, and limiting the races, or at least spacing them out in a responsible way, I think is quite important. And that's, you know, that next season with the World Championships as well, again, all the races will have to change because we won't want to clash with that. We don't want to clash with Utmb on the weekend. And so suddenly the balance of races is going to be very hard to achieve without putting too much strain on athletes. Because yeah, you it's so easy for athletes to overdo it and get injured and that's, that's I think the biggest limitation on our sport at the moment is keeping athletes healthy. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're running a series like that too, it's like you would hate to have, you know, one of the kind of the, one of the storyline athletes kind of get out and then all of a sudden get hurt and not be there for the, I mean, you're going to have that level, you're going to have some risk with that no matter what. But yeah, minimizing that I would imagine is a pretty high priority. Yeah. And what often happens is you have an athlete come along who. Because if you run one way race and come top ten, you then get all expenses paid to the next race. And so it is launching people's careers and people are becoming full time athletes off the back of it. But we quite often see it in the second season when athletes are now going full time. That's actually when they pick up injuries because the extra time actually allows, they tend to spend it training harder rather than resting more. And it's super it's super hard to balance the shorter distances with speed. So much more important. You know, lightness is. Does help you climb faster. And so we're seeing a lot of injuries of athletes who are either overtraining or under fueling. And when you're racing that many races and you've got intensive training, still it's very hard to find the balance of that. And quite often it's that step to becoming professional that gives people the freedom to actually damage themselves. And so that's probably the biggest challenge for athletes is how to find a balance across your training to ensure that you are able to improve your performance and what your ambitions want without actually risking it all by being constantly injured. Yeah that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. When you find yourself with more time as an athlete to some degree you have to be mindful of, well I achieved this level of success to become I already achieved a level of access to even have the opportunity to be a professional athlete. So you were already doing a lot of things, right. So then it's like you removed a hurdle, but what do you put in place there that's going to be productive? And at that point in your career, probably looking for smaller levers to pull and then continuing the things you were doing already versus trying to double down on some of the levers, like, you know, more training hours and things like that, which is always tempting. I'll definitely say that. Yeah, especially because typically the athletes will be younger who come through Golden Trail because it is a shorter distance. And so if we if we think of that, the great thing that the ultra distances, they do tend to be more experienced athletes and have been around for years or have taken longer to achieve success, whereas we will have people in their kind of early and mid 20s who haven't had those years and years of Bass training, but also education in the sport as well. And so it is a lot easier to make mistakes when you haven't had that years of experience. Yeah, yeah. There could be a gap in education and it could also be a gap in just learning from their own mistakes where, yeah, you get someone who's been around for a while and doing these longer ultras. Good chance. They've already made some mistakes that they said, well, better never do that again. Whereas if you're a little younger, you may be on the front end of that still and needing to be mindful of it. But even Kilian now, because he's said at the last two press conferences we've had on the tour that he's in the form of his life, and it's partly been because he's now so consumed by work and family that he's had to cut back on his training. And that's forced him to actually analyze which sessions are most important for him to do. And so he's now finding that cutting back on his total volume has allowed him to actually improve his performance. And so, it's a shame he's not doing Utmb this year. not the one, not to my knowledge. Because, you know, we saw at Sierra that now it's his second highest ever Italy score and he beat his own course record in insane heat like he is in the shape of his life. And so if someone is experienced as if Kilian, who's 36, is now only finding out that he could have trained. Better for this first 18 years of being a pro, and is only finding that out because it's been forced upon him by circumstances. It just shows how much, just how much there is to learn for all of us. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting I think there's, there is, there is something to be said about filling some of that extra time with something that is meaningful to you, so it doesn't feel like it's a stress that's keeping you from doing what you want to do, where it's almost like, I love. I'm sure Killian's this way with his children and his family, where it's like, that's something that's just as important or more important to him than, you know, any race results he's ever had. So for him, to some degree, he's like, yeah, sacrificing, you know, that eight hour session out in the mountains to be able to spend time with my family is a worthwhile trade. So he's not going to bed at night thinking or like regretting that decision the way he might if he just was like, had all this time available to him and he decided to take it a little easier. So I do think there is like this challenge for athletes to kind of find this, like balance in life where you want to have enough going on that you're not always narrowly focused on the task at hand. You have these like worthwhile distractions, things that keep you from overreaching, things that keep you from overthinking, from stressing, from inducing yourself with additional anxiety. Things that are going to be counterproductive to you, to you, to your results. You know, that doesn't mean if you're injured as well, if you speak to a lot of athletes who when they're injured, it's horrific because they have nothing else in their life. And for their mental health, they. They can only think about what they're missing out on. And so I think just to be rounded individuals for lifelong health, you need to have a greater purpose, a secondary purpose, a different purpose, rather than just your training focus. So that when we get into it, because ultimately we are, we do all get injured, even the people who never get it. You just you're just not old enough yet that all your issues haven't quite built up enough so that you've got that injury. Then you can, you can, you can be happy with an injury because that's even more challenging. Challenging. Because when you're not happy with an injury, that's when you rush back and that's when you overdo your training back or you, you, you are more likely to to damage yourself in that speed to return than if you've got more of a balance in your life. Yeah. Really interesting stuff. I did want to chat with you a little bit about caffeine too, because I think that's something where in the sport, whether you're doing the Golden Trail series or you're doing the Ultra Trail, Mont Blanc or Western States 100, caffeine is going to be something you see used by athletes and participants. For the most part. You know, there are some people that don't respond to caffeine, but that tends to be the minority. and it is something where the research on caffeine is such that, you know, as far as legal things you can take in to supplement your performance, it's one of the higher rated ones you can find out there. So, what do we know about caffeine and endurance sports from just like a starting point for people who are thinking about it? All right, I know I should probably consider this, but what do I really want to actually do? Maybe in training and then on race day to actually leverage that tool? Yeah. I mean, as you say, it doesn't help everyone. The meta data from scientific studies, the best collated data is that 8% of people don't respond at all. You'll instinctively know that. I think if you are one of those 50% of people respond, super responders and 42% respond above placebo. So, when you look at the studies and there's been. It's been like over a hundred studies on caffeine. The results actually average out those 100% of people. And so actually the impact of caffeine on some individuals is far from massively understated. But for other people it is massively overstated. I guess the stats on it are that you can improve endurance up to about 6%. The way it does that is it releases fat cells from the liver that can be used as a fuel source, preserving glycogen from your muscles. So you're less likely to run out of your glycogen stores, which is obviously great for endurance. It reduces the feeling of pain and fatigue. You will still actually be in pain and you will be fatiguing. You just won't feel it as much, which allows you to actually push through that pain fatigue barrier a little bit more as well. It also works in many other ways. We know about the alertness factor. the. The areas where I think people get right, go right and go wrong in its use. And I think people use it too much as background noise, where the more caffeine you use, the less the impact it has. Although there is mixed research on that. So that's certainly true when it comes to alertness, because how it works is caffeine attaches to sensors in your brain, which blocks the chemical called adenosine, then attaching to your brain. When adenosine is attached to your brain, it makes you feel sleepy and so it stops you feeling sleepy. The more caffeine you have, the more of those receptors you build. And so it takes more and more caffeine to keep yourself alert and to stop yourself being sleepy. Now, some studies I've seen done with Ironman athletes have shown that even if you have a high caffeine usage, you can still get the benefits of caffeine in sport. Because my understanding of it, although this hasn't been actually analyzed, is that the physiological elements of it, that releasing of the fat cells from the liver still happen even if you use a lot of caffeine. But, I personally always drink decaf coffee and don't have caffeine in my life at all, so that when I take caffeine, I don't have to have much to feel a real, really big kick. Now the studies are saying that to get your optimal caffeine dose is a huge amount of caffeine. It's between 3 and 6 mg of caffeine. Most studies have shown for me it's about 5.5mg. but that equates to that's per kilo that you weigh. So for someone like me, that's 210 mg of caffeine. There's three cans of Red Bull at that low bar. Like it's a massive amount. Yeah. And it doesn't make sense to use that in your training and doesn't really make sense to use it in many of your races. It doesn't alter, as I do, that if I'm going for a PB and a 5 or 10 K, but actually studies are showing that one milligrams of caffeine is what it takes to get an academic effect. So to have a benefit in sports. So you're looking at for most people between 16 to 100mg of caffeine. So bear that in mind. When you're looking at your gels you choose, your coffee, your energy drinks, whatever you're using is that a lot of gels are really under proofed. And so particularly some gels like some of the Googles, some of the cliff gels will have 20, 30, 40mg of caffeine. So if you're looking for a quick kick. You're going to have to take two of the gels to be able to get that kick. Now, something else to bear in mind is that we massively differ in how fast caffeine kicks and also how long it lasts. So the half life of caffeine, which is how long it takes for half of it to leave your system. So if you start with like 100mg in your system, the half life is typically between 4 and 5 hours for most people. So 4 or 5 hours later you've got 50mg left. That again though, is that data based on those different groups of individuals. You have 10% of people or 8% that don't respond at all, your 50% super responders. And also it's muddled by other elements as well. And so if you smoke, for example, it doubles. It's already half the half life of caffeine. So actually the impact you have with caffeine is, it is concentrated and reduced. so instead it peaks in your blood for around 45 minutes to an hour. So if you're doing sport, you'll typically get about 45 minutes worth of feeling like you're absolutely on five. Got a rocket up your butt. So knowing all of this and things like ultrarunning is quite important because you want to time your peak for the time you think you need it, but also to extend it for as long as possible. And so I've found and there are no studies on repeat doses of caffeine, which is frustrating because actually there isn't a scientifically backed opinion of how you should approach it. But I've always found with athletes we've worked with and my own personal experience that you need to keep on increasing the dose of caffeine in your system to be able to actually extend the period of that peak. The peaks need to keep on getting higher. So when I was running a race like Comrades Ultramarathon, like, I started with 50mg of caffeine. That's like half a caffeine bullet. Then my next dose I took when I was starting to feel a bit tired again I had A12 adding 100mg, so suddenly the tightening of my systems more. I was next to it within 45 minutes. So actually the total amount, even though it was the same level of dose. I had 1 or 2 because it was less than an hour. The total in my system is higher and so you need to keep on increasing. So the longer the race, either the later you start your caffeine dose or the, the more you have to just keep on increasing that dose level. One thing that hasn't been researched that I suspect could be possible is, is having a low dose of caffeine, kind of 30 or 40 mg over an extended time. You may still be able to see some of the fat mobilization without necessarily feeling that the mental response that you see with the reduction of pain, of fatigue, and that alertness. So that is something worth playing with. But because we are so different, it's very hard to actually advise someone what to do. and similarly, if you're on the pill, the contraceptive pill actually doubles the lifespan as to the half life of caffeine in your system. So if you are someone on the pill, you probably won't want to take caffeine at night if you know it can take you to keep you up because it's more likely to keep you up unless you're a fast metabolism, at which point it might not have any effect whatsoever. But I generally say to people, think about who you are as an individual and whether you like to attack a race by having. Caffeine early so that you can then schedule it and know that you're going to be keeping your pace. Or if you're someone who actually likes to respond. And when you feel tired, use it. Because if you're someone who wants to be responsive, using something like a caffeine gel that takes longer to be absorbed in your system. So anything you swallow typically takes around 25 minutes, 15 to 25 minutes to start to kick and 45-55 minutes to peak. If you have something that's sublingual like a chew or a strip, they'll start to kick in 5 to 15 minutes and peak from 25 minutes. And so if you're during a race, if you're trying to use caffeine responsibly when you tie it, it's better to use something like a chew or a strip. If you're actually planning on having regular caffeine, then you can use gels because the fact it takes longer to absorb won't be as much of an issue. I guess those are the main reasons. The main facts around it. I'd say most people though, because they use so much caffeine in their day to day life. When they then use it, when they race, it has less of an impact. and studies have shown that for caffeine to be completely out of your system takes around four days. But to reverse the effects of caffeine, take at least two weeks for the, to almost return to your baseline. If you're a very heavy caffeine user, though, you may get withdrawal symptoms. And so if you that that can give you headaches, it can actually disrupt your sleep. So if you do take a lot of caffeine day to day, I wouldn't necessarily advise cutting caffeine out in the build up to your races unless you do it quite long out because quite far out because it the impact of disrupting your sleep may be more negative, in your overall performance and the benefit of the caffeine on the day, if that makes sense. Yeah, it kind of fits within the mold of just like maybe a dress that in your off season, if you're going to do that and make sure any of the hurdles that are come along with it are done when it's a low consequence for performance. which is interesting because it's like, and this is I mean, you hit on so many points that I'm curious about, and I think they do a pretty good job of just sort of spelling out maybe where some starting points are for people if they're doing longer races like I am, where they're out there for 100 miles or, you know, all day long and and beyond in some cases. So yeah, it's one of those spots where it's like if you look at the caffeine research and find that like what you mentioned, there's I call it a performance dose of 3 to 6 mg/kg. I think of that like in a couple different ways. One is like you can't be hitting dosages that large frequently enough to really like, you can't be doing that often if you're going to go that route. So then you have to decide, like, when do I take that performance dose? So like if you're out there for 24 hours, like, you know, maybe you can do that a few times, but you probably want to pick the right spots. My other thought too, is like when we're looking at a 100 mile race versus like, say, A5K, if I'm doing A5K, I want that performance because I sort of want to be shot out of a rocket. Whereas if I take a performance dose before 100 miler, it's already too easy for me to get tempted to go a little faster than I should. So if I have an A incentivizing me to go faster yet, I'm just gonna probably blow up at the end of the race due to two fast miles early on that are like artificially effort wise, like reduced. so, so many people have a morning coffee before their race and that's doing exactly that. You know, before your marathon, you half marathon, you do start off too quickly and then you're burning is like consider that too. At too high a rate. Yeah. Yeah. You just compound it. So I usually tell folks it's like what. What's probably worth considering is like if you're going to do performance dosing think of it as like where are the spots that I want to be returned to baseline because things are getting pretty rough, or I know I'm going to be running through the night, and I know 2 or 3 p.m. is going to be a challenge, because normally I'd be fast asleep at that point, and now I'm out there not just being awake, but trying to perform at the same time versus a strategy that it sounds like you're maybe a little more in favor of with these longer ones, which is just kind of like dosing in things that are like well below the performance dose, but doing them more frequently because you're likely to probably get enough of a cognitive assist there to stay on a relatively low intensity effort or enough focus to maintain that. But then you can pull that lever more frequently and then maybe avoid kind of shooting yourself in the foot by going out too fast or hitting caffeine at the wrong spot in the race at a high enough dose where you start, you know, eating up miles or kilometers that are rates that are unsustainable. But it's really worthwhile thinking about your overall nutrition when you think about caffeine as well. Because while that's the science behind it, actually the reality is most people need and use caffeine at the point when they're their stomachs going or they're not wanting to take more gels, or they're sick of their energy, their even their tailwind or whatever it is that they've had already three liters of it. And so. You need to think about it. I always recommend having more than one potential source of tested caffeine, because in the same way, at ultras, you want to have a variety of flavors and of products to reach for, because the moment you're having caffeine is when you're likely to be turned off. All of these, this nutrition you've been having up to that point in your race, that's when you need to have some options. And, but something else to bear in mind as well is that caffeine does spike your insulin levels in your bloodstream. And so if you've been if you say, for example, taking caffeine gel to get the caffeine, if you're not able to continue taking gels after that, you're not only going to get an insulin spike from the caffeine, but you're you'll get your sugar spike, you get your insulin spike from the gel as well. And so you'll then see a pronounced sugar crash afterwards. If you don't keep topping up your carbohydrates. So it's really important if in longer races, if you are using caffeine, that you don't just think carbohydrates will get me until like the 80% mark and now I'll just caffeine out the rest, you need to be topping up to make sure you're not having that caffeine crash. and that's where we've kind of been toying with different products that can help. So we've now got a ginger tea that is milder. So it's like 33 mg of caffeine rather than 100mg. And that means you get the stomach settling element of ginger, which moves carbohydrates faster through your system. So at the point that your stomach's going to shit, literally, hopefully it means you still can get your caffeine without having to sacrifice your stomach quite as much. But, but, but do try it out. Because, you know, whenever I used to race when I was younger, I wouldn't mind going into that five milligrams of caffeine because it meant that I'd go out all night and go raving afterwards, because that seems to be like a traditional post-race finish. But that's not great after a training session, because. Right, you need to sleep. but also think about how to deploy it in your training as well. And I find that most people, because they associate nutrition almost with the race itself, because you don't use carbohydrates typically in your training because you don't need it, you will do in your longer run potentially. But then people neglect caffeine because they link caffeine to caffeine gels or caffeine to energy chews with caffeine in. But actually, for me, I've found tempo runs are so good to have. Caffeine on me because I'll quite often if I've had a really intense training block and it's it's the Thursday run I fear the most, which is my tempo run where you keep an extending it a mile and it almost seems unfeasibly hard when you're you're coming to the end of your training and, having a, having caffeine in your pocket, you could either take it before if you wanted to, but say I was before, comrades, I did a basically ten miles of hill sprint, and knowing that halfway through even five miles of this hill, I ran up and down seemed a lot. But knowing I could then have caffeine to help me get through the end meant that I could start with confidence at the beginning. But actually, I wasn't dreading the race. I wasn't dreading that training session or week and like it draining my mental energy because it suddenly meant halfway through the run I'd be like, right, now's the time to blow the bloody doors off. And so using it, having it there as a support and sometimes I wouldn't take it in every session because sometimes it's important to actually gut it out and train your mind to have to deal with that misery. but having something like that for your tempo run, maybe your interval session, if that's the one you fear, or having it in your back pocket on your long run where you're doing back to back and you're just worried about. Not being able to finish those extra miles. And I just found it. It takes the stress out of training. Yeah. No, those are some excellent points. I'm the same way. If I'm doing speed work that's usually when I'll get a little more strategic about caffeine timing and things like that before. But for some of those sessions and, and it's also like if we, if we go back over to like lower intensity long run stuff, you know, there's, there's debate about like how to structure long runs and ultra marathon running where it's like, do we do these ultra long, long runs? And I find that like my personal opinion on that is like, it's probably not something you really need or want to be doing year round to the degree where your weekends are dedicated to these, like half day to full day training, training outings, because you probably will still from tomorrow and have a real reduced quality in the later stages of that where now you're taking quality off. We're kind of getting into the Kilian experiment a little bit here, I guess. But there are those, there are those kind of consequential weeks when you're getting closer to the race itself, where with enough time, if you've developed the proper running fitness up to that point, you should have a little bit of flexibility to make that opportunity. Cost of maybe going out for a little bit of a longer session, or doing a tune up race in order to practice things like, well, how do I feel when I'm out here at a low intensity for five hours? If I take in 50 mg versus 100 mg of caffeine and really kind of run some of these things through the system to to give yourself some insight as to how you're going to respond to it and put together a more of a personal, individualized approach to kind of how you're going to use caffeine on race day. That's maybe a little more specific to the timing, the fatigue level and the specifics that are going to be there. Yeah. And even, particularly if you're someone who trains the heart rate just by going out and practicing with caffeine as well, it's going to throw off all your stats because it's going to immediately jump. And so if you're not, if you're not used to that on race day and you are suddenly taxing caffeine, you don't know what pace to run anymore because it's completely changed. but I find, for me, caffeine's like a shortcut to motivation, and it's in the summer. I don't need it for that. But sometimes when it's dark and wet, I can't be asked to train or to do a gym session that I just dread. It's easier than having to motivate myself to just get some caffeine and that could be a cup of coffee or whatever it may be. And then, yeah, that gives me that boost to suddenly think, yeah, come on, let's go and do the sessions. So that's but that's, that's where cutting out caffeine in your life is useful because it means you can take some and get that feeling of energy to motivate you without it necessarily. You've taken so much during the day that it then impacts on your sleep. Excellent. Well David, this has been an awesome chat. I've definitely learned a lot about just some of the trail racing that you got going on over there for gold with the Golden Series. and just had a fun chat about running in general and then obviously caffeine too. So I appreciate you taking some time to chat with me today. Oh, thanks for having me on. And, and what's your next race out of interest. What are you lining up for? Yeah. You know, so I sort of put myself into a pattern after this summer race that I was going to do a hundred miler, probably in the fall time frame. So I kind of started the training process for that, but I hadn't really picked an actual race to do yet, and I was sort of on the fence between doing javelin 100 and Tunnel Hill hundred. So I think I'm going to make that decision probably in the next week or so. and go for one or those two. But both of them are runnable enough hundred mile courses where I wouldn't change the way I prepare for them in any drastic way. So I've been sort of resting on that reality, and that's been keeping me from actually picking one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always need a good listener. If you've got a motivation for why exactly pick one of one race you're going to or the other. How about something shiny to make his decision for him? Yeah. That's true. We could do a poll. Should I do? And then see which one comes out ahead and then just go for that one. So we even, like, suggest the best post race food that's available locally because that's there you go. Pretty easy right. It's been great or something. That's good . I'm thinking about this the wrong way. I should be looking at the post race food venue more than anything here. Exactly. Get you to that finish line? Yeah. No doubt. You got anything coming up, David? No, no, no, I'm doing something called the craft half. It's three hours. It's half the biz. But I'm well away from any kind of fitness to race, so it's just a joy for myself, just having fun out there. There's nothing wrong with that. Awesome. Well, where can the listeners find you, David? I know, you're on the Bad Boy Running podcast. I've been on a couple times, and you guys do an awesome job over there. But where else on social media can people find you? Websites that sort of stuff, to be honest, that's about it because I, I don't really share anything on socials myself. caffeine bullet. There's some I do more fun things with them, but, even the podcast doesn't put much out on socials, so, but it tends to be more stories about running rather than, how to run faster because those days are behind this. Awesome. Well, the stories are great. I'm here for the story. So if the listeners want to dive into some fun running stories, they should head over and check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes as well. Well, thanks so much for having me on. Right on David. Take care.