Episode 429: Blisters & Your Best Workout - Listener Q&A

How should you go about managing and preventing blisters, and what workout is going to be best for you. This listener Q&A dives into these two topics.

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Episode Transcript:

Alright, everyone, welcome back. This is going to be the first listener Q&A episode of the year. So if you do have topics or questions that you think would be a good fit for one of these episodes, feel free to shoot me a note and let me know what you're thinking, and I'll put them on the list for some future ones. But this Q&A had two questions that kind of came across my radar just on socials. One of them was blisters, and uh, the person asked basically, uh, actually, I think the person ended up, um, having a rough 100 mile race where they got really bad blisters and I think had to drop out kind of near the end stages of the race. And that's always one of those things where it's just kind of a bummer because you put in all the work for training, you're likely fit and ready to go, and then you have something that's not related to your actual fitness that costs you whatever it was you were targeting for it. So they were kind of curious about, um, if I had done an episode on blister prevention and what people can do, especially for some of these longer ultras, to sort of navigate that sort of thing when you're out there, if they do occur, or what can you maybe do to prevent them? And then the other question was basically one that kind of came across, uh, through some kind of threads that were just kind of going around because, I mean, you go online and you'll just see a lot of info. Steve Magnus and I talked about this on the most recent episode I had him on for, uh, episode 426. And it was basically kind of like we sort of get these popular trends where people want to focus on specific types of workouts, whether it be like VO2 max, lactate threshold zone two or aerobic threshold or whatever you want to call them, there's all sorts of popular workouts that sort of have their, their, their time and day in terms of popularity and how important they, they end up looking. And you just kind of scan the internet and someone kind of reached out to me because I was just basically, I think I put up a post and said, like, I think we'll see. A lot of relatively new runners eventually benefit from some zone three training, mostly just because they're often told never to do it. And it was kind of a funny post, but it was also just like a point making that I think about where when we think of training in general, it's rarely about one workout. It's rarely about one thing that you should be doing to maximize everything. It's more about where is your global fitness and where are the strengths and weaknesses. And in that and then what is your like, your training based adaptation strengths and and lax in terms of what maybe you would do? So the questions that we were getting were like, well, how do you know what workout to prioritize or workouts to prioritize? And I thought that would be kind of a fun one to add to this, just in terms of like, what are some things to consider when it comes to deciding how to structure training and workouts and things like that. So let's get into this one. And starting out with the blister question. So one thing that I think is good to start with is first looking at what blisters kind of arm with their purposes. Um, because we think of blisters as negative, they certainly feel negative. You don't like them, they don't feel good, you don't want them. But the purpose is actually for a blister if you get some sort of irritation. And then what the body does is it tries to kind of build this natural bandage where you've got this irritated spot, and there's often like a layer of skin over it. So the body essentially pushes some fluid into that area and between the skin and the fluid and the irritated spot, you sort of have this bubble that serves as a buffer from that irritated spot getting pressurized in a way. So it's sort of like your body saying, hey, we need to create a defense here so that that irritated spot doesn't get exposed, infected, and, you know, just basically pressed on in a, in a painful way so that maybe can give you some information about how to maybe see a blister, because a lot of times we'll get into this is like someone's like, well, I've got this blister, do I pop it? Do I leave it, what do I do? Uh, so that's kind of like something worth just knowing as to like, what is your body actually doing when it forms a blister. But what I think is probably more important for people is like, what actually causes these blisters and then what to do about it from a preventative standpoint, what can you do once you have them and things like that? So the way to think about this is blisters. They usually form from a combination of things. So usually what happens is you get heat friction and moisture. Those three things combined just set up an environment for a blister to form. So when we think of uh, like friction when it comes to running, we're thinking about things like when you run, your feet will rub against something like maybe your socks, your shoes, even like your, your, your toes themselves are rubbing against each other. And this kind of repetitive motion can irritate that skin, especially in certain areas like your heels, your toes, your arches and things like that. And that rubbing kind of starts this process of separating, um, the epidermis from the dermis. And that is where you start to kind of get some issues with that. So the other thing when we look at heat is heat is something that just is sort of like you're going to be generated from running. We got our feet in socks, shoes. It's probably warm. We're increasing our body temperature, we're sweating and things like that. So those feet in those areas that are prone to blistering just tend to get amplified because of that heat that we create. And then there's other things people talk about, like hot spots and things like that, where you can kind of feel where blisters may be about to form, where you can just kind of tell there's a spot that's getting a little more sensitive or a little like hot sensation on that. And that's kind of maybe like a warning that things are kind of starting to head that direction. And if there's something you can do to mitigate it at that point, you can maybe catch it before it becomes a bigger issue. And the last one is just moisture. So things like humid weather or water crossings or just sweat in which humid weather is going to make even worse, because that sweat is going to be more likely to stay there versus evaporate. It is another thing that can kind of help create that blister like wet skin, softer and stickier, and make the friction and the heat more, uh, more impactful and kind of forming that blister. So the way to think about this is when we have those three things combined and you get the blister, if we can try to eliminate just one of those, then the odds of you getting a blister just go down quite a bit. So the strategy I usually like to employ here is. If we're thinking of friction, heat and moisture combining to form the blister, how do I either remove the friction, remove the heat, or remove the moisture? So some of those are going to be a lot more difficult than others. Uh, heat's probably the big ones. Like you're just not really a lot you can do about that. Like your feet are going to get warm, and when they get warm, it's like there's not a lot of things you can do to kind of end that or stop that. So it's not really one we can control very well. So I usually don't um, say like, okay, here's a strategy to reduce the heat to your feet. So that leaves us with friction and moisture. So some things to consider with moisture is just how we are treating our feet with what we're putting on them in a way that will keep them more likely to be dry. So something like, you know, a sock that has a better moisture wicking profile than others. So if you think about that, like, I mean, you could get a cotton pair of socks, which is probably the worst option for this because that's just going to retain moisture. And then your foot's going to be sitting in that dampness a lot easier. Um, you can get a lot more of the kind of higher tech type performance socks that actually actively pull moisture off your feet, and then they're more likely to stay dry. Uh, you can add things to your feet to like, keep them from getting as wet and you can get as aggressive as using things like diaper cream and stuff like that to keep that area a little bit drier so that moisture doesn't hang around in there. Um, there's all sorts of other products and things that you could consider for that, but if you're going to target moisture, you want to be thinking of keeping your feet drier versus letting them stay wet for long periods of time. And that's going to be another one where depending on the event you're doing, depending on the conditions and the specifics may dictate whether you're able to do a thorough job of that or not. So like I was mentioning before, if it's really humid, you're a heavy sweater. You're going through water crossings, puddles and things like that. The likelihood of your socks being able to wick to the degree that you keep your feet dry is really low. So that might limit the amount of proactive things you're able to do that are overly productive from the moisture standpoint. So then we come to friction. So are there ways to maybe help with the friction side of things. And you know the friction is a lot of times just things like your feet are rubbing against your socks, your shoes, the toes themselves, the stuff that I mentioned earlier. So how do we kind of minimize that. So some strategies you can think of. What kind of shoes are you wearing? Have you tested your shoes out in training? Enough to know, like, how they're going to behave over the course of a longer session versus just like your general run? Because I know I have shoes that I can tolerate for a speed session, or I can tolerate for an hour and a half and nothing really that bad happens. But if I take them out for a long run or an ultramarathon, I start getting issues with that pair of shoes. So it typically tends to not be my race day shoe at that point. If it's going to be something that's going to be a higher likelihood of creating an issue from that standpoint. So kind of doing your homework in terms of like what shoes fit your foot well, or in some cases when we're getting these longer ultramarathons, is it something where maybe changing your shoe midway so that you can accommodate for things like foot swelling, where in the beginning maybe the shoe fits really well and there's not a lot of rubbing, then your feet start to swell a little bit from just the amount of time you're out there and changing into a different shoe in the second half. That kind of puts you in a position where your feet at that stage of the race are more likely to not cause friction, because you have that kind of changing environment for what shoe product is going to be the best for that particular purpose. The other thing is, just like I like to do it, I mean, we all have some uniqueness with the way that we kind of strike and the way our feet behave through the gate cycle and things like that. So you may notice in training you're more susceptible to getting blisters in certain spots. And I'll often notice this, like when I'm doing long runs in the summer when it's humid here in Austin. And I'll notice, you know what? I didn't get a blister there. But I can tell after 30 miles that if I would keep going for 70 more, that area was probably going to get progressively worse and then become a blister. So I need to be proactive with that particular spot, and you start identifying areas of concern for you at the individual level, and then you can start thinking of things like, okay, can I avoid friction by, say, taking some like breathable athletic tape and putting it over that area so that, that that area starts to rub. There's like an artificial layer of skin essentially on there. Or you can get other products like moleskin and these different things that create little buffers on your foot to kind of prevent an area from having the access to rub the way it would if it were just. Foot in sock and shoe type of a scenario like that. So that's another thing where I think you can try to strategize with just some of your, your ultra specific long run stuff. And, you know, as far as ultra specific long runs go, because I know that can sometimes be a bit of a debate as to whether you should do them or not do them and where their value or their negative may be. I would say one of the advantages of some ultra specific long runs or a tuneup race or things like that, or you are more likely to find those areas when you're out there for a little bit of a longer time and you're exposing their your body to the specifics of what you'll be doing on race day for a little bit of a longer period of time. And you can sort of see where those trends are heading a little bit more clearly than you'd be able to for just a typical, like midweek run or even a standard long run in some cases. So that's another option to do. Just be careful when you are putting in any of these like preventative taping type strategies, because sometimes if you cut it in a way where there's like a sharp edge on that or an edge of any kind, that can also cut into the skin and create an environment for a blister too. So just make sure you're being kind, thoughtful about how you're applying things like athletic tape and stuff that are going to prevent a spot that could possibly blister, and you don't create just a different spot in another area by doing that. And like I mentioned before, like any products you can get to that will maybe keep some of that moisture off your feet or some of that moisture, your feet a little more dry or may help to with just the way that how how harsh that friction ends up becoming in that area to as things to kind of consider with that sort of stuff. One of the final topics on blisters that I think a lot of people always wonder about, and is probably the reason this question got asked in the first place, is what do you do once you have one? Especially during something like a race where there's obviously some sort of consequence at the end in terms of how fast you're able to get to the finish line or if you're able to get to the finish line or not. So with this type of situation, the way to think about it is, generally speaking, if you can tolerate it, meaning that the discomfort of that blister isn't causing you to have the inability to continue to run properly, changing your mechanics, and just generally annoying you to the degree that it's becoming really problematic for your forward progress. The best thing to do in that scenario is leave it as is. Don't try to pop it. So the reason for that is kind of because of the stuff we've talked about already, where it is sort of this natural response, where it's creating that buffer from the aggravated area and anything kind of getting into it and continuing to bother it. So if you're able to tolerate it, leave it as is. If not, and you decide, okay, I need to drain this so that I can run comfortably, what you want to do is pop it and drain it in a very sanitary manner. So just like a sanitized needle would be preferred, uh, clean the area and pop a small hole and drain it. Try not to rip the skin off, though, because you don't want to expose that raw skin underneath. So if you can just make a little incision there and drain the fluid out of there so that pressure isn't causing an irritation to your running mechanics and things like that, and then clean it. Bandage it. If you can't, put a new pair of socks over it so that that area is protected and not exposed after you drained it and kind of removed that natural barrier that it created in the first place. Uh, just for a quick recap on that one, do your homework on shoes, how your feet change over the course of longer sessions, maybe consider a shoe change for that purpose. Pay attention to the type of socks you're wearing, pay attention to specific areas of blisters, and you can even lean on prior races. If you're the person who said, hey, I had really bad blisters and it cost me my race. Or maybe it didn't cost you a race, but it was just a huge pain for a large portion of the finishing stages of the race. And you noticed it. It might not be a bad idea just to kind of like take some inventory post-race and reflect on where those problem spots are for you, for you in something that is a little bit more exact to the duration that you'll maybe be out there for the next time you do something like this too. All right, so feel free to shoot me. Any notes if you have any follow up questions on the blister stuff. It is something where, like I said before, it's always frustrating when something non fitness related hurts your goal time or costs you a finish because you did all the work, you feel like you got to that level of fitness you needed to be, and then something outside of that impacts you. That is never, never a fun scenario. All right, so the next one is, uh, kind of figuring out what workouts to do and kind of balancing things over the course of a training cycle. So I'll start this one off with just kind of like a little bit of a, like just a rotation or just some basic advice that I like to share. If it's something where the person is kind of new to running or they don't really have any, like specific focuses that they've done in the past to the degree where they are in an area where just like improvements in general are going to be beneficial or just adding some structure, there's some orders of operations that I kind of like to follow in terms of like, how are you going to get faster by putting these training inputs into your, your, your calendar. And the starting point I would say is to build a foundation first because that foundation is going to allow you to get more quality and probably more volume out of the speed work that you eventually do. So what do I mean by that? That's just a lot of slow running. But don't just go and run slow. So things you'd be considering at the end of some of these easier, lower intensity runs would be things like strides or hill bounds and just some really short like low rep type of intros at the end of an easy run. So you're kind of keeping that element exposed in that training, and you're not just out there plodding around at an easy, easy pace the entire time. But like I said, they're not going to create a meaningful amount of training load to the degree where now, the next day you're not able to hit your volume targets because you did too much hard stuff at the end of that run, and that's just going to set you up for the ultimate structure that you're going to want to be targeting, which is kind of maintaining that foundation that you spent some time building. And you can do that probably with something as low as 50 to 60% of what your original input was, which frees you up to be able to spend some more of your training time towards things like. Interval sessions, long intervals, short intervals, and keeping it maintained by also building out a long run so that you're getting like a higher exposure point for a longer period of time to those lower intensities, and kind of maintaining that at that point while you introduce some, some speed work. So a basic thing like that would be like 1 to 2 hard sessions per week. Plus a long run is a pretty good strategy to think about when you're looking at like, all right, I have that foundation built. What do I do next in order to preserve it but also improve my fitness overall? Uh, one thing to consider with that too, is like, don't try to force things. Don't think like, okay, now that I've got my foundation built, I need to start throwing as much hard work as I can and try to, like, squeeze in extra stuff. You know, some people are just going to respond better to less frequent speed work sessions. So maybe they're doing one per week versus two. If you're the type of person where by doing two, you notice like your fatigue is increasing, your quality is dipping over time and you're struggling to even hit the volume targets you have because you're needing extra rest from it. So don't try to force it. Just add that extra stimulus and then wait and keep doing it. Be consistent with it and you'll start to see some improvements. And when you start to see improvements, that oftentimes opens up the opportunity to maybe do more of it. If you're able to and you have the timeline to kind of keep going with that sort of thing. So essentially make sure you're working where you're at. Don't try to, you know, go and say, okay, well, so-and-so is doing this. Maybe I should do that too. Or I got this training plan online and it says I should be doing this much, and I'm falling 10% short of it when I feel good and I feel bad when I hit it on the head, you know, treat yourself as an individual with this type of stuff and make sure if you're using kind of a pre-made plan or you're taking advice from someone else, that you're applying it at the individual level and actually taking some time to ask yourself, how is my body responding to this training and my recovering at the pace that I need to to be able to kind of hit the target sessions I'm looking for. And, you know, don't be afraid to be a little bit lighter on some of the stuff if it's showing up that in order to get it done well and right, that you have to go for one workout versus two, for example, or start a little lower on your long run development and things like that. Uh, the other thing is like picking an area to improve while you're maintaining others. So what I mean by that is, if we think of it as we can't really go all in on every aspect of the training inputs, we really can't say, okay, I'm going to do as much aerobic threshold work as I can tolerate, and I'm also going to do as much VO2 max work as I can tolerate. I'm going to also do as much lactate threshold work as I can tolerate. There's going to have to be a balance in that. So at times you're going to have to think of it as, all right, I've done the work for this one and it's in a good spot relative to the rest of my fitness. I'm going to pull back on that and remember that maintenance is done at a much. Lower input than progress, or creating additional stressors to create more adaptations. So you're able to kind of loosen up on one in order to create space for another one. So this is where I want to kind of get into the heart of the question which someone asks is, well, what workout should I focus on? What should I do? Well, this is where I think it's good to kind of have a view of where your global fitness is at. And what I mean by that is where are your strengths and weaknesses within that aerobic intensity spectrum. So where are your strengths at when it comes to like, say, the pace you're running at your aerobic threshold or that kind of zone two category for people who go by the zone targets, like where is your pace at for your lactate threshold or an intensity that on race day you could sustain for roughly 60 minutes and then like, where is your pace at your VO2 max? Or like an intensity that you could maybe tolerate for up to 12 minutes, maybe 9 to 12 minutes or something like that. So if you can get kind of a profile on yourself with those kinds of three key points, then you can start to kind of see a picture of like, well, where do I stand to improve the most? Which ones of these tend to get closer to one another? So like if I look at someone's training fitness and it looks like they've got like a pretty fast pace at their aerobic threshold, but there's just a small jump between that and their lactate threshold, then what that tells me is if we kind of poke at their lactate threshold for a while, we might see that window open up a little bit, and they won't have quite as tight of a pace difference between those two areas, where they can probably stand to just maintain their aerobic threshold for a while, by reducing their exposure to that intensity, and make room for some more long intervals. That lactate threshold or another example could be like maybe their aerobic threshold is pretty strong, their lactate threshold is pretty strong, but their VO2 max pace is just barely faster than their lactate threshold pace. And then for that person, they may benefit from just a little bit more focus on some VO2 max short interval sessions, where we can start to kind of separate their pace between their VO2 max and their lactate threshold, so that they have a little bit more of a balanced overall kind of global fitness. So if you're asking like, well, what do I do to kind of figure those things out? Um, I mean, for your, for your pace, that aerobic threshold or zone two, it's probably going to be a little bit different because that's just an amount of volume you can probably tolerate quite a bit of. So you might just want to look at just like when you go out and you are running in that zone to intensity, whether that be by a heart rate gauge, a perceived effort gauge, um, you know, following all the like, general rules of thumb where it's like, hey, you should be able to carry a conversation during this if you're able to kind of do some nasal breathing in your nose and out your mouth, that's probably a pretty good indication that you're in that area, not past it, and actually pushing up into moderate intensity. And some of these like talk test type things. If you have an idea of just off, off like a, a, a. A bunch of your prior runs. Where that pace is at, you can sort of like to use that as your marker. And then for the other two, I like field tests. So like you could do a lactate threshold field test, which for if you're doing it by yourself un tapered outside of an event. If you just go and give a good 30 minute push and take the average of that last 20 minutes of that 30, you can get a good idea of kind of where your pace might be at for your lactate threshold. If you're fortunate enough to have done an event that was roughly in the hour range, you could use the data from that as well. Uh, then for VO2 max, similar to lactate threshold, just go out and do like I like to just do a Cooper test. It's like 12 minutes. Just give it a good hard push, see how fast you can go for 12 minutes. Try to make sure that you don't get out so fast that you have like a slowdown over the course of that 12, but it's just fairly evenly paced and you can get a good idea of just about where your pace at your VO2 max is. And if you kind of have those three data points, you can start looking at that and seeing, is there a scenario here where, um, where some of these are really close to one another, where one is like clearly weaker than the others, and that maybe points to something that's worthwhile to focus on for a little bit in your next training block to see if you can kind of nudge that one in the right direction while maintaining the others, and or that it could also just be something where you have a real clean look and it's like, all right, there's actually pretty good spacing between all of these. I'm hitting some pretty good targets here. I just want to improve in general. And then you can maybe just default back to what I was talking about before, where you're including a couple hard sessions per week in a long run, and you're just kind of adding to that stimulus over the course of a training cycle to to eventually get to a point where you add some race specific intensity in there, depending on what you're training for in that sort of stuff. So that's kind of like the way I like to kind of approach that question is, let's get a picture of where that person is at at the individual level, figure out where their training based input strengths and weaknesses are at, and then from there, decide like which one of these looks like they could stand to be kind of poked a little bit more and see bigger improvements in the short term, because it just hasn't been something you've been exposing yourself to because your body's ultimately going to going to respond to inputs that it needs to improve, and getting an idea of where you're at. And if you're someone who's been training a lot and you're just having to answer this question, you can usually get a pretty good idea just based on what you've been doing in the last few months. If you just look back at your training, I'll see this. Oftentimes when I'm onboarding a coaching client, they'll send me their prior training and I'll look at it and it's like, oh, this person's just been doing a ton of zone two work. I'm pretty certain then that like, we're going to probably get more benefit for them, assuming that they've been doing enough of the zone to work. And it's at a point where we're probably not going to add more volume to it that they're going to benefit from, from some short intervals and long intervals, because that's just something they haven't exposed their body to as much. Or if it's something different in that they come in and they're like relatively low volume, but they've been doing a lot of speed workouts, a lot of short intervals, a lot of long intervals, a lot of higher intensity stuff. They're they're more likely to benefit in that scenario, assuming they have the time for it, for us to kind of go back and say, hey, let's add some stuff to the foundation here and give yourself a bigger platform to come back and add some more of those speed workouts, short intervals along and rolls and things like that to it in the future when we kind of have a bigger foundation there. So hopefully I answered that question thoroughly enough. But if you have any follow up questions about that one or the blisters, let me know. Any new questions you might have sent on my way for a future listener question and answer episode.