Episode 417: Brady Holmer - Low Mileage Marathon PR, Creatine & Carb Timing

Brady Holmer is a MSc in Human Performance, endurance athlete, and science writer. He hosts Physiologically Speaking, a great resources for both health and endurance performance. Brady recently dropped 10 minutes off his marathon PR on a four day per week running program, clocking a speedy time of 2:26:28. We unpack how he structured his training and nutrition. We also touch on some new research around carb timing, and some considerations for creatine usage for performance and sleep related fatigue resistance.

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Episode Transcript:

Cool. Well, welcome back, Brady, I think. What is this? Is this the third time? I think you've just been too. Just two. Okay, I couldn't remember. I knew you were here in the studio in the earlier days of the studio, I think, actually, but I couldn't remember if I had you on remotely at one point. I can't remember either. We might have done it remotely. I know we've done one in-person, one remote, and maybe you, like, came on my I was on yours. I remember thinking about that. Yeah. So we've talked in podcast formats at least three times. So this will be at least three times for sure. And we've had, you know, several conversations I feel like on runs that could have been podcasts. It's unfortunate. Like we can't carry these along with us. I need to get those rode clips on mics that are supposedly really, really good quality despite being very minimal. Yeah, I know it would kind of be fun. I always, I've had this idea that I want to do a podcast, but it's all you have to be like exercising when we do it. Yeah, probably. You know, we're doing zone two cardio. We're on, like, a bike trainer or something or out on a run. But, audio quality might not be that good, but yeah, but if it was, I think if it was a shorter episode, you could probably do it because people would tolerate it for the kind of uniqueness of it. Maybe, or or it could also just end up being like, maybe people engage with the same way they do, like the live like peloton classes or the what are some of the other ones they have like, no. Is it NordicTrack? They do. Or ifit they do a bunch of that stuff to where it's like, yeah, they're kind of talking to you, but they're also exercising. Tolerate it. Yeah. And I think they're like ten, 30 minutes long. Yeah. 2030 or something like that. Yeah. Maybe that's the move. Yeah. You just got to be in really good shape. Zone one. Yes. No. Zone three podcast. No no no. Yeah. Well, speaking of zone three, because I'm assuming that's probably right around where your marathon pace is these days. You're coming off a nice ten minute PR. Yeah, that was exciting. So what about two weeks ago now. Ran the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. for the first time running that marathon. Great one. So if anybody's looking to run, like, very flat, very fast, very well run like a marathon, too. I thought it was well organized for being kind of a major marathon, but not super, you know, logistically, like not a ton of people, like, you know, Boston or something like that. So, yeah, the Indy Marathon ran two 2628. So that was almost a ten minute PR. Previous PR was 237 actually from this year. yeah. I ran, you know, kind of a perfectly executed race. So I was very happy with that. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, your fastest mile was the last mile. So it was. Yeah. I think 521. That's like my last mile and obviously so I don't know what I ran from. You know the last thing. Yeah, right. You know, 25.2 to 26.2. It could have been probably in like the five teens because I had kind of a good, good momentum going. But yeah. Which you know that's kind of how I wanted to run the race I think, you know, just looking at all of it like when you look at the world records and things like that, it's just they're all running negative splits. And that's kind of, you know, these days how I try to race. And I think sometimes that holds me back a little bit, maybe from like, oh, what could I have run because you finished the race feeling good and you're like, oh, what if I would have pushed myself earlier in the race? But, the goal was to negatively split that race. And I did it almost perfectly, even split, but a slight negative. So it was like I think one 1330 and then like a 1256 or, you know, something, the math probably doesn't check out perfectly on that one. But so even split, slight negative split, which is kind of how I wanted to run the Kingdom approach. Yeah, exactly. Now, if you just get 26 minutes faster, it'll be then it'll be actually some approach. Yeah, yeah. Crazy to think about. Just 26 minutes faster. Like a minute per mile faster in the world record. If you know, that's why it's sometimes been running. You can't put your own times in, you know, the framework of others? Yeah. One of my most, like, viral Instagram post was actually just breaking down kingdom splits, like in word form in a picture where after he died, I was like, just so you know, like when he did or like because people here two hour marathon and I think, I mean, people who know about running can appreciate that. But when you start actually looking at it like, oh, that's 68 second laps for a marathon. And then I posed the question. I was like, at what point would you be able to join him and finish with him? And people are thinking about that. We're like, okay, can I do a 68 second quarter? It's like, okay, I can do six. I could join him for the last quarter mile and that's it. That's kind of an interesting approach to like, yeah, like you start with 400m to go in the race. How long are you even going to beat him during that? Yeah. But no, it's helpful to put it in. I think everybody typically puts into the perspective of like the 400 meter, like going to a track, running a lap as fast as you can. It's probably not going to be 68 seconds. It's probably going to be slower and just realize that guy did it however many hundreds times in a row during his math on. Yeah. What was it? It's 100 and. 5.5, I think something like that. Yeah. So yeah, it's wild to think about. I'll take quarter repeats that 68 oh my gosh. Yeah I need to I for sure yeah I mean and like either doing like that or his five K splits because most people can kind of put A5K in perspective or a mile. It's like it's just absurd to look at that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about the marathon is I'm obviously your pacing was beautiful. but also I think your approach because I wouldn't say like your approach was super non-traditional, but it was definitely different from what I think most people imagine they would do if they were going to go in PR in the marathon. just because I'll let you tell me. But like, it seems seems like kind of since I've known you, you've sort of come from like dealing with some injuries to kind of solving some of them and kind of having a couple maybe setbacks along the way, but ultimately kind of figuring out a program that entails a fair bit of cross training. plenty of running. Still, I think you were hitting 60, 70 miles a week of running. but the way you've done it, it's kind of been like working with your body in ways that, you know, are both productive to your fitness, your health, and then getting faster at the marathon. Yeah. And, you know, maybe we covered it like last time I was on. But just like the injuries, you know, probably fast past 5 or 6 years or so, it's just been every year I've had some sort of injury related to something like a bone stress injury. So like, nothing ever muscular like that seems to be fine. And that's probably a result of, you know, when I was younger and, you know, running in college, I ran a ton of miles. And so I'm not really pushing my body like mileage wise to the limit where it's going to be like I'm going to have some hamstring injury or something like that. So it's all kind of been like bone stress related injuries and you know, of course, like. When it comes to that. You look at obviously nutrition is kind of one of the factors, which is something I've iterated on, you know, over the years. And I think I've gotten down pretty, pretty good. And we maybe can talk about that too, because that played a part, I think, in my marathon training. But the running thing specifically, and when you look at just like a bone stress injury, one of the number one risk factors is just going to be you take some time off and then you try to rebuild either too quickly or, you know, build too much volume too quickly, run too fast, too quickly, or a combination of the both. You know, you're running too fast, you know, too quickly and for too many miles. So I've kind of just every time, you know, I had one of those setbacks kind of reformulated and like, okay, well, you know, I was running, you know, I went up to 70 miles a week, so let's like, cut it down, you know, a little bit and maybe just run. We'll put a cap at 50 or 60 miles a week or something like that. So the volume side of it, as opposed to the speed, is kind of what I've chose to focus on, because I think that probably played more of a role. I'm not, you know, running too fast. So the volume I think has maybe contributed to those injuries and so fast or rewinding a bit to when I train for what I'll consider to be like my first marathon in May, where I ran that 237. For that one. I kind of set a barrier for myself. Okay, I'm going to run a maximum of four days a week, and that ended up being probably 40. I probably averaged 40 to 50 miles during that marathon build, which for the time I was trying to run really isn't that much. I mean, I was hoping to run like low 40s or low two 30s, like 235, something like that. with again, you know, my peak might have been like 50 miles a week. And so but setting that barrier, I think, or the cap on, I'm going to only run four days a week. It kind of self was a self limiter for the mileage there, because there's only so much you can run if you're running four days a week, right. so I decided to do that and again, that, you know, let me do a 237. I was very undertrained for that. And I think that showed up in like the last probably thinK of that race. It was just like I wasn't used to running that far. I didn't have many long runs under my belt. I did like a 21 and a 22 mile or maybe, during the build, but nothing major. No real good long run workouts, nothing in super shoes, which I think, you know, contributed to some cramping during that. So regardless, I was happy with the race, but it wasn't you know, I didn't run to my potential, but. The goal for that race was, let's get to the starting line without any injuries. January of this year was the last time I've had an injury. So I was like, I'm going to run this marathon, get to the starting line with zero injuries, get there healthy. and I accomplish that goal. So that was kind of number one. Check check check it off. And ran a decent time that I was pretty proud of. But again, I'm like, okay, we didn't get hurt. So now what can we do? Like now what can we iterate on to train differently for this next marathon to one have the same goal, don't get hurt, but to actually run a time that I think I'm capable of, which I thought was kind of mid two 20s, certainly sub 230 I think given, you know what, I've run for the half marathon and just like what I think, I'm capable of. So yeah, because you broke 70.5 on a similar low mileage approach earlier I did. Yeah, I think my mileage was maybe a little bit higher. It was probably around like 60, but I ran a 109 30 half marathon in Houston in January. I was injured during the race. It wasn't enough to, like, prevent me from running the race. But yeah, I mean a similar lower mileage approach. I was running more days per week, like 5 or 6 days per week. But again, I ran that and I certainly knew that I was in better shape for this race than I was for that. So like, I mean, you know, 108 high half marathon shapes, I think I can run, you know, a mid 220 for the marathon. Yeah. So. The approach for this one was to keep it at four days a week. And as you know, I don't want everything. During this build I ran more than four days per week. But let's like up the mileage a little bit. So it's kind of what I referred to as this high density running approach. So I'm only running four days a week. But on those days that I run, you know, if I'm running 60 to 70 miles a week, that means you're averaging 15 plus miles a day. Yeah. So, you know, you have a medium long run during the week of like 15 miles. You have a 12 mile run in there. Then you have like a 22 to a 26 mile run for your long run. And then, another day where it's 20 miles. So I'm doing like 15in the morning, five in the afternoon. So kept that throughout the build. And I think that's again, a bit unorthodox, where most runners of, you know, that speed or my speed or, you know, even better or worse, I guess, or slower are probably going to be running five, six, seven days a week. They're not doing cross training. So they might be doing similar mileage 60 to 80 miles a week. But on, you know, more days per week. and I don't think my reasoning for that, I mean, everybody kind of asks, like, why not just run 6 or 7 days a week for one? Again, I think it was the self-limiting thing. So again, if I'm only running four days a week, sure, I can kind of cram a lot of miles into that, but I'm not going to be running 100 miles per week on four days per week. I just can't do it. So 70 is kind of the most that you can really do without. Just like going crazy on any day and losing some quality. So, Kept that with the four days per week and peaked around. I think 72 was my highest, highest mileage week. I did that one week. The rest were kind of, you know, between 65 and 70 and then some, some down weeks in there, so much higher mileage. I probably ran double the amount of mileage during this build than I did for my marathon in May. and yeah, I think something else that was different in addition to just higher volume. So that in and of itself, I think contributed to the better time. but just like the targeted workouts as well, and like on the days that I run, just keeping them high quality. So in the long run, there's no days where I'm like, okay, I need to run, you know, 8 to 830 pace as my recovery run. Those have essentially been replaced by the bike, which is my main only form, I guess, of cross training. So, I guess I can speak a little bit on that, but basically I'm doing Zwift, so I have my bike hooked up to an indoor trainer. Do that three days per week, for anywhere from 100 minutes to, you know, two hours or something, sometimes 2.5 hours. But, mostly those have replaced kind of like a zone to easy recovery run. I'll do intervals on the bike sometime to get a little bit of volume in there. But yeah. So it was a little bit unorthodox in that the density thing has kind of worked out not only from the perspective of I just like running a lot on those particular days, which I think there's also something to the fact that you're placing your legs a little bit. So let's get my legs used to kind of running a lot on the days versus, you know, I'm doing 7 to 10 miles a day on seven days a week. I'm doing like a lot of mileage on those high density days. I actually think that served me well in terms of just building up kind of leg strength and things like that. so again, and it also helped me prevent injury, I mean, whether that was the sole cause of it or whether it's just my body is getting stronger and less injury prone as I, as I kind of progress, who knows. But it seems to be working. And, so I wasn't really willing to change that. Yeah, maybe for the next one. So I'm going to run Boston in April. Maybe I'll up it to five days of running per week. But, you know, eventually I might end up doing that if I want to, you know, stretch it to, like, averaging 80 miles a week or something like that. I might have to stretch out, run five days a week instead of four. But, yeah, it worked pretty well. And, I think a lot of people. Enjoyed seeing that approach. I posted a lot about what I was doing on X kind of throughout, and people took an interest in kind of the oh, this is weird. Like, you know, you're only running four days a week. And what because that's very uncommon for, you know, say like a mid 220 marathoner. But it worked. And just another way I'll try to iterate on that again as the next marathon training block. They should have categories of days of week for week running. And because you probably got the four days per week gone, yeah, they take all the people from the race, you know, how many days are you running per week? And they have different groups for that. Yeah, it'd be funny to see. But yeah, I doubt there were a whole lot of people in the two 20s doing that same approach. No, I would, I would like to know, but I feel like it's probably very uncommon. Most runners are just going to be doing mostly running, maybe some cross training, but you know, they're probably going to be running at least six days a week. Yeah. Well, I mean, it goes to show you that like, there is what we kind of think we know on paper or that we're convinced we know on paper. And even that is fair enough. I always say like, well, if it was super cut and dry, there would be no reason for pros to switch coaches ever, because they would just all have the same formula. So even at that level, there's a variance. But you know, the next piece of the puzzle is kind of being aware of what is likely to work, but then knowing, well, what can I do and not do and, you know, show up to the start line feeling healthy. So I mean, when you think about your scenario or like some bone injury issues. So yeah, I like to minimize the impact as much as you can without sacrificing. Or getting as much quality out of the running that you can is definitely seems like a really worthwhile approach to me. I'd be curious, with the king of the timeline that you chose, I think you kind of start focusing on those 12 weeks out. Yeah, like 13 weeks. But, you know, we'll call it 12. So three months, three months build. So did you have a workout progression that you were focusing on during that kind of midweek runs and then as you moved into higher mileage on your long run, starting to focus on more marathon pace stuff. Yeah. So, I would say I kind of have 3 or 4 different workouts, like a weekly interval workout that I cycled through, and I kind of like that. I think some people like variety, where it's like, I don't want to do the same workout during my training block at all because I want something different. But for me, every day, month or whatever, I like doing the same workout that I did the previous month to kind of see, oh well, how did that feel? What did my heart rate look like? What were my paces compared to last run? So like mile repeats, two mile repeats, three mile repeats, and then I think 800 meter intervals. Those were the only kind of interval workouts that I did throughout the build. I probably did one of those every week, every month or something. There were weeks where I skipped interval workouts. Which one of the perks of not having a coach and not being on the team is just like, I don't want to do interval workout this week. I'm just going to like to run one of my runs like a little bit up tempo or something and just kind of skip the interval workout. so I kind of cycled between those and I felt like I just really enjoy a lot of them, and they can tell me a lot about my fitness specifically. Like the mile repeats, the two mile repeats the three mile or the five K repeats however you want to call it. I can sense a lot about my fitness on those versus, you know, I'm sure you've heard of like the Jaso eight hundreds. and the idea behind those, if people aren't familiar, is like, you take whatever time you want to run in the marathon. So for me, let's say it was a 225 and you basically just say, okay, well, now you're going to run 800 meter repeats at two minutes and 25 seconds each. Okay. And you should be able to run that like 10 to 12 of those with equal rest. and that kind of is predictive of your marathon time. You know, it's very loose. It's very rough. But for somebody who's more endurance oriented like me. That workout at 225 is actually pretty hard. Yeah, because that's pretty fast. I mean, that's 450 mile pace and I'm doing 10 to 12 of those with, you know, a two, 2.5 minute rest. That's hard. So I did that work out a couple times during the build. But I was doing, you know, 230 to 235. And so if you would, if I would have taken that and been like, oh, like I'm not in 225 shape, you know, it's not a perfect prediction. And so I think the longer endurance kind of intervals and reps predict my, you know, potential more than like the Jaso hundreds or something to which is why I, I kind of like those so for in terms of the progression, I definitely something new that I was doing this build was the long run workout. So I do like 6 to 10 miles of work during my long run, at marathon pace or faster and I don't the progression, I would say whether I added more miles to each of those. I didn't really do that, but obviously the pace kind of progressed. So that was kind of the only thing that I did during that. but yeah, one of I, I did a couple different iterations of them. Some of them I stole, there were like a couple local running clubs who would post what they were doing. I like taking a couple of those during the build, but I would do about 1 or 2 of those a month. So not every long run was a long run workout, which I think, you know, you can't make every long run a workout or you're just going to be doing, you know, a little bit too much and kind of burn yourself out. I didn't want to do that. But yeah, for something that, you know, that was a lot different from the build between the last one was, yeah, do the long run workout. So typically involve like five six miles of a warm up. And then you're just doing say like a four mile with a like a four mile tempo with a minute float in between and then a three mile, then a two mile, one mile. That was like an example of something I did. And what I found good about that was it integrated some. I'm running at my marathon pace, which my goal marathon pace was a 538, but also and maybe another thing that's a little unorthodox is. Doing some below marathon pace work. So, you know, for maybe the two mile repeat of the one I was doing, you know, running 515 to 520. I think that is, you know, people would question I think you may have somebody even pointed this out to me on X. They were like, oh, I thought you might have been doing a little too much work, you know, below your marathon pace. And I was worried that, you know, that might leave you, like, not as fresh on race day, but I think that goes to kind of just show the you need to really be individual in terms of telling your workouts for you during like a marathon build, because for me, a lot of it comes down to I want to be fit and I want to know I'm fit. But psychology for me is very important too. So I don't want to know that I can run 538 miles for my tempo run. I want to be able to run 515 to 520 for a ten K tempo and feel good. So that way oh 538 that's slow. You know, you want that to kind of be slow. So when I'm running 520 or 515 pace during a long run workout, I'm like, oh, this is great because when it comes to race day and I'm running 535 per mile, it's like it's going to feel very easy. So for me, that was kind of a psychological training approach as well as, you know, obviously fitness because your body's, you know, used to running fast like that and you want that to, to be the case as well. So yeah, that was kind of one of my approaches. And I implemented those in the long run. Workouts have been I think for me were one of the bigger things that prepared me for the marathon. I even ran like a marathon during the build, which another speaking of, you know, more unorthodox things kind of. They always say things like, you don't run a marathon to train for a marathon. And I was like, well, why not? Yeah, I want to run 26 miles in training one time and just yeah, you know, see, and I think I ran like a 245 or whatever. And it felt so easy. So again, like psychologically for me, I'm like, okay, I just ran a 245. On a random Sunday morning. I wasn't tapered. I wasn't, you know, I didn't, like, eat breakfast or whatever beforehand. I took my gels and stuff during it, but, after that, I'm like, okay, like, can you run 20 minutes faster than this? Like an ideal race scenario? Not to mention, you know, we were in Austin, Texas. It was in the middle of the middle of the summer. So, it was super humid. So that was just another thing that like, psychologically, I was like, okay, this is, you know, going to prepare me and, you know, physically to I think, you know, you just, you know, why not run a marathon during your marathon build or further like you'll be ready for race day. So you just gotta make sure to obviously like to recover, you know, before you do that. And then afterwards make sure to take the day off afterwards because like, you know, it's the least I can do, right? Right. Yeah. I think with that sort of stuff, it's all about the kind of timing. It's like if you drop that session in when you're like midway through a block that you're progressing in, like maybe not the best spot for it, because the likelihood of taking quality out of your next session is a little bit higher. But if it's like, you know, at the end of a block where you're going to have some easier runs coming up where you're not really treading on much, you're feeling good, you've kind of gotten kind of this structure. And then, you know, for you, I mean, you're running a 226 marathon. So it's you're not running a five hour marathon. So for you to run the distance, you know, you're not even really leaving the like the real adaptation benefit zones that you're going to get from just sustained running like you would maybe do if you went out, ran for five hours or something like that. Totally. And but but even that, even that run, that 26 mile run. I'm like that left me. I felt better after that than I had some of my harder intervals, you know, workouts during the week that, you know, weren't as long or whatever. So it was just like, yeah, you just got to be smart about it. I'm like, you know, my, you know, looking at my heart rate during it, I feel during it. And it's like I felt fine. So if you know, you don't want to waste yourself during it, but if you feel fine afterwards and, you know, let yourself recover. And I think it was probably maybe 6 or 8 weeks out like from the race. So plenty of time to recover afterwards. And so yeah, you know, it didn't seem didn't seem like a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think most if you look at most like professional runners or even like real serious runners, they're going to do a tuneup race a lot of times around that time frame. So from a training load standpoint, it'd be hard to argue that that was more dramatic than you going on pushing up for a hard half marathon or something. Oh, definitely. Definitely. I think yeah, I didn't do a I didn't do a tuneup race in my build for the marathon. And ideally you if there was like a half marathon or something around here, I would have done it. But I think you hit the nail on the head there. It's like if I would have gone and raced a, you know, a half marathon at a 111 or a 112 or something, that would have left me way, you know, weight, I would have needed way more recovery after that than I would of that, you know, marathon that was not even at, you know, a tempo pace. It was slower than tempo pace. So yeah. Yeah. So that's cool. I think it was, you know, fun to follow. And I think like the bike. The Ron combo is just a really interesting setup. So what was like your volume hitting when you added in the bike volume and the run volume on an average week? Yeah. So bike volume, bike volume kind of stayed the same with about like 4 to 6 weeks to go. I upped it a little bit. But again, so it was you know, I'm doing three times a week and I'm doing let's just call it two hours per session. So six hours of biking and then, you know, if you take what I was doing maybe my average run week, let's just call it 65, 65 miles in a week. So that's probably another, let's just call it 7.5 hours of running per week. So about 13 I would say 13 to 14 hours probably of just biking slash running, total volume. So I would say probably averaged between then if you take the high end 15, so 13 and 15 hours a week of like total volume. Cool. So yeah, I want to touch on kind of nutrition and what you kind of focused on with that both kind of in the training side of things. Actually, given the way you kind of structured your running with longer runs, but fewer of them, maybe that provided a better platform for intra workout nutrition? probably for the long run, I would imagine, for sure. But then ultimately how that kind of got things set up for you for race day. Yeah, totally. So it's funny because like, one of the things I don't detail and sometimes one of the things people ask about when I'm posting my training is. They don't ask about it. I'll probably like it often enough, but like, oh, you know what? What types of things do you eat? And I don't detail a lot because there's not really a method to it. Just regarding my daily nutrition, I would say it's like I'm, you know, I eat carbohydrates. I wouldn't consider my diet. It probably could be higher in carbohydrates for like the amount that I'm running. I wouldn't consider it low carb either. So it's kind of just like a moderate carbohydrate approach. But so regarding the fueling, you know, around nutrition or around the workouts is kind of where I like, chose to focus on it. And there was something again that changed like this. This block two was given, you know, like what you just said that the days were sometimes longer and a little bit more intense. focusing on nutrition, I did fuel during two sessions during the week. Two of the other sessions I would carry like water and electrolytes. And sometimes that would have like a carbohydrate, carbohydrate in there as well. But just two sessions per week when I would use fuel in the form of energy gels. One of those was the weekly interval workout, which I typically always did on like a Thursday. And again, that's because, you know, the total volume for that session is going to be 14, 15 miles. I'm going to be out there for 45 to 2 hours, like total. And so, I did fuel during that. Again, I think I didn't necessarily push the limits of fueling, but I made sure to at least get something during it. So my typical approach was to carry two gels with me. I'll take one at the end of my warmup. I warm up for 30 minutes. Just an easy 30 minute run. so. Right. And like that last mile, take an energy gel, have some water, and then about halfway through the workout, or let's just say every 30 minutes during the workout, I take another energy gel and they're not incredibly long. So it was typically just like one gel during the workout. That was partially, again, for the fueling purposes, I. Think that most workouts I could have done again, there's this thing between could have or should have. You know, could you have done the workout fasted well, yeah. Of course. Should I have? Probably not. It would be better if you don't. or it'd be better if I did fuel. So I would take a gel for like 30 minutes, every 30 minutes, like an intense interval workout. So that would typically just be like, I might have 50g of carbs during that session. 25 and like the first and then 25 and the second. the reason for that, again, I just felt like cognitively, it kind of helped me a little bit physically. I think it obviously helped me a little bit. Also I think there's a recovery aspect of maybe taking carbohydrates in during the workout, maybe something we can chat about later. So I did change that because other than that, you know, most of my just general weekly runs, I do fasted with the exception of maybe some electrolytes in a little bit of carbohydrate like powder in them or something. and so again, they're going to be like 12 to 15 miles. And I'm just like it's kind of inconvenient to take gels and eat breakfast beforehand. And I don't find the need to do that, regardless of whether it might, you know, be good for me or not. So, fuel during the interval workout during the week, which I definitely felt like had some benefits. And then obviously during the long run, that's kind of where I tried to at least mimic what I was going to do on race day in terms of carrying as many gels as I was going to use on race day. especially if it was a long run workout, if it was just a general long run, I'm going at an easy pace. I might take like 1 or 2 fewer gels than normal, just because I didn't feel the need. But I tried to replicate my fueling strategy in the long run. And so what that looked like, I did the approach of I know it's more popular sometimes for people to do. I'll take a gel every 30 minutes. For me, it kind of makes more sense to do it based on your miles, because then you were kind of fueling for output versus just some arbitrary time. So if I want to say I'm going to take a gel every four miles, that kind of compensates for, okay, well, if I'm running faster on this run, I'm going to have to take gels more frequently. versus if I take it every 30 minutes, you're kind of taking, you know, for over a. Yeah for gels over a two hour run versus if I do it every four miles, I might end up doing 5 or 6 gels over that run, but I'm running faster, so I probably need a few more gels during that. That's kind of my thought process. And so I did every four miles and sometimes even pushed it to a jail every three miles if it was a very intense one. And that's something I actually did on race day too, I took a gel every three miles in the latter half of the race. So pretty, pretty frequent fueling. and yeah, I guess I can talk about the race a little bit too, like what I did fueling during that. again, that did. So for the first 12 miles, I did a gel every four miles, and then after that I did one every three miles. Eventually it ended up being, I think I averaged probably 80g of carbohydrates per hour. I used the science and sport gels, beta fuel gel. They have a gel that's 40g of carbohydrate and I use that during training. I liked it a lot. It, they're very, they're less viscous than some of the other gels. So they kind of just are like water to me. So I ended up liking them. And then I use Morton just because I'm like, I feel like I have to. They're kind of the more they seem like they're more efficient. My body kind of likes them. They have one with caffeine in it. So. So I took that as well. I alternated between those. During the race, I actually had another 20g of carbohydrate gel, Science and Sport one. So I had three different gels and I alternated those throughout the race. People are always like, why the heck are you alternating? I just kind of like mixing it up. Yeah. You prevent, like, pallet fatigue. So two of them were neutral and then one was like a lemon lime. It's just like it's just something different. And they actually all each had a different purpose too. So it wasn't just about taste. But you know, I had the one with 40g of carbohydrate in it. One just had I think 25g. And then Morton had caffeine and also 25g of carbohydrates. So it was very strategic. It wasn't just that I wanted to use three different gels. but yeah. so I did about 80g per hour, which, didn't I didn't experience any sort of GI distress. I attribute that a lot to gut training. I know, you know, I talked about that on our last podcast. But I mean, the difference that that makes, I think is huge. I mean, I think a lot of people, you know, if you're taking in a lot of carbohydrates, there's always the risk of GI distress. But my question would always be, well, you know, were you training your gut during, you know, training and are you going into race day taking all these gels when you haven't even practiced that strategy? during training? And I think doing that during the long runs and during that interval workout during the week, it actually, you know, it helped because I experienced like zero gi distress with which, with what I think was a pretty high carbohydrate intake of like 80 80g per hour or so. Yeah. Well, and I think it highlights something that I find interesting because it's like. Use it often. See, or the way it comes across I think with people it sort of becomes all or nothing where it's like, why bother taking anything at all? Train your fat ox rates and all that stuff versus like, oh, I need to be taking gels during every run, my easy run, my long run, my interval session and everything. Whereas it seems like for you you're like, okay, what is the dosage required to get my body ready for this? What session is going to be the most specific to it? And then just kind of, how do I check those boxes without kind of becoming overly dependent on this, but also being able to get the value out of it? Yeah, totally. And again, I think it comes down to like, I, I'm trying to think about like, oh, well, would I be better off if even during my easy ish 15 mile like medium long run during the week where my even like an easy ten mile run? Of course you could bring a gel and eat it during that, but I think you really if you weigh the cost benefit of it, it's like, well, I'm not necessarily sure that there's a cost. I mean, I'm maybe eating too many carbohydrates compared to what I need. I'm not necessarily worried about that, you know, being, you know, metabolically healthy and whatnot. But in my mind, you know, it's like, I don't really need this, like extra sugar during the run. And I do think that there is something to training fasted. I've always done it and I enjoy doing it. And so I'm like, there's I don't see a major downside of it as long as you're refueling afterwards and stuff. But yeah, just, you know, fueling for the work required is like just using that concept. And I think that was one of the main things that I did. And you don't want to become overly reliant on it because again, there are people who are, you know, you're going out and you're five k easy, right? And taking like three gels and like a Gatorade, it's like, okay, nobody needs that. So that's the far end of the spectrum. But then, you know, I'm also not going to do my long runs completely fast just because that's what I can do. And, you know, I want to make sure my body is ready to handle that, during race day. I just think it's all kind of this process of seeing what works and what doesn't. And I mean, I had, you know, this interesting interaction on X with whatever, whether it's Tim Noakes or Tim Noakes burner account or whatever, where, you know, they're like, oh, well, you know, was your time, do the carbohydrate intake, how much, how many, how many undigested carbohydrates in your gut after the race? I like it. I don't know whether that question is valid or how you want me to, how you want me to measure that. But it's just like, well, I didn't experience any GI distress and we're in a great time. I mean, sure, it would be interesting. I would love to do a controlled run where maybe I do a fastest marathon, or maybe I just do one gel per hour. You know, what kind of time could I run on that? I don't know, but this approach seemed to work. it didn't lead to any downsides. If you're somebody who doesn't tolerate carbohydrates very well, I know, Sage Kennedy, the runner. He posted something a while ago. He's like, I don't run half marathons and I don't take gel because one, you have enough glycogen to do it. Okay. Well, sure, you kind of probably even have enough glycogen to run a marathon, you know, without any fuel. But he goes, you know, the risk of GI distress doesn't necessarily outweigh, you know, the fact the performance benefit that I might get from taking a gel during a half and I'm like, well, yeah, I kind of respect that. But I think that there's decent evidence that taking a gel or two during a half could, could probably benefit performance. But you know, everybody has their own preferences. I mean, it does highlight, I think, an interesting point that often gets ignored. I think when you see these debates happen, each side will, will, they'll, they'll be more than happy to share the negative of your approach and they'll ignore the positive and then vice versa. So then it's just like, well, who's got the more powerful negative in the viewer's eyes versus actually taking? Because I think everything has just gone in thinking everything has a trade off. Right. Like certainly. So let's say for the half marathon, taking in two gels has a performance benefit on average. But like just the act of pulling out the gel, taking it in, feeling your stomach maybe a little different is like enough of a psychological and kind of slightly physical barrier for a person that they just prefer to do it now. So maybe for that person, it is better to do it without versus someone who can just, you know, take it down, no issues at all. And then they actually maybe have a more sensitive -like alertness from a carbohydrate intake or something like that. You know, for them, maybe it is because it's like that in that scenario, the benefits outweigh any of the hassle of doing that, that, that practice of the gel taking and, and stuff like that. But I mean, stage is an interesting thing because I don't suspect he's someone who likes not taking in a bunch of gels in general and eating a lot of carbohydrates. So he would be the guy I would think would be taken in like 3 or 4 gels in a half marathon just because he can. Yeah, I would think so too. Like because he's kind of the one he seems like he's one to go kind of after, like the low carb or whatever the people. So yeah, I did find that interesting. But it's funny that you talk about the hassle because I probably spent like an hour the night before the race figuring out how the hell I was going to carry all of these gels because. So I had these. I had, you know, I wear half tights like when I run. I enjoy doing that, especially if you're storing gels, you can get them in the pockets and stuff. But like I had these huge beta fuels and I was like in the mirror, like putting them in my pockets. And I'm like, okay, well, this is not an area. I had the bulges on the side of my legs and I was like, okay, this is terrible. Like, I don't really want to start the race like this. so I eventually just settled upon it. I brought this my spy belt with me, which I typically carry my phone in. So I'm like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have three gels in my pockets because I didn't like to create the bulge on the sides that I wanted. And then I had three gels in the spy belt. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to do the gels for my pockets. When those are gone, I'm going to flip the belt around so the rest of the gels are in my pockets, and then I'll kind of be good. And that's eventually the strategy I settled on, and it worked out pretty well. But I'm just like, man, like logistically it was hard and I'm like, I need to get, you know, to that elite status so I can have my box. I got the bottle set on the road. yeah. So that ended up working out. But there was one point during the race when I, you know, went through the three gels on the sides and I was flipping around my belt and, I mean, it was just for like five minutes. I was working on pulling the gels out, stuffing it in my pocket. I'm like, I probably just cost myself 30s. But I'm like, I look ridiculous. but it ended up, you know, working out pretty well. But the strategy wasn't the best, so I need to find some bigger shorts, I guess, for next time, or carry gels that have, like, you know, 50g of carbs and you only have to carry a few of them. But, so yeah, logistically, you know, it. There is a potential, you know, you know, you got to think about that because you do have to carry all them. Nobody's handing them to you during the race and things like that. But I worked it out. And for me, again, the trade off was. Maybe you slow down by a few seconds to take them out and put them in and rip off the gel, but probably I'm gaining more back from the actual carbohydrate intake. But again, it's hard to know because I don't know, I don't know anybody. You know how much your carbohydrates are actually contributing to you running that time versus what you would have run with a lower carbohydrate intake. And so, I don't know, I'm, I'm typically on the side of, I think, you know, we again talked about this kind of but like the alertness that you kind of feel when you take a carbohydrate gel during a run. Yeah. So it's not all just about, you know, delaying, you know, your glycogen depletion, which some evidence now suggests that you don't even do that if you take gels during a race. I think it was like this study. I haven't looked at it or written about it yet, but they measured, you know, gel fueling and then glycogen depletion during a race. And they're like, you can't really fuel at a fast enough rate to even counteract like glycogen depletion. So that just gets into the whole discussion of like what? What is the performance enhancing benefit of carbs during, you know, a run? I think there are several, you know, maybe mechanisms for that. But yeah, it's not all just about glycogen depletion for sure. Yeah. It is interesting because I think Noakes' argument is like all you really need to do is defend blood sugar levels. Right. So he's like the minimal amount you can put in to keep your blood sugars at that, at whatever stable number is for you, then that's what you should target. So he talks about really small amounts like ten grams. So yeah I wonder about that. I mean I could see that being the move in like a marathon and below. Maybe I'd be curious how that would play out in a really long race where you're just out there for so long, your energy output ends up being, you know, eight, 10,000 calories over the course of your session. You know. Who knows? Like they actually did, a study on Hunter K runners. This was a long time ago. Actually. At this point, I think it was, I don't know if Marc Bubbs was involved with it or if you just wrote about it, but they looked at 100 K road runners that were kind of more elite and then ones that were more kind of mid back of the pack, and they were actually looking at their fueling strategies. And it was like it was the middle in the back of the pack. They were actually running. They hooked up with continuous glucose monitors. And the guys in the back middle of the back, their blood sugars were like way high off the charts. So they were over-fueled and they weren't doing anything super crazy. I think they were just kind of following the recommendations. And then they had the guys in the front where it wasn't an issue, so it seemed like they were at least clearing the blood sugar faster. So it wasn't showing up on the CGM anyway the faster they went. So I mean, I always just default to like what's your workload and what's the intensity and then say like and kind of look at it through the lens that you do, which is if it's not gonna cause a digestive issue and it's not super logistically difficult. And yeah, like just do it then that's kind of what I think. It's like aiming again, digesting. I think that's the main thing. Prevent digestive issues. You don't want to get GI distress. But so say you know, independent of that. Well what then if I'm over fueling who cares right. Who cares if I over fuel a little bit if I'm not experiencing GI distress because of it? I mean, I don't really see a downside to okay, so I didn't oxidize all these carbohydrates. What's the downside? I mean, I'm not going to get diabetes from a single refueling on a single marathon. And like some people will talk about it like that's going to be the case. And I think the main thing I don't know, maybe I think the whole argument, it's always come down to it's like, well, you're all these people are just over-fuelling in their blood. Sugars are too high. But I'm like, I use gels like one time, like a few times per year during a race. And I mean, in the context of the grand scheme of things where I would eat what I consider to be like a perfectly healthful diet, a metabolically healthy I'm like, I'm literally not worried about just, you know, cramming gels down my mouth during a, during a race, even if, you know, that's probably, you know, during the race, I probably had more sugar. I was calculating it afterwards. I'm like, dude, the amount of sugar that I just had during this race, I'm like, I never want to see. I'm like, I need to go keto for like a week just to detox like nothing sweet. People are like, oh, I want like, you know, some ice cream or something after a marathon. I'm like, I want nothing. I want steak and broccoli because you just don't want to see a gel ever again after that. I just don't, you know, I'm not really worried about the ramifications of, you know, fueling a few times per week to meet, like you said, the the load and the workload of that workout, even if you are slightly over fueling, I just think you're going to you're going to compensate for that elsewhere. If your diet is okay. It's kind of the way I think about it. Yeah. And I mean, I think it even extrapolates into kind of the low carb world to some degree, where it's like, I'm not seeing a ton of keto runners, like strict like legit by the book strict keto runners. They're definitely out there, but like most of them are more low carb. And then in their scenario, it's like, well, they have the same. They have the same approach, but it's just going to be reduced. So maybe like let's say for your marathon, let's just say like the intensity that it took you to run the marathon. You know, you're probably burning north of 50, 50 fat carbohydrates because you're probably above your aerobic threshold for certain on race day. I'd imagine. who knows, maybe your fat oxidation is really high and then it's different for you. But for you like your workload and your needs versus someone who is on a very calculated low carbohydrate, let's say ten, maybe 20% of their intake. You know, there's still probably going to benefit from a carbohydrate intake, might just be instead of 80g per hour, 40g per hour. And I sort of feel like that's I mean, kind of your approach, right? I mean, it's like you're, you know, kind of during training and just day to day, you would eat what most people would consider to be like low carb, and then you were lower carb when you're working out or when you're racing or something like that, but it's not as low of carb. So you're just like low carb compared to the higher carb fuel. Some of the racers, it's just like you knock it up, but it may be like, you know, half or three quarters of the carbohydrate that somebody on, you know, like what I might be doing. So maybe you're doing 40 or 50g per hour versus somebody who's doing 80 or 90 or something like that. It is funny because I'll catch some catch some attention every once in a while in the low carb community because like if you find like a high enough workload day where you don't, you just ignore the energy outside of things and just look at the energy and it's like, oh, well, that's like a ton of carbohydrate. It's like, yeah, compared to someone who's metabolizing 2000 calories in a day, it is a lot of carbohydrate. But at a percentage rate, you know, like if it's a 30 mile long run or something like that, then then it just you have to play differently with it. But, you know, the way I usually default to with some of this stuff too is like with all the low carb runners I've worked with, it's very rare that I'll have one where we're out having out there doing a quality session and they take in a little bit of carbohydrate, they don't report back. I felt like I got a boost from that. Right. And this isn't a person who you would think is going to go in with a bias of, oh, well, you know, the doctor told me I'm going to get a boost there, I'm going to get a boost. And they get this like placebo. You think if anything could be a reverse, they're going to be a little more resistant to even try it. So like and if anything they just report like it worked better than it used to work. Like they were more sensitive to the gel where they remember the days when they were mod high carb and they would take in a gel and they feel like, okay, I feel a little bit better, but then it wears off and they do it again. This time they're like, felt like it hit twice as hard is usually what they'll report back to me. So then I'm thinking to myself like, well, this is still a tool then. It's just now we need to recalibrate the dosage for you to match the experience we're looking for in terms of perceived effort, and then let fitness take care of the rest. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think it's all, you know, it is all kind of like relative to speaking like absolute grams of carbohydrates. Sometimes I feel like it's. Totally not relevant because you have to consider the person's output, what their usual diet looks like, and all kinds of things like that. I mean, you could kind of think about it maybe in the same aspect of caffeine. I know it's a little bit different, but yeah, if somebody never takes caffeine and then, you know, during ultra or something, they have a couple hundred milligrams, you're probably going to hit a little bit better than somebody who's taking caffeine all the time. Yeah for sure. Yeah. The way I look at ultras is if you I'll just tell someone like, imagine it this way. Like if you're watching someone like David Roche, one of the best hundred dollars in the sport right now and you see like, wow, he's taking in 130 plus grams of carbohydrate per hour. Maybe I should do that. But then they look at their schedule and their predictions like, okay, I'm going to try. I might finish this in 28 hours. It's like you might want to try to eat as much as David did during the 100 miles. You're going to run, but you're spreading that out over 28 versus 15. So he's doing 130. You might be better off at 65 versus thinking like, okay, this is a plug and play approach that I need to. So but you're right about that I think like the workload. So like, you know, David at Leadville and probably in some cases that have a lean is probably 800,000 calories an hour in some spots. So for him to go one 30g, you know, he's probably only getting half his, even if we would just grant that like you actually are replacing glycogen stores by taking in, he's kind of just matching his intensity at that point. And then it is one of those things where I think if you can get away with it, I would argue most people won't get away with that much. But we'll see. I mean, David's definitely pushing those fringes a little bit. I think within the ultrarunning world anyway, the cyclists have been pushing those for a while. But yeah, totally. I know I one of the things that I really want to do, and I probably have data from previous like tests I did on like a treadmill where I did a lactate threshold test is like, I would like to just see, you know, okay, well, I mean, you could theoretically just say, oh, I'm burning, you know, at this pace or this intensity or this heart rate, I'm burning X amount of carbs per hour and then kind of like match to that intake or whatever. And I even just kind of did the rough math, for, you know, what I would be like doing during a marathon and I'm like, even at 80g per hour, I'm like under fueling what you would call it under fueling to, you know, to what I'm burning. And so, you know, I think perfectly matching it and slightly low, like eating more than you might is probably like a safer approach. But, you know, one could theoretically kind of, you know, calculate that out. I would also like to get like a CGM too, to kind of do that. I think all that stuff's coming and I'm sure you've run like with CGM before, but that's something I've never done and I would I mean, I would love to like just have maybe for like Boston next year I'll get a CGM and do it because I would just love to see like during a marathon. Like, what the heck is happening to blood glucose. Like it would be super fascinating. Well, if Nokes is right, that's the ticket then, right? You just wait for that thing to tell you to take in ten grams of carbohydrates. Seriously, though, you're kind of just like, put yourself on a IV drip of glucose and just make sure it's steady. That's what we're going to get. It's going to be a monitor. And then when it dips below, it's just going to trickle in a little injected into you. Yeah, I have like a little no speed belt needed anymore Morton pouch on the side of my body. And it just puts in ten grams of carbs. They'll start selling little. Yeah, little like plugins to your little, like built in like injector. I mean, we joke about it, but like, it's coming, it's coming. So fascinating to think about though. Yeah, it is funny. I think this is probably a good transition into just carbohydrate timing in general because, you know, one of your Substack posts, which, if anyone who's listening isn't subscribed to your Substack yet, they should definitely do it because you've got so much good stuff over there. You wrote about carb timing in terms of like, Postexercise, and I found it really interesting because it sounded like the study you were referencing was looking at post-exercise carbohydrate consumption and that being kind of like a sweet spot for it in terms of recovery benefits. And obviously, you know, recovery is that second half of the equation of training, load recovery. You know, you want to be able to rinse and repeat as often as you can in order to get in as much quality as you can over the course of time. So I was thinking about that in general, because even with my low carb clients and people who talked to me about this, one of the biggest questions they often have is like, what do I do with the carbohydrate intake that I am having? Where do I put it? Do I have it at dinner? Do I have it at lunch? Do I have it after or during before? And all these, like there's a, you know, you can put it anywhere essentially. So it's like there's always this kind of thing. You're always looking for like, well, what is the best spot to do it? And historically I've always thought like, well, let's look at it as like, let's let the fuel match what you're doing so it can get as complicated as, let's look at seven days. You're doing two moderate high intensity sessions. Let's concentrate more carbohydrates around those, even if we're borrowing from other days. So it doesn't look as kind of plug and play as it might during an off season or a base building phase when each day is a little more similar from one to the next. but after you had posted that, I was thinking, well, maybe I should just lead with. If we don't know anything yet about you individually, let's just put it after your training sessions and focus on that and see what we get from it. And if we don't like it, if it's not, if we want to play around with something and try a different spot, we can do that. But that might be the best starting point. Yeah, I think so. I think for a long time I kind of held the same belief. And I think this is kind of the belief among maybe athletes and anybody in general. But it's like, okay, well, unless you're let's just say, you know, you have somebody who's not exercising twice a day, you're not doing like a double where a hard workout in the morning and maybe another hard workout in the afternoon or a double in the afternoon. I think the thinking was, okay, you just eat your carbohydrates whenever, because if you work out at 8 a.m. in the morning, and even if you fast all day and eat, you know, 200 or 300g of carbs at dinner, your glycogen synthesis will be complete by the next morning. So you're going to start the next morning's workout with full glycogen stores. And ergo, you know, it doesn't matter when you have your carbohydrates during the day. That is true. And I'll kind of talk about that in general, just in the context of this study. That is true with, you know, if you're eating sufficient carbs throughout the day. You know, your glycogen is replenished the next day. And so, I think then the thinking was like, okay, well, the timing necessarily doesn't matter. It kind of is analogous to the whole anabolic window for protein, which has kind of been debunked as well. It's like it really doesn't matter if your total daily protein intake is high. It doesn't really matter if you eat it immediately after your workout or three hours after your workout. In terms of the long term effects on muscle building, muscle protein synthesis might be different over the next, you know, the first few hours after your workout. But in general, if your only goal is to build muscle, it doesn't matter. Just total daily protein intake. Maybe the same thing goes for carbs. Just total daily carb and timing doesn't matter. Timing seems to be a little bit more important for carb intake. And so for this study that you were that I you were talking about that I wrote about essentially they tested, okay. So if you do a high intensity workout in the morning and then you have one condition, they had one condition where they consumed carbohydrate immediately after they did this high intensity session, which I believe what the session was, they did ten by two minute intervals at 95% of like their VO2 peak or something like that. So a pretty, pretty hard work out, a glycogen depleting workout essentially, or a goal to depleting as much glycogen as possible. So high intensity workout. One condition. They consume carbohydrates, immediately after. So in that, like 0 to 3 hour extra post-exercise window, I believe it was 7g/kg of body weight. So decent. You know, if you're a 70 kilogram guy, which I think was around the average, they were all men in this study, recreationally trained. You know, that's a pretty decent amount of carbohydrates. and then the other condition, they did a delayed carbohydrate intake. So in the 0 to 3 hours after the workout, they didn't consume any carbohydrates. And then they consume carbohydrates, you know, three hours, you know, afterwards. And then for the rest of the day and, you know, importantly, obviously conditions were matched for carbohydrate intake because that's an important aspect there. So they consume the same amount of carbs during the day. It was just when you delay it, don't eat for three hours after they did eat something like a protein shake or something like that. you know, delay your carb by three hours or do it immediately after. They measured a couple things. So the first one was muscle glycogen. So they measured muscle glycogen resynthesis rates a few time points on the same day. And then 24 hours after, because they did a workout 24 hours after their first high intensity workout. They did glycogen synthesis rates they measured, which I thought was kind of cool. molecular kind of transducers. So your Ampk, your PGC, when alpha, you're like mitochondrial biogenesis stuff, your mTOR. So kind of your anabolic signaling pathways for glycogen resynthesis, mitochondrial biogenesis, muscle protein synthesis, things like that. And then also obviously the next day they measured performance. So it was basically essentially like a time to exhaustion. They did the same intervals ten by two minutes, but just until you couldn't do anymore. So how many of these ten by two minute intervals can you do before you can't sustain this power output for two minutes or whatever? and so the rundown basically for the performance. I'll talk about that first, what they showed where maybe the glycogen will be, I'll say the performance for last. So like I was discussing earlier, the glycogen resynthesis rates were the same. So the following day they started the workout. They had the same essentially levels of muscle glycogen. So delaying carbohydrate intake. kind of like their hypothesis stated, it doesn't have any impact on your ability to re synthesize muscle glycogen the next day. So again, if you're not working out again the same day, if you're just doing one workout a day, delaying carbohydrates doesn't matter. Okay. same thing regarding kind of those like molecular indicators. So like the PGC one alpha for mitochondrial biogenesis, Ampk, those were unaffected as well. And I don't think that I got enough attention by myself. and regarding this study, because I think that is important because one of the reasons why people promote fasted exercise or delaying carbohydrate intake, I guess you think about why would anybody even want to delay carbohydrate intake? The idea is that hopefully you get a more robust response of mitochondrial biogenesis, or Ampk or mTOR because you're fasting, so you're going to help improve your fat oxidation. You're going to help kind of improve your mitochondrial biogenesis by either exercising fasted where you're, you know, glycogen and glucose is lower, or you're going to, you know, if you're going to delay carbohydrate intake, maybe you'll get a higher response of these and therefore, like improve your mitochondrial biogenesis or get all these beneficial fat, oxidation adaptation, things like that. Well, that didn't seem to happen with a delayed condition. So they were the same. And I think that's an important aspect because again, it kind of points to, well, the main reason why people are delaying it doesn't isn't really, you know, happening. So why would you delay it in that case? And then we get to the performance and performance was, you know, kind of the main focus of the study. And it was significantly impaired the next day. So they did, I think 30% fewer intervals in the delayed carbohydrate condition. So the condition that did immediately carbohydrate intake afterwards, I think they performed around like 15 intervals. The delayed condition did like 10 to 11 intervals or something like that, which, you know, if you think about it, a pretty significant reduction if we just call it a 30% reduction in your time to exhaustion or your, you know, total work output, that's, you know, for an athlete who is seriously, you know, serious about their workout or their race or whatever, that's, you know, a pretty significant finding. And so the conclusion from that was, despite similar glycogen resynthesis rates, delaying carbs impairs performance the next day. And yeah, you know my conclusion from that and sort of you know, I think this was one of those studies that I love to write about because not only do I think I can provide a practical takeaway for people, but I like to implement that into my training, like immediately after that. So, you know, I'm not one I don't do, you know, I do like a time restricted eating thing. And sometimes I'll just do my workout in the morning and, and wait until lunch to like, eat some kind of something or whatever. But now I'm like, okay, well, based on the results of this study, even if again, I'm not, you know, working out again the same day, I'm going to get some carbohydrates in after my workout to kind of kickstart that process. and make sure my performance the next day isn't impaired. So it seems that carbohydrates after a workout are imperative for recovery. making sure you're going to perform at your highest the next day. And it's not really dependent on glycogen. And it kind of, you know, led me to think, well, what could the reason be then, if it's not due to muscle glycogen? you know what? For what reason would performance be impaired the next day? I don't think, you know, that study provided an answer. I don't think I have a fantastic answer for why that happens. The reason for my speculation is that it has something to do with the autonomic nervous system. That was kind of the one of the things that I would think it's like there's something that, you know, I just think that, you know, under fueling and not to say that these people were under fuel, but you are delaying fueling. And so your inner energy deficit after that workout, I just think that there's some sort of autonomic nervous system component that's kind of restraining activity. Perhaps the next day that's just one thought. It could be due to several other things. But, it was a very interesting study. Again, one of those that I immediately implemented and used to kind of ensure that especially after, like my high intensity workouts, I am fueling within that window, which 0 to 3 hours is a pretty big win. You know, have a meal within three hours of finishing your workout. But I would go so far as to say, you know, as soon as possible after you're done working out, try to eat something if you can. Would be a good takeaway from that. Yeah. I wonder too, like how some of these, these things interplay with hydration to where like if you're I mean there'd be like I just think in general, if you're eating right after, you're probably more likely to also get started on hydration a little sooner. You're probably getting more. I mean, carbohydrates in general have to play with hydration. I mean, we see that when people go straight to ketogenic and then when people bring carbohydrates back all the time, it's like there is a, you know, a hydrating effect to those. So it's like I wonder sometimes, like with some of that too, how much other things are kind of throwing off by not having carbohydrates at a specific time when your body is starved of everything, not just carbohydrates in general. Yeah, totally. No, I think that that's a good point. And, you know, I think they probably control for. The hydration in that study. Maybe not was, you know, the thing that was the most well controlled. I think they just had them drink like ad libitum. So sure, whatever, whatever you guys want. So I'm sure there could have been more strict controls maybe regarding that. But yeah, that's definitely a good point. Yeah. Well there's always a limit of how many controls you can ultimately at the end of that you're going to miss something. But yeah, I wonder did you get any pushback on that with like, well, what if because I'm guessing all these participants were moderate to high carbohydrate in general. Yeah. They didn't like eating a low carbohydrate diet or anything. They were just, you know, again, like recreationally active. You know, I think younger men. So they were like 25. so they didn't necessarily I think, you know, I think it was probably a requirement that they weren't like doing keto or a low carb or something like that. But, no, I didn't really, really receive any pushback in people questioning like, oh, what did their habitual diet look like? I mean, during the study, though, they controlled their diet. So during like the few weeks that the study was going on, you know, it was this like they, you know, made sure that they were eating a similar amount of carbs, but again, controlling for their dietary background. Again, I don't think there's something that necessarily did. Yeah. It would be cool to see that study run with just low carb participants and see if there was a difference between them putting the carbon take right after. I mean, it wouldn't be able to be ketogenic, although you could have like another arm of strict keto and just see what happens along the way with them as well. But I would think it would be really interesting to see someone like at a 20% carbon take. Positioning their carbohydrate right after that workout versus doing it. Say, in their evening meal. but yeah, I mean, it kind of makes sense, I think, like, I've always just more or less preferred to have the carbohydrates I'm going to eat after a workout anyway, and it just seems to have worked well for me for the most part. So, it wasn't something I guess I could go high carb. That would be the change I would make. True. yeah. I mean, it just kind of makes sense in general. And just like, you know, you were talking about what you talk about with your clients and like, in terms of when to have your carbohydrates. I just think based on what we know about, like circadian biology and then just the human body and exercise, like it makes sense to, okay, if you're going to have carbohydrates, have as many of your day's carbohydrates around that exercise about as possible, not only because you're more insulin sensitive, but especially, you know, if you're working out in the morning again, you're more insulin sensitive in the morning. So it just makes sense to place it around your workout when you're using it. And that's kind of how I like to do it as well. Again, I don't necessarily have a low carb approach to diet, but I try to skew my macronutrient intake. Kind of carbon. Carbs are heavy in the morning. So after my workout and then at lunch and then for dinner, you know, maybe eat lower carbs, you know, maybe like to focus more on protein at dinner. but again, I think that, yeah, it just makes a lot of sense. So that would kind of be my advice is like, if you're somebody who's focusing on, oh, when should I eat my carbs? Like if I'm going to do that during the day, certainly in close proximity to exercise before, you know, or after, I think, yeah. Did this study say what time of day they were doing the exercise they worked out in the morning? Were they okay? Interesting. I wonder if anything would change if they were, like mid-afternoon. Yeah, I know, that's interesting. I mean, I think there are like so many iterations of, like this study that you could do, that are, that are kind of interesting. So yeah, if you know, like what happens if you do it in the afternoon, you know, what happens if you're doing less carbohydrates than they did? Again, it was like a pretty decent amount of carbs that they were eating in the study? Yeah, I'm. I'm sure the results may change a little bit. They might even be. I mean, you know, theoretically, I think if you're thinking, like, if someone were to exercise in the afternoon, some, you know, time if you're delaying carbohydrate intake or maybe just, like, work out and then go straight to bed, I think certainly your performance is going to be like worse the next day. I would, I would think. but yeah, I would probably like to see that version of the study run. Yeah. It'd be, it'd be interesting. It almost needs to be someone who's, like, pretty routinely in the afternoon, because otherwise you run into the window of time being a variable where it's like, if you do the second test the following morning, then you gave them 5 or 6 hours less recovery time. Yeah, exactly. Just to refuel. And yeah, it's interesting. One of the other topics we wanted to chat about was creatine. And I'm actually excited about this in general, because I've had a couple of listeners reach out and say, hey, can you do something with creatine? And, I think it'll be fun to kind of just talk about, because I think there's been some relatively new stuff that's come out with that. And then maybe just to start with creatine. You know, this has been something where I feel like it's evolved a little bit, where it's very, very well studied for, for one thing. As far as supplements go. But there's always been kind of this ongoing conversation in the endurance community of like, is this positive, negative, neutral? You know, it seems like it's definitely got a stronghold in the strength community for good reason. But let's start with creatine. Is that something that you would just straight up advise an endurance athlete to play around with at least? Yeah, I would say so, in part because I think that there I mean, there really seem to be no downsides again. I think the only downside and you know, with why runners and endurance athletes in general may be hesitant to take it again, like you said, it's kind of been just seen as this: what's for bodybuilders or strength people or whatever. And runners, you know, well, it's, you know, they're very weight sensitive sports. You know, if you have a little extra weight on you, you might perform or perform slower. And there is the, I will say, potential because I don't think that this happens for everybody and to the same extent and everybody. But supplementing with creatine, particularly if you're going to do a loading phase, which I don't think most people is even like recommended anymore, but it'll cause you to retain a little bit more water weight because creatine, you know, it accumulates in your muscles and there is water associated with creatine. So you do get some water retention with that. And that's just simply because your muscles are more hydrated. It's not like you're gaining fat when you take creatine. You're just your muscles are more hydrated. So you're good help with holding a little bit more, which could help with performance. So if you're not, you know, averse to say gaining a little water weight due to hydration, I think that that could be a net performance benefit. It's weird because I initially, you know, started taking creatine probably like a year ago. And I was using this brand and I did notice some water weight retention, which I don't know if it was due to the creatine or just like something else at the time, but I kind of stopped it. I didn't really like it. I felt bloated or whatever. I started taking a new brand of creatine and haven't really noticed any of the water retention. I haven't really noticed any of the bloating or anything like that. so, you know, again, I think it doesn't happen for everybody. Not everybody gains the same amount of water weight. And again, it's impossible to isolate. Like is it due to creatine? Is it due to something else? You know, there are people who are like, oh, you know, I don't take it because I, you know, I took it one winter and I gained like 8 to £10. I'm like, okay, there's no way they're doing something else. Like, well, maybe you got stronger, maybe it has to be Christmas time and you're eating all the Christmas cookies. Yeah I know, was it the creatine or was it the. Yeah, the Christmas cookies I don't know, we'll create last Christmas. We need to run a randomized controlled trial. So yeah. And so I think that, I don't know, I won't say that that's a myth, but I just think that it's like it's probably a risk that necessarily isn't as important as probably people are thinking. And so I think. Endurance athletes, it's certainly something that they should at least experiment with taking. The way I see it, I think there are probably a few potential upsides to it for endurance athletes. One, you know, the better hydration that could again, potentially be an upside. I think that if you are, you know, as all endurance athletes probably should be doing, you know, doing some strength training, it may allow you to, you know, eke out a few extra reps in the gym, kind of have more power, get more strength. due to your strength training routine. Again, I think sometimes there's this misconception that like, creatine, just like makes you stronger, but it really it doesn't. It just allows you to train harder. Right? You're not going to get stronger just from taking creatine. You have to. Creatine allows you to train harder, which you know, if you're strong, it gets you stronger. So, if you take creatine and are doing strength training, you kind of may notice a benefit there, which, you know, definitely a plus for endurance athletes. but then, you know, I was listening to something, a creatine researcher kind of speaking on a podcast the other day, and. You know, in an exercise. Bioenergetics. I think we sometimes just talk about like, oh, okay, you have these fuel systems, you have glycolysis, which is for high intensity exercise. You have oxidative, you know, fat oxidation during lower intensity exercise and creatine phosphate, you know, you only use it for 1 or 2 seconds if you're undergoing a very quick sprint. But in reality, like we're using all of these energy systems at all the time during exercise, just to different extents. You know, during a 100 mile race, you know, you're going to use the creatine phosphate system a couple times. Maybe you're going really quick up a hill and then like your creatine, you know, you deplete it, but then it re synthesizes because we have high energy phosphates. So really what you're doing by supplementing with creatine is just giving your body more fuel sources. It's not necessarily oh well I don't sprint so I don't need creatine. Well no your body's going to use this creatine and these high energy phosphates as a fuel source during exercise. And so they were just talking about it in that regard where yeah it could benefit endurance athletes in that respect. Not you know, from an absolute. Just like it's going to give you more literal energy, ATP to fuel exercise. And so that's sort of changed my mindset in thinking about it as well. Not just like the strength supplement, but okay. It's an energy source, you know. So supplementing with that could help make sure your body's creatine stores are saturated. That was kind of an interesting perspective and kind of changed my thinking about that as well, in terms of being another benefit for endurance athletes. And the final 1 in 1 of the reasons why I actually probably the main reason why I started taking it, I don't think there's a ton of great evidence out there yet, but enough, you know, theory, maybe in speculation that it could potentially help with bone health. Oh, interesting. Again, the same researcher that I was listening to, he was talking about the cells in our bones, the osteoblasts and osteoclasts that, you know, build bone and help bone formation. They use ATP just like any other cell. So, you know, they use the creatine phosphate system and and, you know, in theory that could help you again, provided the right stimulus that you need to stimulate the bones to cause them to like, improve their bone density and things like that. But that could also help there. So for me, it was like, enough of these three different buckets that it might help me in, in addition to potentially some of the cognitive benefits. And maybe we can talk about like a study or two that came out on that, but enough reason to just like to give it a shot. There's no downside. the water retention thing for me, I'm kind of past that. It doesn't seem very cheap. It's pretty cheap to supplement with just creatine monohydrate. That's kind of all you need. people were asking about, like, creatine. There's a hydrochloride. and they market that as, like, it'll be better like solubility or bioavailability. That doesn't appear to be true. so, yeah, I think all endurance athletes should honestly give it a go. I can't say, you know what improvements in my performance are due to creatine, but it certainly hasn't hurt anything. Yeah, I don't know. Do you? Are you currently taking it? I've gone back and forth with it over the years. I always stop. Yeah. So I was going to ask you, is there any evidence that there are like responders and non-responders or is this pretty cut and dry? Like if you get more of it, you're going to see improvements to some degree. It just might. Yeah, I would think just given the nature of what it is, I think I think the responders and non-responders would all kind of come down to your habitual diet. So if you have somebody who's on the carnivore diet eating a ton of red meat, a ton of fish, they probably won't respond to it because their diet is probably so high in it that their stores might just be saturated from diet alone. Yeah, most people probably don't eat that much meat that they're creating. Stores are going to be saturated. I think it's like I think the sighted number is like, oh, you might get like 1 or 2g a day from diet. Whereas I think going up to like 5 to 10g per day will saturate your muscle stores. So you could get that additional 5 to 10g from supplementing with creatine. Certainly if you're a vegan or vegetarian, you probably should be taking it. So I would say they are probably going to be the quote unquote responders, whereas somebody on a meat heavy diet would probably be a non responder, which is kind of funny because those tend to be the people who are more likely to take it. The people who don't need it are probably the people who are supplementing with it. It's like the gym, the bodybuilders who are like just cramming, like, you know, a couple pounds of steak today or whatever. It's like they're probably getting so much from their diet, but they're also bigger, so they have more, you know, they could probably afford a supplement more with it. So yeah, I don't know. You know, I'd have to do more research into looking at whether they're the responders and nonresponders. But my speculation would be it's probably a lot related to, like, what your baseline diet looks like. Do you? Are you doing this five grams a day? Yeah, I just do five grams a day. I think that's enough after. It's all about kind of like the time span that you look at it. I mean, 2.5g per day would be enough to saturate stores over probably, you know, a few months. Ten grams per day is typically what most people do, but five grams a day appears to be enough, especially for like, you know, smaller. Maybe people like us who weigh a little bit less, you know, if you're over £200, maybe ten grams a day, but I think five grams per day for most people is enough. Okay. And are you doing it pre-workout or. I do it afterwards actually. and there wasn't a reason for that. And now that there is. So the reason for it was just that I do like a smoothie for breakfast every day. So I kind of mix it in there. I prefer to mix it in there versus if it doesn't mix well like water or anything. So it kind of has a grainy taste. So if you put it in a smoothie, you don't you don't notice it. but actually it appears that, muscles are more sensitive to up taking creatine after if you do it after exercise, similar to like carbohydrate, it's more sense that more insulin sensitive. I think something similar happens. So I think taking it after exercises would be ideal for everybody. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Final creating question was there was some research on creatine with alertness, and that one caught my eye because I was thinking like, when we're looking at just the different vehicles of stimulants and products that you can use to stay alert, whether it be like, okay, I just got a poor night's sleep, or if you happen to find yourself running an ultra marathon all night long. Is there some value there with creatine in terms of alertness and maybe fatigue resistance would be the way to look? Yeah, yeah, just there was just one study on that and I hope that, you know, kind of more will come out on that. But they did like just a single night of sleep deprivation and they did 30g, which is a very, very high dose. And I think that's important. You know, something I'll talk about. But they did a very high dose of creatine before sleep deprivation or you know, without they had significantly better cognitive performance afterwards. And what was cool about that study was they actually like measurements using things like oh gosh, spectrophotometer or some technique like that. They actually measured high energy phosphates in the brain. And they showed that there was literally more brain energy after they supplemented with creatine and during the sleep deprivation versus not. So yeah, I think there are two kinds of use cases or maybe several use cases for that. But, you know, if you are sleep deprived and need some more mental alertness and don't want to rely on a stimulant like caffeine or nicotine or something like that, maybe a very high dose of creatine, something like 20 to 30g at once. You know, you may run the risk of some kind of GI distress during that. I don't think they noted any in that study. They said, you know, despite 30g, they didn't really notice any GI distress. so maybe just do a super high bolus of creatine. I would recommend probably before, you know, you plan on doing it versus after. But, you know, you could probably try to experiment with both that study they did beforehand. But yeah, you know, if you're sleep deprived or if you're yeah, you know, planning to run an ultra marathon for, you know, 24 hours or more, maybe like halfway through during the night bolus of creatine, or maybe you're sipping on creatine during, Doing the lower dose actually, though, doesn't appear to be effective. So people are like and I think one of the misconceptions and I've probably been guilty enough of saying like, oh, well, creatine is good for cognitive performance. I don't know if that's true if you're not in a cognitively impaired situation. So if you're either sleep deprived or if you're running or if you're doing some sort of activity, or if you have a traumatic brain injury, it just doesn't appear to be good for cognition, just in general. like general cognitive function, it's not like a nootropic or something like that. I think supplementing with it long term could benefit, you know, prevent cognitive decline or something like that in older adults. But yeah, the super high dose appears to be important because it allows creatine to uptake into the brain, whereas a low dose doesn't. So you need like 20 to 30g at a time to actually, you know, cross the blood brain barrier, accumulate in the brain. So that's kind of one of the important aspects there, because people I don't think you would get the same benefit just doing five grams before your sleep deprivation. It seems that you need 20 to 30. but yeah, I think for running, you know, if we apply this to endurance sports, you know, if you're doing an ultramarathon, you could try supplementing with it during that. I think the high dose, too, and something that I might kind of experiment with. I even did this after the marathon was like, well, what if I just take a very high dose after a really hard exercise session? So like a marathon, could that potentially help with brain and or body recovery? I'm like, there's maybe the potential for that. So I did like 15g or something after my marathon, but I'm thinking about doing that more in the future. Like maybe if I do a super hard workout, I'm going to take 15g of creatine in my smoothie versus five or something like that. So kind of a lot of applications, I think there's just a lot, you know, every now and then there will just be like one study that comes out and I think, you know, I like it's fun to write about it and it's fun to talk about it. And, you know, until those are replicated, obviously you can only like to say so much, but there's just all these interesting different use cases for creatine coming out like cognitive performance and sleep and things like that where it's just it's such an interesting supplement. And so it's kind of why I went back to taking it because I'm like, I think I got a fear of missing out and like, I'm not taking this like there could be all this potential benefit. And luckily I got past like the digestive issue kind of stuff with that. And I'm fine taking it now because I found a brand that works. So yeah, I think, you know, endurance athletes should kind of embrace it. There was one cautionary study where they showed that it decreased VO2 max, and people are always citing that one. I even ended up writing about that for my Substack. It appeared to be just totally due to the fact that they gained a little extra weight, a few extra pounds, so their relative VO2 max went down. Yeah, yeah. Nothing like really to worry about. I wasn't worried about that. Especially like, you know, if you're an endurance athlete and have a pretty high VO2 max, I'll take like a hit or two on my right. You to max. Yeah. For the potential performance improvement. Yeah. Maybe just like scale back taper off of it before A5K. Yeah. Exactly. If you are doing something I mean there could be. Yeah a theory behind that too. It's like people ask me about that. They said, you know before your marathon you stopped taking it. Said no because I honestly like I said, I don't I didn't I didn't feel like I if anything, I was lighter going into the marathon. Then I started taking creatine. So I was like, I don't feel a need to stop it. I kind of would just prefer to continue what I'm doing. But if people are interested in that, you actually can, stop and you're not going to like it, it's not like you would be withdrawing from caffeine. So you're creating stores in your body that will stay elevated for a week or two, even if you stop it. So you could kind of do it for a month, stop, taper off before you race, and then do it again. If you were like, worried about the water weight or something like that. So you'd want to cut it off a week or two before a week or two, right, as taper kicks in. Yeah, exactly. Exactly ironically, you're stressing your body less. I probably have less of a need for it. Then it kind of makes sense. Yeah, exactly. That's interesting to think about. But yeah, I mean, I think I think with a lot of that stuff, I always think like. You know, I mean, I'll do a workout in a pair of shoes that aren't the highest performance shoes too. And I'm not really worried about the efficiency relative to my VO2 max in my trainers versus my racing shoes. Or I'd wear my racing shoes every day. So. So like to like, not use creatine because of that. Seems like maybe ill placed. Yeah, I think so too. And again, that was just like one study and it appeared to be totally due to increasing the water weight. Is there a variance from person to person with the water weight gain? Are there? I'm sure that's on some sort of like some people probably noticed non others more just like the bloating. Yeah. There do appear to be you know going back to the whole responder. Non-responders there do appear to be like you'll get people who say I experience nothing. And then there are people who get a huge increase in the waterway due to it. So I'm not sure what the reason for that would be. But there does appear to be a lot of variation in that in terms of how much weight you gain. For me, it might have been like 2 to 3 or £4 if there was anything. But again, that seems to have subsided. And so it may just be like an initial thing, you know, if you're, you start creatine, you might notice it, but then after a month or two it might just you kind of like, settle back down into, like you're sure. It kind of normalizes. Yeah. I wonder with the people who've had digestive issues with it, how long they just kind of pushed through because, I mean, there's things that I'll get digestive issues from, too, if I haven't had it in a while. But then if I continue to eat it, it goes away. Yeah, exactly. So I wonder what I think. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like if someone like you have someone who's got digestive issues for like, you know, a few days and they quit because of that versus like they just kind of pushed through and then two weeks later it's normalized and they've kind of got the routine in place then. Yeah, I think like with anything with any supplement, you would want to give it at least a month, I would say okay. And then because, because that's kind of when it seems like the timeline for your muscle stores to like, saturate. So it just seems to be kind of like the mellowing out period. It's like, just do it a month and push through if there is, unless it's not like debilitating digestive issues. But if it's something that you can kind of handle, kind of just, give it a shot. I think that maybe was my main problem. I kind of discounted it too quickly because I was experiencing some of that. I would also just say like. And something that I did to experiment with timing and what you're taking it with, because I found that I think the initial times when I was experiencing some GI distress with it, I was just like mixing it in water and taking it before, like at night. So I'm like, okay, maybe it was just I was doing it all like the wrong time. I took it and went to bed like, that's silly. Now that I'm mixing it in a smoothie, taking it after my workout, I think all of that plays into it as well. So like, I would sure, I would, you know, tell people to kind of experiment with those variables and see if some of those might change. Yeah. And there's generally good advice too, like when you're adding something new, what else are you adding with it. So like someone could get a digestive issue because they weren't doing a smoothie before, but because they're going to do creatine now, they have a reason for a smoothie and they're said like they're associating the discomfort from whatever, you know, maybe frozen berries or whatever banana or something that gave them digestive issues. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Got to isolate the creatine before you just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So add it to something you're already eating and test that first I guess. But. Cool. I want to go kind of full circle back to the beginning. Marathon. You said you're doing Boston. Is there a PURchase target that you're going to aim for now that you're a 226 marathoner? Yeah. I mean, what's the next step in the progression? Yeah. So I really think I think, with the right race and on the right day, I think I have probably another four minutes probably pre. I think I could get to a 222 probably in the next year. That'll kind of be my goal. And then just kind of see how I progress from there. whether that will happen in Boston, like who knows? I don't think that my goal for Boston is to set a PR. I think my goal going into that will be let's kind of try to run, you know, maybe, maybe a minute PR. I mean, Boston's a hard course, but I don't think there's any reason one can't run fast at Boston, especially if my, you know, fitness continues to improve. I think I'm a long way from maybe what my peak marathon potential is. So, you know, one of my friends asked me about that the other day. So I think it'll just be, you know, train hard for it and certainly maybe put in a little more effort and a little more volume into my training bill for Boston, maybe going to the race, trying to at least replicate the time that I did at Indy. But overall just kind of race it hard to be competitive. That'll be the goal for that. And then I think, maybe next year targeting like another kind of fast race with the goal of pairing that will kind of be the next step. But I do think the 222 will be the next focus. I'm going to try to run a half marathon or two, within the next year as well. I'm going to Houston and trying to get the half marathon PR down a little bit, which I think will help with the marathon speed as well. So yeah, those are kind of the next steps. Boston will be fun. This will be my first time doing it. and yeah, we're really looking forward to that. So again, I think there's like this myth, you know, Boston, you never know what the day the weather's going to look like. And it is obviously a hard course, but I've, I've had friends who've run fast on the course and people run fast there. So yeah, the reason you can't I think it's like, I think, I mean, you live in Austin, so you're going to get a lot of hills. So you may be suited well for Boston in general. I think it's just about what I think Boston probably is. I think it is like I mean, you can find faster courses. I don't think that's necessarily debatable. But like, you definitely can run fast in Boston if you approach it. Right. I think you just have to know when to kind of hit the gas and when not to. And don't put yourself into a corner. So which by your last race would suggest you're probably going to run it smart. So I think so. I think so, yeah. Like I said, I think, you know, sometimes running a smarter race can sometimes leave you at the end feeling like, oh, what if I just would have pushed a little bit harder for that first half marathon? But it's a more fun way to run. And I mean, I think one of my favorite statistics from Indy was I was, I think 50 between 50 or maybe like 45th place or whatever at halfway. And then I finished at 26. So I would just pass, you know, almost half like that front view. Yeah. First field during the last half of the race. And that's kind of how I prefer to run. It's more fun to run that way. Just like passing people the entire time. And so, you know, you like you look at your stats at the end, it has your. Places that you moved up, right? Yeah, that was one of my favorite eight. Yeah, exactly. So maybe try to do that, at Boston as well. Just kind of like, settle in around 80th place and then try to get myself in the top. I don't know, you know, I think at 226 would probably get key top 40, maybe 50 at Boston. So I think that would be a solid place. Awesome. Yeah. That's cool. I did think of one question I forgot to ask you when you're talking about your training, did you have any strength work program that you were working on with this one? Gosh, that's the question everybody asked me, like, what does strength training look like? I'm like, it's not, it's not good enough to like detail. So I kind of talked about what my approach was last time when I, when I was with you, it was kind of like the whole, you know, what I would call the, the snack or the exercise snack approach, kind of the intermittent stuff throughout the day. So three times a week I'll do, you know, I'll do stuff with kettlebells, I'll do Bulgarian split squats, Bulgarian split squats, you know, kettlebell swings. I'll do you know, I have a Nordic curl thing at home. I have a pull up bar. I do a lot of bodyweight stuff. You know, my strength training routine is certainly something that can improve, which, you know, perhaps like going into Boston or going into the Half-Marathon, like this winter, something I can focus on more. So. What's kind of fun about that is I'm like, well, this is really, I think, an area that I have a lot to improve. Like what happens if I start deadlifting or squatting a little bit, maybe putting on a little bit of, you know, upper body strength, maybe that could lend itself to improve performance. So that's kind of again, why I think not only in the volume training running department, I think the strength training department could kind of yield a lot of gains there. But yeah, the strength training approach is very unfancied. And I'm disappointed in my strength training approach. And I have a lot of, I have a lot of work to do that, but, I mean, it is one of those things where it's like we kind of with with the path you've been on the last few years, it's like adding things at a reasonable pace so that you can actually account for what's working and what's not, and you can dial things in. And like you said, now, like you have a lever that you can pull that could potentially yield some results that I mean, that's exciting. It's a little less exciting to think like, geez, I think I did everything right. Like, what am I going to do now? Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking that exact same thing the other day. I'm like, well, it's kind of you're just sequentially kind of adding in things. It's like, okay, now for the next cycle, I'm going to increase my running volume a bit more, maybe add a day per week of running and due to gym sessions per week where I'm maybe doing 1 or 2 heavier, lower body lifts to kind of help with that power. I don't consider biking to be strength training, but I think there's something to be said about it has improved my leg strength. I mean, just like the size even of, like my legs since I've started biking have gotten considerably larger. And I feel like I have pretty, pretty strong, like quads. I do think that there's something to be said about biking being a pseudo form of strength training, but I'm not going to be one to claim that that's a solid replacement. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right about that. I mean, for me, I've noticed that in the past I'm very inconsistent with any structured biking. But when I, I guess this is a year and a half ago when I had my sacral stress fracture, I did a four week block of biking before I started reintroducing running, and it was the most structured biking cycle I've ever done, and other than it well structured, I guess I can stand by that because. I biked a ton as a kid, but it was all like an unstructured bike. but like I was, I was getting stronger, like, objectively in the gym. My lifting was improving. And that was I mean, you could make the argument that maybe removing the running allowed for strength to develop better. And then I'd have to tease that out, I guess, to some degree. But I think there's probably something there. It certainly doesn't hurt. No. Totally. Yeah. Totally. Cool. Awesome. Brady, before you go, for the listeners who don't know, where can they find you? Yeah. ex and Substack are kind of the only places where I'm very, very active. So on X, I am B underscore Homer Homer. And then Substack is, physiologically speaking, dot com. If you go there you can subscribe. It's a free weekly email newsletter. I do some paid content every now and then. but so people can pay, they can do free things. and so yeah, kind of those two places are where I'm posting most of my content these days. Very cool. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining Brady again. It's always fun to chat. Yeah. Thanks a lot Zach. And you know, I was on the right over here. I was just thinking like I really appreciate you being very one of the same kind of minded people on social media, just in terms of like in the running and fitness community, because I'm just like, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on there. But every time, like, I see you engaging in a conversation, even if it's not like with me, you're just like, very I don't know, you're very calm. You're very even keeled. And so, like, I appreciate that. So I just, I appreciate all that you're putting out there and you're keeping everybody kind of level headed. Well, I appreciate that. I credit that to my two years of teaching seventh grade. I can imagine that. That helps. Yeah, it can always get worse. Dealing with seventh graders can't be as bad as dealing with people on ECS. Awesome. Well, yeah. Thanks again. Brady. Yep. No problem Zach.