Episode 439: Ultra Running Success - Alyssa Clark

Alyssa Clark has covered a wide range of events in the ultramarathon world. She has wins at Moab 240, HURT 100 Mile, San Diego 100 Mile, Ouray 100 Mile, and Canyons 100 Mile to name a few. Alyssa also battles ulcerative colitis, presenting an additional hurdle when fueling daily and during races that entail a large nutrition variable.

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Timestamps/Topics:

00:00:00 Introduction to Alyssa and Ultra Running

00:06:50 Journey into Ultramarathons: From Childhood Inspirations to First 50k

00:12:56 Navigating Career Uncertainty: From Education to Professional Running

00:19:30 Balancing Athletic Career with Future Planning

00:26:09 Evolution in Ultra Running Distances

00:32:30 Ultra Running Strategy: Deliberate Race Selection

00:39:42 Optimizing Running Economy for Speed

00:46:05 The Importance of Enjoyment in Recreational Training

00:51:46 Breaking the World Record Unexpectedly

00:58:13 Overcoming Nutrition Challenges in Ultrarunning

01:06:07 Optimizing Nutrition with Electrolytes and Black Currents

01:12:32 The Polarizing World of Supplements

01:19:27 Shift to Fruit-Based Sports Nutrition

01:26:19 Fueling Strategies in Ultramarathons

01:32:48 Managing Energy Levels in Race Preparation

01:40:06 Where to Find Alyssa on Social Media and More

01:41:50 How Zach Uses Podcast Sponsors

Episode Transcript:

Alright, Alyssa, welcome to the show. Happy too. Excited to have you come on and chat about some ultra running stuff. Thanks for having me on. I've been a fan of yours for a while. I mean, you're a legend, so. I'm. I'm very honored to be speaking with you. Yeah. I swear, every year I think back to kind of when I first got ultra running and it was like I kind of got in on this, like that wave and like the early, like, 2010 ish time frame where the sport was really starting to kind of find its, find its place in terms of kind of where we're kind of seeing it go today. And it was like back then it was like I was this young guy in the sport and kind of coming up, and now I'm kind of the old guy in the sport. So. but yeah, it's been fun to kind of watch the sport grow and all the different angles it kind of has, has taken over the last decade plus. Yeah. No, it's funny because I started in about 2015, so ten years ago, which is a bit wild to say. And thinking about how trying to explain to people what an ultramarathon was was just they didn't there was no comprehension of it still at that point. And then where it is now and people totally get it, they know what you're talking about. They either have done one, they know someone who's done one. It's pretty wild that it's still not mainstream, but it's becoming actually comprehensible. And then they ask you, if you've ever run a marathon, you're like, okay, sure. Did you? Boston? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. The one thing I or one topic I always like to get into nowadays because it seems like this has sort of shifted to is just like kind of. What was your background in sports? Did you do a lot of sports as a kid, like when you were in school and things like that? Yeah. That has to mean, I grew up in a family that had sports. That's just what we did. My dad was a football player in college and then went on to do triathlons and marathons. My mom was a cross-country skier. She's biked across the country, biked across Europe. So I just grew up in a family where I truly did not realize how prevalent. Like, I didn't realize that endurance sports and families weren't a thing because we would just go out and hike for 15 miles or bike across Prince Edward Island. And so I feel very fortunate that I had two parents who very much led by example in the endurance sports world in particular. but as I grew up, I think I started playing soccer when I was three. I played lacrosse, starting at five and played lacrosse in college. I was a cross-country skier. I went to a ski academy, Stratton Mountain School, my freshman and sophomore year. And that's where I really learned about training, about, you know, having a training log where you have a number of hours you want to hit for the year, where you get lactate threshold tested. You know, all of those pieces that most 14 year olds aren't exposed to. And so, sports have always held a lot of value in my life. I've learned about that or learned through them, I think. It makes a lot of sense. I am where I am because of the background and I can't imagine my life without them for sure. Yeah. Was there something about running that kind of caught your attention at some point where you decided, like, this is where I want to kind of spend a lot of my physical energies towards. You know, it wasn't when I was younger. And when I say younger, I say before 10 or 11. I used to always say, oh, I hated running. I was like, well, okay. I would say probably not that many seven year olds want to go out on a run. but I would run for the sports and then my parents being who they were, they my mom was like, let's start running. And so we'd do a run-walk thing. when my sister was playing soccer or, you know, my brother was playing a sport. And then probably around 11 or 12, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is very similar to Crohn's disease. And for some reason, that was a catalyst for finding this really strong love of running. For some reason, running became this source of freedom from a lot of uncertainties. I don't respond well to medication. I was having a lot of health issues and complications, and running just became this anger. It was like this expression of. Being free in a way. And so I remember distinctly one run when I was in seventh grade. It was just this mile and a half loop, and I just felt like, oh, this is what flying feels like. This is complete freedom. And that was just this incredible light bulb moment. And running just stuck. And, you know, I didn't really. I wasn't really a cross-country runner in high school. I was a cross-country skier. So we did a lot of long distance runs. We'd go out and we'd spend 4 to 5 hours on the trails, eating snacks, hiking up the hills. And I just thought that was so fun. I loved either the really short stuff or the really long stuff. I hated five KS, and have always hated five KS. Probably will until the day I die. And so I just feel like I probably didn't fit the mold of the distances that traditionally are, what runners do. So I feel like I've probably been a runner since I was maybe 10 or 11. but I was waiting for something like an ultra marathon to come about. And I read Dean Karnazes book when I was ten, and I said, I'm going to do that someday. Like, I knew that, and then when I graduated college, I was a lacrosse player. and I went, well, I really love running. I'd kind of been running throughout. This dream of doing an ultra. I'm going to make that happen. I'm going to skip the marathon. I'm going to go to the 50 K. So two months after I graduated college, I ran my first 50 K and was like, wait, this is really cool. I, I love this, I love it felt like when everyone else started getting tired, I just started getting more energy and just was so curious about how far I could go. yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I'm like, I'm extra interested in the topic of like, people's kind of upbringing and what led them to ultra or just in whatever fitness pursuits tend to kind of they gravitate towards. I was I was actually at a summit this, this last weekend, and one of the presenters was talking about kind of the increased specialization that we see the youth get into now where, you know, you might be on like a like youth baseball team and be training year round for baseball as a middle schooler. And when I think about just my it sounds like, like you're kind of an introduction to alternatives, kind of similar to mine, where, you know, I was in sports all the time as a kid, and I just loved moving. And then running was what long distance running was, what I was maybe better at. And I kind of had to learn to discover that, though. And I didn't overextend myself too seriously with it. Not even really until college, where I really started thinking about it as something I wanted to do even year round, really. But I look back at that and kind of see kind of how maybe I was a little bit further behind some of my peers at the collegiate level in terms of when I started taking it seriously. And I'm like, part of the reason I think I still do it now is because I really had to learn that I liked it better than other things and and really narrowed down what I liked about running, because I had exposure to a ton of other stuff. And, you know, before the sport professionalized to the degree that it has today, it was like, you know, you're going to be doing this stuff for the fun of it. So I think learning to do it for the fun of it, before you really have any sort of success that leads to anything monetary or professional is just, in my opinion, just such a more sustainable way to go about it. And hopefully something that kind of keeps someone like you or myself in the sport for longer than we maybe would otherwise. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I never started running ultras because I thought this was possible. I never assumed that I was going to have this journey to becoming a professional athlete, or have this be my career with kind of all encompassing coaching, etc. but I will say I never got into it because of that. But at some point I believed that it was possible. And so that fire of like I think when I think for some reason I'm okay at this. I'm just going to keep trying. And I think one day this is going to happen. So it's kind of funny. And maybe they're on the same spectrum. They're not opposites, but it's like never getting into it because I thought it'd be any good at it, but also started to realize after a few years, maybe if I stick with this, it could become a reality. Yeah. Yeah it is, it's that interesting thing where I think a lot of, a lot of people that were in our spot, it sort of kind of was something we learned about as we went. And you know for me it was I'd be curious what your kind of thought is with this is like when I, I was a school teacher originally, and that was what I assumed I was going to be doing. Yeah. Me too. Oh, really? Okay, okay, we'll have to dive into that a little bit. Maybe. But yeah. Yeah. So I got to a point where it was my fourth year of full time teaching and I had had enough results at that point where like brands were starting to reach out to me and they were brands that I was already using. So I was like, this seems like a really good fit. And, I also had people back then. It was like, you know, coaching was getting kind of new to the sport. Even so, totally, people would reach out and say, hey, do you coach? Yeah. So I remember teaching like that last year. I just ended up building up a group of maybe like 15 coaching clients to the degree where I was starting to. See the writing on the wall where it's like, hey, there's kind of like two semi unique paths here, like a full time teaching career or professional athleticism alongside coaching. And to try to do them both is probably going to be unsustainable. or with teaching, it seemed like there was always either a lot of time or no time at all, because you got a kind of summer where you can get quite a bit of freedom, but then when you're in the school year, it's like you're in it. And, there's not a lot of wiggle room there. So, you know, I talked to the principal and was like, hey, I've got this opportunity. I think I might try to take advantage of it because in ten, 15, 20 years, that probably won't be on the table any longer. Whereas teaching will sort of always be there to some degree. If I wanted to go back to that, it's not like my legs aren't going to determine whether I can teach or not. So I kind of took that risk, but it was one of those things where I was so terrified of, what does this mean? Because, you know, I went to school, I went to college, I got the degree, I got the job I wanted. I even got into the actual school district I really aspired to get to. And it was like that was all sort of like a very clear like, as long as I do what I'm supposed to do. Like, it's pretty predictable. I could teach the rest of my life with very little insecurities there. And, I mean, I also had a special ed license too, which basically made me employable at almost every school district in the country. So it was like it went from a very predictable kind of do this, get that, do this, get that to a little bit more of a, all right, I know what I need to do to maintain an athletic career, but there's a lot of uncertainties built inside of that. So I've always kind of had this mindset of, I'm going to have to retire from running professionally at a very young age, relative to most careers. I need to have other things in place so that that transition isn't, like, financially problematic. So, you know, getting into kind of all the other other stuff that kind of come along for the ride now, which was sort of growing along the sport as well, which is like social media, podcasting, coaching, and these things were always things I was interested in, both from stuff that I liked, but also things as like, all right, there's there's legitimate careers in these as well. So, yeah, I'd love to kind of hear about the way you kind of navigated that, that time frame where you kind of went from like, okay, this is cool. This is fun to oh, now brands like honor reaching out to me and want me to be on a team and be a legitimate professional athlete. Yeah. Well, your story resonates so deeply. that's it's very, very kind of similar, I think, in how things came about. You know. It's very. I went to college for 30 minutes. I grew up on the East Coast in Vermont, went to school in western Massachusetts. Everyone around me went to New York City or Boston to pursue investment banking or consulting or, you know, very tangible, high paying jobs. and I just went the total opposite direction, took a teaching job out in Hawaii and at an international school, assumed I was going to do that. I was going to, you know, travel there. There's going to be an adventure wrapped into being a teacher as well. But that was probably what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I accepted I was never going to get paid that much, and that was fine. but I always kind of kept pursuing the running side of things. with my husband, who's in the military. There is a lot of job variability with moving a lot of times. so I was able for certain periods of time to pursue the running, but I didn't have, I mean, this is we're talking like 27, 18, 19, like, still kind of on the early side of, of really the professionalization, I'd say, of ultrarunning. and then. Let's see. I landed a teaching job at a very high end private school in Monterey, California, and went into that, and the running was starting to really take off. And then I got a job opportunity at Uphill Athlete. And I was sitting there being like. And I knew that I was going to have to leave the teaching job anyway because we were moving to San Diego, and I was sitting there and I was like, well, I could delay essentially my dream to pursue this, for another 4 or 5 months, and who knows what's going to happen. Or I can say I'm going to take this right now because don't we teach our kids to chase that dream? And I was like, it's literally sitting in my lap. The thing that I have wanted and pursued for honestly like three or 4 or 5 years. And so I went to the administration and I said, hey, I need to leave early. And they were not happy with it. And I do feel badly that the timing wasn't ideal. But I was also like, look, I'm, I'm just gonna take this. But there were points along the way where when I lived over in Italy for a couple of years and I didn't really have a stable job for the first year. It's very hard for military spouses to work in Italy. They've actually changed a little bit, but we could only essentially work US government jobs in Italy. We cannot take Italian jobs or we couldn't. And they also need to employ a lot of Italians because the agreement is like, hey, well, we'll bring employment to you so we can have a base here. so I'm looking at my career being like, well, I'm an aspiring. Maybe one day will be a professional ultra runner who, you know, is tutoring some kids with no actual job. And my friends are over here on Wall Street and working for JP Morgan, being like, what am I doing with my life with this degree? and so yeah, it looked murky and it looked really I felt like I had nothing to show for all of this hard work and this degree that I'd put a lot of effort to. And then. Things just kind of kept coming together. and like, the results started being where they needed to be, to have, you know, brands like to pay attention. and that now I look at I'm like, I have, I wear a lot of hats. I've kind of been able to create this career, but very similar to you. I have always thought about the future, that there are only so many years where I'm able to run at the level that allows me to be a professional athlete. So I am always, and maybe this takes a little bit away from the true pinnacle of what I can be, but I have always needed to have more than just running in my life. Whether it's coaching, whether it's podcasting, mentoring athletes. I've started doing actually a little bit of agency work, and helping with brand partnerships. And I'm always ready for the next step of my career, and I'm always building pieces into that. so, yeah, I mean, very, I think similar mindset to what you had, where it's like, yes, we do take this opportunity to be a professional athlete, but also we're always looking at what's coming in the future because I think the most dangerous place you can be in as a pro is being comfortable where you are because there's, you know, there's so many variabilities with. We get a career ending injury. Just things happen that I think we always have to be prepared for what the future looks like. And the more that we can do now to set ourselves up for that future, the better off we are. Yeah. And it's also interesting nowadays too because you have like you know, there's so many different outlets outside of the sport itself that sort of offer themselves up to you that are kind of built maybe on the backbone of results as you get more eyeballs on you and things like that, but are also just kind of a the way the world is shifting with the online presence side of things. And, yeah, I was, you know, the other thing that teaching kind of taught me was we'd have summer break. So like, I was an administrator, so I had basically three months where I could do whatever I wanted. So it was kind of like summer break as a kid, almost, to be honest. And it was like always every year I'd get to like August. We'd always start at the beginning of September in Wisconsin, and I'd get to August and I'd just be like, you know, this is fun, but, you know, I need something else other than just the training and racing and whatever. I, you know, so I always kind of knew in the back of my mind, even when I stepped away from teaching, regardless of whether it's for financial reasons or otherwise, like I need to be doing something to kind of give myself outlets outside of this. You know, there's only so much running you can do. There's only so much, you know, like diving in one dimension into something before you need a distraction or like a release from that. Yeah. I've also always been very motivated by being a part of and helping whatever, being out there that's greater than myself. And when I just focus on Alyssa Clark running, that's not big enough. Like, I'm not big enough in the world to to take that absolute, complete focus. I mean, hands down, being a professional athlete is a selfish endeavor, I think. It's almost impossible not to argue that. And for me, I have always needed to have some outlet where I was helping society outside of just being that professional athlete. And when I have leaned too far into being a pro, I've actually had worse results because all I've done is obsess about myself. And that has never, yeah, it's never given me the edge. So I've, I, I do try to get way too excited about too many opportunities. So sometimes I swing a little bit too far. I'm like okay. I moved a lot of parts around for me to be able to be really good at the running part, and I'm not even prioritizing the running part today. Like, okay, that's too far. But also, I do think there's so much value for me personally, and honestly, I admire the focus and the ability for athletes to perform at that very high level without those other pieces, but I've always needed other pieces in my life than just myself as the main actor will say. Yeah. And I always wonder too, if there's maybe some uniqueness with ultra running where it's not like an NFL football game or an NBA basketball game or something, where like your mind in competition is pretty short. I mean, it's intense obviously, but like the duration is short relative to like going out, running a hundred miles or, you know, like when you're running these 200 miles and stuff like that. So it is also something where I always think about, like the training itself, you can get to like a physical limitation before you can really start to get to the hard part mentally of what you're going to see on race day. So part of me thinks, like, I need to have some intellectual rigor in my day outside of the training so that my body is still resting, but my mind is actively being able to stay on, stay focused, stay disciplined and not get distracted. And just like lackadaisical and off centered from what the goal would be. So I think there's maybe something to that too, where like you get you give yourself enough like cognitive stuff to occupy your mind with. You just get good at tolerating large chunks of time of using your brain essentially. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I would also say that looking at many of them. You know, historically, like very strong ultra runners. They're very smart people. And so there's I think this cognitive need, that need that has to be satisfied in order for us to perform like, yes, we are using our brain. Actually, that's kind of the superpower is to be able to run well and also be able to manage all the logistics because there's so many variables within an ultra compared to a 10,000 meter race or a 5000 meter race. We just have so much time. And so I think that intellectual piece, like we need to stimulate that in many ways in order to be at our best and be able to adapt in the situation of the ultra. and also we are limited to there's only so many hours as a pure runner, you can train per day. I mean, a triathlete, you can hammer in for so much time that just the amount of time they can train is so much more significant than we can. And so at some point, it's like you got to fill the other hours of the day. Yeah. No, I agree. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about that was kind of, I thought it's, it's kind of unique at this point in time in the sport from my opinion is like when I first got into ultrarunning, it was like you were kind of an ultra runner. And I mean, the sport was a little tighter in terms of like there was kind of like in terms of what people were paying attention to was kind of like a hundred milers and shorter. now there's like, you know, these 200 milers, you know, you're seeing these timed events get a little bit more momentum kind of back, not nearly to where they were in their, in their history, historical peaks, but like we're just seeing like the multi-day side of things grow up. We're seeing enough talent in the sport where, like, you know, a 50 K runner might be different from a 200 miler and things like that. So there's like a little more specialization even within the different disciplines there. So someone like yourself, you've actually got a pretty diverse set of results to your name in, in, in recent years, actually to where you've, you've, you've done you've done well at 100 milers. You've done well at international races, like Utmb events and things like that. And you've done well at some of these multi-day events too. And, you know, is there something Like, how do you go about navigating a race schedule with interest and things like that, with being able to kind of perform at that, that kind of variety? Yeah. I would say I'm not as diverse as I am. Or maybe the better question is, have you ever. Do you have a favorite? Oh, maybe a better question. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it's funny because I just did NAFTA like a flatter faster 100 K. And I was like I'm getting back into mountain trading. I'm like, I'm never gonna run anything less than 100 K fast. yeah. I mountainous 100 plus miles. That is my absolute love. I was literally having this conversation in my head yesterday off on a run where I got pulled out and was having a great time, being up in the mountains where I was like, you know, I don't think I want to try to be diverse. I think I'm just gonna do what I love doing. And that's. Yeah. Being in the mountains for long periods of time, you know, I would say that, I appreciate that because I feel like I could be a lot better at, I, I really struggled in 100 KS recently. That seems to be my Kryptonite. I, I psych myself out because they're fast now, like you are. You cannot sit. But again, 100 milers are fast now. Everything's fast now. So, Yeah, it's. I think it's really interesting. I. I definitely am a student of the sport in many ways, and I would very much argue that a very, very good 50 K athlete is going to be somewhat different than a very good 100 miler, very good mountainous 100 mile athlete. but so often we see a lot of crossovers still where, you know, you have Katie Scheid, who I think was two years ago, two years ago came second at ACC and then the year after is winning Western states and course record at Utmb. So you know, at the end of the day, I do think there is still enough room in the sport that yes, we are seeing specialization, but we are seeing the top athletes still be the top athletes from 50 K to I mean, we'll we'll see in just a week or so how Courtney shakes out at Coco. Donna. So yeah, I, I kind of sometimes try to, give myself a little, like, pep talk of, like, you don't have to be good at the 50 K. That's fine. And then I'm like, well, the best athletes are good at everything, so maybe not quite yet, but I do. I really do think that that is the direction that we are headed. I think that we, you know, you can't. I don't think you can expect a marathoner to be doing you can't expect a marathoner to be competing with an 800 meter runner. And with the explosion of the sport, with how it is being professionalized, I do think we're going to see the Sub Ultra up to 50 K distance. There's not going to be as much crossover with someone who is competing at Utmb. I think that the speeds are just going to increase where it's just going to be very hard to specialize the training enough to be able to perform at the highest level in both of those scenarios. Yeah, I think we'll get there eventually. What I think is maybe the transition point we're in right now is where we see someone like Katie Scheid who is able to like, say, win canyons and then win West, win UT and be like three fairly unique events. I mean, all trail mountain type courses. But you got you got a pretty wide spread in terms of like where the intensity you're going to be able sustain kind of trending up from canyons to Utmb. I think really what it comes down to is like Katie, she ran three races that year. She knocked them all out of the park. My guess is she sat down at the beginning of the year and was just like, okay, these are the three events I'm going to focus on and this is how I'm going to get there. So she really prioritized those three events versus trying to do maybe what I would have seen kind of in the early days where, like Tim Olson, when he won Western states, I remember he ran back then it was the Montreal Ultra Cup, I think is what they called it, which is basically what the Golden ticket races are now. he did all of them basically, and I think he was on the podium for pretty much every single one of them. And then he wins Western states at the end. So it was like that was the goal, but he could do quite well. But I think the volume of racing may come down and then allow someone like Katie Scheid to be able to do really well at these top tier events, despite them being slightly, at least slightly different from one another. Yeah. I mean, I think I couldn't agree more. It's actually one of the conversations I have with athletes. I'm sure you do all the time that I have with myself. And I think it's. It's so easy. Like, gosh, every weekend it feels like there's another major race where there are gorgeous canyons, Black Canyon. You know, there are all these incredible races and I and, you know, it's so easy to be like, I should be racing all of them. But the truth is, I and I use Katie as an example. I've used her as an example many times because she is so deliberate. I mean, she raced Utmb and the first race she's done since then in the trail world, we'll say, was Madeira a couple of days ago. And she crushed it. And so it's that she's incredibly deliberate. I think we look at Courtney and she has she's she seems to be able to or she does race a bit more frequently than Katie. But I think she was very deliberate last year to give herself a little bit of a break after the three the year before. So I do think with the level of competition and the level of specificity in training, we're just going to see people having to make some choices. When it comes to racing, I am in somewhat of a similar position. I try to have, you know, those maybe three really I'm going for it races, maybe four if I can squeak one out and the rest are secondary. And I think that that shows the respect of. Of your body, of your performance levels, of giving yourself enough time to train well. Because racing does not allow you in many ways to train your best because you're recovering, you're tapering, you know, you're not building. So I do think we're really going to see this specialization, also in the race selection and how many races people are racing per year. And that also on the flip side is very scary because you're kind of reducing you're putting more eggs in that basket. So yes, you're probably going to be able to really nail that. But if you don't, we all know those things happen all the time, where there's unexpected issues that come up in ultras that we could never anticipate. It's scary to be like, well, that was my shot for the spring season and I don't have anything to show for it. Like, oh, but I also do think in order to be at the top, you have to kind of do that or start to reduce that number. Yeah. No I agree I think. The other interesting thing too, that sort of feeds into that topic is just like the way you prepare for these events. And you know, that's another thing that's evolved a lot over the course of just my experience with ultrarunning is just like training theory to some degree. when I was doing a little homework on You before, before inviting you on, it was, I was listening to a podcast. You were kind of talking about the concept of just like you had this, like, large foundation of volume that you had established over the years of just kind of passion for running in the mountains and things like that. And then one thing that kind of moved the needle for you was when you got a little more specialized in the sense that you started doing more speed work. So I'd love to kind of hear about just your sort of philosophy around training. Is there kind of a protocol that you at least kind of scaffold in terms of like, all right, it's the beginning of a year. I'm going to start preparing where you have an order of operations of different types of workouts that you run through. Yeah. Well, first off, I will say I work with a coach I work with, John Fitzgerald out of CTS, and a lot of it is conversations with him. and, you know, a lot of the protocol behind what we are focusing on for training is based upon observations of weaknesses from the previous year. So for example, when I. I've been working with him almost exactly about a year now. And when I came to him, I felt like, man, I'm just really not as strong at uphill climbing as I should be. Like, I hike too much, I should be running more. And so we had kind of an interesting amount of time before Utmb. It was a pretty major shift, to pick up a new coach only a couple of months out. I'm so glad it happened, but he really didn't have the amount of time that I think someone would normally have. And so we really focused on uphill hiking and making that faster and doing, you know, Hill repeats in that regard. and then after Utmb, where we had a little bit more time, I had Puerto Vallarta, which was a training race, trying to get back into Utmb for the following year. But the main goal was breaking the course record at hurt and for me to be able to do that. hurt is not a fast race. There's not a lot of running. You can run a lot of it, which I think is kind of shifting the mindset. But we just did a ton of steady state uphill intervals of, you know, I maybe have. Well during that period. Had 1 to 2 days of truly easy running, like an hour and a half of just relaxing recovery type running. The rest was a very focused effort. And I think the biggest difference in shift I have seen in trail running from when you started, from when I started, would just be like time on feet, time on feet, you know, just get out there like take the photos, eat the snack, stop at the top of the mountain. And now every long run that I do is focused effort. It's not just an adventure pace. It's like, yeah, we're going to run up this hill. Yeah. We're gonna and I'm staying below zone two for the most part. Sometimes their steady state worked into there, but there's a lot more intention behind the workouts. And there's a ton of speed work. At least during the injury it was I think two speed sessions. And that, you know, speed is a relative term, but like hard efforts then two long runs, and intensity within the long runs. So it was a lot of load. We didn't need to work so much on volume because I had a lot of the volume from Utmb, from kind of the years of experience. So this was like, yeah, we got to work on a lot of time in that kind of uncomfortable space, like the gas pedal is not fully down, but it's on. And so since then, after her kind of took a little break, but where I have felt the most. Space for improvement is my running economy on flats with slight uphills? especially if you look at a Utmb race, that's kind of my major goal for this year. There's a ton of runnable sections, and I feel like my climbing and descending was pretty solid, but in the in-between periods I just wasn't. You know, you can go from say, and of course we're saying all this like Utmb, you got a pretty loaded pack. You know, it's a heavy carry. if you're running nines or 930 on those flats and you can get that down to an eight, that's a lot of time. So we spent just a lot of effort on flatter, faster running, and just getting that running economy really up, doing hard intervals. and in the long run working more like at pace efforts. So that's been that phase with some VO2 max, as well interval focus And then now we are shifting. And then that was kind of supposed to translate into a faster 100 K. Desert rats. I went into it. I don't really know what was going on. My heart rate was super elevated. Something was up. so that didn't work out quite the way we thought, but the training was. There's the training job. I'm kind of feeling the effects of it where I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah, I can move faster on those flats. Like, without as much effort. but right now we're shifting more into those longer endurance days. Longer hill intervals. Steady state time. and just, you know, bigger days in the mountains, like 4 or 5, six hour days in the mountains. like, when? Because I have a burrito up next. And then Utmb, my Utmb training weeks could be anywhere from 24 to 28, 30 hours of just big mountain days. So definitely shifting more into the focus for long runs rather than the shorter, flatter speed stuff. Yeah. The way I like to describe it is if, if I were given like a person and it was like guarantee that their fitness was very balanced across the spectrum, then like I'm basically going to follow principle of kind of least specific to most specific with the when we're getting these longer races, we're just doing more speed work earlier in the training plan than we'd say like A5K runner would be doing those sort of things probably right around the race because it's very specific to it. And then you kind of leverage that fitness you're going to get from that speed work. When you pull everything up, especially someone with a big foundation like you, then you get into the work that you're actually going to do on race day, kind of at the end there. So you're really ready for what you're actually going to be doing out there. And then since most people aren't often coming to you with that kind of perfect profile, then it's like you have to sort of look at it through the lens of, you know, where are the strengths and weaknesses. And this is one of the more fun things for coaching for me is like, if someone has a good like record of their prior training, I can usually look at that and think to myself, like, all right, what have they been doing? The most of them? What have they been doing the least of? And it's almost always, what have they been doing the least of is going to be the thing that we can kind of poke and get the most out of in the short term, and prepare them to be a little more balanced and give us the tools to really kind of go after the specifics of whatever they're they're going to do eventually. So, it's kind of the fun part about it is it's kind of there's like a little bit of a, like a fingerprint or a blueprint for every person in terms of what they've been doing. And then to some degree, probably some of their natural strengths and weaknesses, too, on top of it. but it's kind of a fun, fun puzzle to solve for, for ourselves and, and as coaches. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I would always say that my. Not coming from like a collegiate track or cross-country runner. My low hanging fruit has always been just like, honestly, what you're super good at. That is where I struggle just like, yeah, carrying a very good pace over longer periods of time. and so for me, it's always like, okay, can we get that, that a flatter, faster pace further and further down without, with getting the correlation of the heart rate and the effort coming down all the time. So for me, fast running has always been my low hanging fruit and will continue probably to be an area that we dedicate time, in the beginning of the season's off seasons to, to increasing. And the interesting part of that is there's also a mental piece, because I do the same with my athletes, where I'm like, I mean, with a lot of athletes. I work with a wide range of mountain athletes, whether it's mountaineers, ski tours, you know, actually probably a lot fewer trail runners than most people would expect. And for the newer athletes, for me, it's always like, okay, can we kind of like, what's our bare minimum of, getting you to the finish line safely or getting you to the top of the mountain safely, and then you can kind of play with that. But, it is really fun to be like, okay, where have you traditionally excelled? How can we work on those weaknesses? But the other piece of it, as I was alluding to the mental piece, is that if you hammer someone's weaknesses too much and they feel really down on themselves, and so you have to always be playing with that balance of like, okay, we we got to kind of give them, you know, like we've given them, all of this, these things they need to work on. We also need to balance that with like, they're having fun because I think it's professionals. We're very we're we're okay with that because we know we need to work on that. We see the bigger picture of, this is not going to be maybe my bread and butter, the thing I love doing, but it's going to help me do the thing. I love doing better. But if you're constantly hammering an athlete with their weaknesses, that gets really demoralizing. so I do think there is kind of a play with an athlete of like, okay, we're going to do, you know, this one workout, it's maybe not your favorite, but also, like, I'm not going to make you miserable the whole time because at the end of the day, for a more recreational athlete, like there should be a lot of enjoyment in that training process. Yeah. No, I love that. And it's also I mean, I think there's some, there's, there's some, art within the professional side of things with that too, where it's, it's one of those things where, like, if someone's signing up for 100 mile races and trail races and the mountains and things like that, chances are they like long days out on the trail. Yeah, they love that. Yeah, yeah. So I think yeah, you, you have to keep room for keeping that aspect, that play aspect and enjoyable part to it. I think when you start to separate the, the professionals from the, the just the participants or the everyday ultra runners and things like that, I think you're, you're, you're maybe just looking at a little bit more of a through the lens of like, okay, this is a block of time where I have to be on and I'm going to follow the schedule as closely as possible versus I'm going to probably need an off season at some point in order to make this sustainable. And maybe that off season is the time where you can sort of, you know, ignore the heart rate, ignore the intensity a little bit, and go out and take some time to take pictures on some long, more like meandering adventures out on the trails and things like that. So, yeah, I think it's all just about like, yeah, I always say like the timeline cures all. If you have a good timeline, you can really do everything and it'll be in your best interest to. So, plan ahead, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually curious what your thoughts are on offseasons. Do you try to work that in? Yeah, yeah. Usually I'll do like I'll do an off season where I kind of have two different ways. I'll do it. And it's a little more difficult living in Austin here, because in Austin we kind of have to leave in order to do this second way really well. Whereas when we lived in Phoenix, I kind of had access to every type of running right out the doorstep. So it was like you kind of had all the tools available to you. But I'll look at it through the lens of, I'm going to need a break or a phase of time where I'm not just sitting around doing nothing, but I'm a little more unstructured and overall volume is going to just be lower, and I'm just letting everything kind of reset. I'm just waiting for that excitement to really get into the rigorous part. So I kind of think of it this way. When I come off of a goal race, I think, okay, what was the hardest part of that bill? Just like the part that was the most demanding, the part where I was like, if I had to do this year round, it wouldn't be sustainable. And I kind of wait until that kind of drive to do that again comes back, and then I can start kind of layering in, kind of that build back up to that sort of thing. And this is my own blueprint kind of has followed like two weeks after that race where the structure is basically gone. You know, there will be times where maybe I don't run at all during that time, and I'll be moving and doing some stuff, maybe focusing on some strength work or something like that. But, you know, it's not something where I'm going to sit down and say, okay, I've got to run this far, or I got to run this long, or I got to do this type of workout. And then the next four weeks I sort of kind of like ease back the structure, but it's just kind of a gradual escalation back to what would be a normal training week. And then I'm kind of usually mentally and physically in a spot where I can wear those, all those signs are starting to pop up. The other burnout I've kind of found is since I've done a lot more runnable stuff historically and a lot of really boring courses like 400 meter tracks. I don't know how you do that. You kind of get. It's different, and I think there's a fatigue element to it that's mental. That really kind of sneaks up on you and I actually discovered this. I think the first time it was in 2018, I went to a Desert Solstice track invite, and I was in really good shape. Like all the fitness markers were there for me to run a really good race, and I just didn't have it like I didn't. I felt like on race day I felt like I didn't have the gears I wanted. I didn't feel like I had the mental fortitude, the desire to do it. things that normally would be like wouldn't be optimal, but I would have been at like. I would have been able to get past it like it was slightly warmer that year. and I remember thinking like, oh, this heat is terrible, blah, blah. So it was just kind of like a lot more negativity towards it than there normally would be. So to start that next year in 2019, I didn't I didn't feel like I needed a long off season. I just felt like I needed something different. just to kind of take a break from just like what I had been working on for. I think it was almost five years at that point. I'd been chasing the world record for 100 miles. And I just said, okay, well, I'm just going to do something totally different. I wasn't in Western states. So I signed up for the San Diego 100 mile, and I just spent that whole first half of the year training for the San Diego 100. Yeah. Yeah. And it was great. I mean, the training, you know, there was still a lot of work, just like any other race would be. But I remember one of my my long one went from, okay, I'm going to go on a track and run for 3 or 4 hours to I go out to Mount Ord, which was this spot out just outside of Phoenix, where it's like a it's a seven and a half mile ascent that's like almost 5000ft. So my favorite peak week or my peak training long run was just doing two rounds of that. So you do 30 miles, almost 10,000ft of climbing descending. And it was just such a different experience. I did that race, recovered from it. And when I went back to start training for flat, fast stuff, not only did I notice like my mind was back and I was excited to do those type of workouts again and that type of training again, I was actually stronger because I was running up and down steep mountain stuff versus just running on the flats all the time. So like my efficiency, like the first thing I noticed is like, okay, my pace returned like that leg turnover and the pace that I was hitting at, like my high end of zone two came back really quick, but I was able to tolerate a lot more of it. So going into that next training block. I was hitting markers way earlier than I normally would, in training. And then I went to a race in Milwaukee at the Pettit Center. as a training race. Was the goal for that race originally because Spartan Allen was going to be my goal race for the second half of the year, and I was getting fit fast enough where I was like, you know what? I'm just going to, like, see what happens on that day. And I ended up breaking the world record there where it wasn't even, like supposed to be the race. I was going to try to do that at. So, I mean, like, there's I think there's also just like you're talking about two is just like there's like this mental psychological piece to the puzzle where you kind of have to give yourself a break. And this is where I give like a pro marathoner, so much credit is like once they kind of get into that pro marathon, I mean, ultrarunning maybe will change this now that there is a professional side of it. But like you've kind of hit the end road of what you can transition towards. So now it's like you see these like Sarah Hall's of the world who are just like still show this like incredible passion for it, but like it's just rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And it's like, I haven't been able to do that with the flat 100 mile stuff. It's been something where, you know, I have to take a break from it and just dive into the trails for a while or do something different and kind of get that reset and refresh everything. Yeah, no, I, I. That makes so much sense. It's a little bit how I kind of felt coming off of her. I was excited to do something different, like faster, faster. You know, a 13 minute mile is not the best mile ever. so I feel that too. I actually am at the end of my season right now and it's a little bit up in the air. And this sounds really funny to say, but the three that I'm contemplating are Kodiak, Javelina and Doy Anthon. And they're three completely different races. And it's basically because after Utmb, I don't know if I'm like, yeah, I kind of want to go right back into like super technical jungle stuff, okay, go to Thailand. I kind of want to be in between, like high altitude, but it's desert running, you know, go to Kodiak or I want to do something completely different and go to Javelina. And I think that what is really fun, as we were somewhat talking about before, is that there, we're so lucky that there is so much variability in the sport of what we can choose to do, and they can translate so well together because. Is Cavallino completely different from Thailand? Absolutely it is. But that doesn't mean that you can't be successful at both. I mean, one of my good friends is, Jeff Mokgoro, and he went from training for Utmb and then second at Javelina and running a sub 12. And it's like sub 13. Sorry. and he had an incredibly short window. I think, you know, it's like eight weeks or ten weeks to do that. And it's so cool to see that they do translate very well. Exactly. As you were saying, that mountain strength translates to the flat. The flat translates to being able to because every mountain race has flat, fast running. Like there's always that component. Maybe the only one is Yuri and Jean are the only two that do not have a lot of components of being able to move in between the mountains. So it is very fun to, I think, have that range and to explore that, as I was just saying that I've given up on all that fast. I'll be back for sure. Well, I hope you do have a Lena. I love that event. I think it's so much fun. And, but obviously do whatever you 're calling you at the time. But, Yeah, that's a, that's a javelin is also a good one if you're kind of maybe flat, fast averse because there's the heat component to it. it still is a trail. So yeah, you're running pretty much all of it. But you do kind of have that, that, that setup where it's like, okay, there's a variable in here that's not optimized, that's going to add a little bit of flavor and maybe takes a little bit of the juice out of the legs of the folks that are just real, like historic like they're traditionally are built on speed, fast running stuff. So, yeah, yeah, javelin is a great one. So. I'm voting for that. One of those exact reasons is that it's heat. I love heat. I don't know why. I've just. I love being hot. I really seem to gravitate towards that. The looped course is also a five loop race. I like that where, you know, it's hats off to you with the track, but, it's kind of that in between. I love seeing the crew. It seems like it has a great atmosphere and there is enough to break it up where it is. Yes. It's like you're running the whole time or like pretty much. But it's not just straight, flat running. Yeah. I mean I don't know, it piqued my curiosity. So we'll see how it translates. But I got to get there at some point for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Not if not this year then down the road for sure. I think that would be a fun one. I think everyone should try Javelina sometime. Yeah. I did want to kind of transition into, kind of nutrition and stuff like that. I think this is just a topic that a lot of what we've talked about already is something that's really grown within the sport in terms of just like, you know, what do we do to optimize? I mean, we've known in other sports, obviously nutrition is a big component. We know it's got to be a big component for ultra running as well. And then it's just been like, well, what does that mean for our sport versus what we maybe have better research on and things like that? So, yeah. Do you do, do you have any kind of specific nutritional approach that you like to use? kind of in your day to day nutrition? and then once we kind of cover some of that, maybe we'll dive into just kind of how you structure your race and training nutrition stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started working with Meredith Terranova, through CTS. So I now have a nutritionist. I've had off and on working with nutritionists throughout the years. And to be honest, I haven't really from my own personal side and just like, haven't really had one that's stuck in a way that has been as impactful as, as probably I put the effort in to make it. and so this year I was kind of looking at giving like we're always looking at how to tinker with performance. And I went, you know, nutrition has really been a point of struggle for me, with the ulcerative colitis. So I had my colon removed when I was 14. So it's really big. Unknown piece like there's. I think actually, Meredith found one other ultrarunner who does not have a colon, who was very or is very successful. I think he was more like in the 15 or so time frame. and so we're now in N of two, but it was very hard to find not only a nutritionist who is ultra marathon focused, but one who has a willingness or like some knowledge of also not having a major organ. So it's, it's been nutrition has been my Kryptonite. It's really been a part of my running. If you look at the past and you see a lot of variability in results and such. It really came down to nutrition because my default was, well, if I feel this sick all the time, I'm just not going to eat. And living off of the hopes and dreams of my ultrarunning, not of actual nutritional, plans. So luckily, with her help and with, I think, just an openness. Food has caused a lot of stress in my life because it automatically, or it has in many ways caused me pain. I mean, physical pain. And so I tend to live very much in boxes of food. I'm very I will eat the same thing every day, all the time. and I'm very happy with that because it doesn't. It makes me feel okay. Whereas when I experiment, it can often lead to a lot of discomfort. and so I think for a long period with my nutrition I kept trying to do the same thing with hoping for a different result, and it was the same outcome. And so I finally started, I think there were enough options. And also just the evolution of the sports nutrition industry has been really amazing to see that all of a sudden there were more options for me to try, and I was able to shift my mindset, probably starting, I think it was right around. Moab, or a little bit before that, where I was able to try different gels, where I was like, oh, and this works in like, you know, all these things that I kind of been afraid of for a long time. so that made a huge impact on my racing of just, oh, yeah, I can get calories in every 30, 35 minutes, not hours. And also being able to drink calories as well. for the day to day, I mean, just what Meredith and I have done also in the last year. I'm a pescatarian. Also, I just don't really eat that much fish, even if I do. But she was like, hey, your protein is super low. also living in a van makes meal prepping, etc. you know, just space is a lot more limited. So, she has me tracking protein, which I have had a lot of aversion to tracking foods. It's not my favorite thing, but for some reason, just tracking protein has helped a lot. She also has me track what I do in actuality, like my longer runs, my harder efforts. so that is another piece that we're really working on. So there have been a few changes. And then, I really struggled with my stomach during Utmb. It's funny now. Utmb was such an incredible race, but there are so many things that did not go that well. Looking back at it, I'm like, okay, we need to tinker with some things. One of which was, I think I visited every porta potty or viable bush on my way around the mountain last year. So we're really trying to reduce that. And a couple of the pieces that I am playing with, are salt intake. So because of the lack of colon I've actually had, I had a sweat test done a couple of weeks ago, and it showed up only in the six hundreds, which is quite low, and not what we were observing from actually, like Meredith and I have been playing with, I add electrolytes to the drink mix that I use. and we're finding that it worked really well. So that supplementation and we couldn't kind of figure out where that 600 number came from because we're like, okay, it seems as though when I'm shooting for 900 to 1000, that goes really well. And when I don't have that thing start going like my stomach really turns on me. so we figured it out by talking to my fellow and now neither of us. I am probably in the 600 range I don't actually absorb. I have to take in 900 to 1000 to absorb that 600 because of the lack of colon. So I'm expensive and inefficient, but we have figured out that that is one of the needs. And when my electrolytes are off, my stomach goes like that and I can very well see every situation where that has been true and been like, yeah, that makes total sense. The other piece that I've been playing with is the, using curtains, which is, blackcurrant supplement. I kind of was testing it last year to see, like, you know, I think with any addition or subtraction to your routine, you have to like it, we're playing with so many variables, it's. I wanted to see, like, okay, let's be on it. Let's be off of it. and so actually during the injury, I started taking it during my runs. So I would take two capsules every four hours. And that along I always take Imodium, during my runs and during my racing every 2 to 4 hours. And I found that my stomach hurt. Was it absolutely perfect? No, it wasn't, but it was a whole lot better than, And so, with the currents that it's really helpful for GI distress. And so I think that along with kind of the, the pieces that I've been playing with, the electrolytes, etc., that has really helped with, actually in race nutrition. So I plan to continue that. I've been using it during my training, and so far it seems to really be helping with one of the biggest pieces of my, let's say puzzle solving. Yeah. Well, that's all really interesting stuff I've got, I've got some follow up questions. I think it's like because you're, I mean you're, you're, you're, you're very unique obviously in this, in this regard. And but who knows, maybe someone's listening to this who's got a similar I mean, I'm sure someone listening to this has probably got some sort of colitis. Maybe not the same, the same degree, but, are dealing with, like, digestive issues and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean, I started using currants this year just as I started looking at the research, it was like, okay, this is convincing enough to me that I'm going to start kind of applying it. I was looking at it more from like the, like the blood flow side of things, because I think that probably there's going to be a lot of things downstream from that on the recovery side of stuff. What kind of a side note? The first thing I actually noticed was like, my fingernails started growing twice as fast as they did before. And I said, that's so funny you say that because I climb quite a bit, and I've been annoyed by how fast they've grown. I never put that together. Yeah. And it was, it was one of those things where like, I'm not I wasn't I'm not that observant to my fingernails that I would be like that I would notice like a subtle difference. But it was like twice as fast where I would clip them and then I'd be like at the computer, typing them like, what is like I just clipped these like three days ago. So like, I, I suspect that's probably just like maybe the improved blood flow is just creating an environment in which, like your fingernails are just growing a little bit longer. But, but yeah, I was curious, like I thought about that because when you mentioned for digestion, I wonder if that's a blood flow thing as well where you're getting better, like blood flow to your digestive tract, and that's helping with it, and allowing you to maybe take in more calories or more fluid and things like that. Yeah, I think that is definitely the case. I think it's also something I had taken. Currents before, but I'd only taken it at the start of the race and then it's going to wear off. I mean, I can almost always get through four. I'm like perfect for 54 ish hours. Five ish hours. I'm totally fine. But it's when you start pushing into the longer distances where I start having to go to the bathroom a lot, like things start to fall apart. And so by topping it up and keeping that blood flow, that circulation going, I do think that that made a difference. It hurts. I am excited to try it again during Le Burrito. And the other nice thing about it and I do I do feel recovery wise where and again, it's, it's so hard when we have so many variables as we talked about ultrarunning where it's like, is it that is it that like, yeah, you know, the basics are like sleeping and eating enough and like if you don't do those two, you're gonna be in a rough spot. But I do find that I'm a little bit less sore. There's times where I'm like, I'm going to be trashed from that. And I'm like, huh, that wasn't that bad. So I think that that, definitely is a piece of it. But also there's not really any downside. It's legal. It's easy to do. It's like, you know, if this if I'm feeling these effects and it maybe it's these other things, maybe it's this, I'm going to keep doing that because I like what's happening. There are no downsides to it. Let's keep trying it. Yeah. And well then given your scenario to like, you're going to just be incentivized to both optimize as best you can nutrition because like a mistake is just way more consequential to you. Whereas like, you know, for me if I make a mistake nutritionally, it's kind of like I mean, during a race, obviously that's problematic. But like in my day to day, like I'm not going to have crippling pain from it. I might just have a, like a bruised ego in the sense that I wasn't disciplined enough to stick to the plan. But like, you know, for you, you've probably got the nutrition stuff pretty optimized because you have to or you experience a lot more, negative. So then you kind of start looking at where are the, you know, optimizing sleep, optimizing recovery, nutrition and proper training inputs, the big levers, the big rocks. Then it's like, well, where are the smaller ones that I can pull to kind of help continue to move things in a, in a, in a, in more of a positive direction. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's really easy with those smaller levers. Are less consequential to everyday wear. Yeah. It's just there's not as much risk because I do think there's certain levers that we can pull where it's like, yeah, that's a lot of risk. You know, let's do four days of speed in a row. Like yeah, that's a pretty high risk versus yeah, taking a supplement that like yeah, it seems like it works pretty well. I'm gonna take that risk any day. And that's not to say like I was gonna say. That's not to say every supplement is like that. Do your homework of making sure that that supplement is within the, you know, the, the, guidelines that it's not on any banned list or anything like that cross-contamination, you know, please do your homework on all of that. but we do know in this situation that's all copacetic. So yeah, caveat that don't just go through with supplements out there. Yeah. Well I mean that. Yeah I mean I mean the supplement world is just kind of this weird spot to where, I mean, it's like a lot of topics nowadays where it gets kind of polarizing, where you'll get people who are just just trying to sell your supplements. And then there's people who are going to tell you, like, well, supplements don't work at all. Like buying, even bothering, just eating good foods and things like that. And it's like. If the answer's in the middle somewhere there. Right? It's like, do you need to be taking all the supplements? Every supplement? Probably not. But is there going to be a way you can optimize your lifestyle based on the specifics to you with certain supplements? Yeah, I think so. I think that's likely the case. And then when you get to a, you know, someone like yourself who's competing professionally, it just becomes even more kind of tricky, where I always laugh at the king of the outsider joke with like, oh, you run so much, exercise so much, you must be able to eat whatever you want. It's like, I mean, I can eat a lot of calories. That's true. But to some degree, when I'm in peak training, I have to be more mindful of where those calories are coming from, because I'm asking a lot of my body. So it's like, yeah, if you're looking at it purely through the lens of energy, then yeah, I can eat more than I would if I were not training for ultramarathons. But, I'm not really probably going to benefit from just mainlining Snickers bars to do that either. So. Yeah. I mean, that is I think about that quite frequently. Say you're going out to a restaurant or something and, and I think and I don't like it, I don't love the judgment that often comes around food. Unfortunately it seems like it's in many ways just culturally part of things. But it's like, yeah, I'm probably going to pick what to someone else looks like the quote unquote healthy option because I'm like, yes, it has the carbs, protein, and fat that I need to fuel the next exercise. And fortunately for me, fried food and grease and a lot of oil just messes me up. Whether I was an ultra marathon runner or not, it's just with my stomach, issues like that's going to make me feel bad. And thus my performance tomorrow and also just my daily life isn't going to feel as good. So I am going to lean towards that option. Not because I'm trying to be holier than thou or anything like that, it's just that fuels me to be my best. And that often, I think is a little bit of a misconception where it's like, oh, you can just eat anything. It's like, well. Anyone's going to feel really bad if you crush, you know, a Costco sized pizza. Like, that's probably. It doesn't matter if you run 30 miles the next day. yeah. You're probably just. Your stomach might hurt. My stomach would hurt. Regardless, I still have to digest it. Yeah. Yeah. And to some degree, it's like. Well, like we're small people relative to our energy intake. We still have the digestive tract of a small person. So it's like. It's like we're not necessarily, you know, which creates all sorts of different, like, you know, scenarios between like, off season and on season and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, you actually have to process that and, and make use of it too. And yeah, just throwing anything down doesn't necessarily make you feel good, regardless of whether you have all sorts of colitis or not. But, yeah, I was, I was going to ask you to like, is it difficult traveling for the international races like Utmb with that, or do you have a protocol that you're like, okay, this is what I'm going to do to make sure that I don't find myself. I mean, this is a problem. Like, you hear, I've had food poisoning before, traveling and, you know, just eating food that maybe I shouldn't have before a race and stuff like that. And I don't have ulcerative colitis. So do you have to, like, be really mindful of kind of a protocol while you're out there doing the international stuff? Yeah, I would say that. I'm pretty cautious. Like I'm going to go to a grocery store, probably over going to most restaurants before races, or I'm very careful about what I'm ordering or I'm a bit paranoid about it. On the plus side, living in Italy for a couple of years, I feel quite comfortable in the European food scene. Like that is not new to me. Luckily, I will say, when I was in Madeira last year, I was very conservative. I'm not sure I even went to a restaurant until afterwards because I was kind of concerned. So yeah, I would say I'm pretty bland and neutral about food before a race, and that's okay. I can, you know, have to go to a restaurant afterwards, but I'm not going to risk anything. Yeah. Before the race. So pretty, pretty conservative on that. I am lucky though. I just kind of know how to navigate the European scene a little bit more, just from having lived over there for a couple of years. Yeah, I got some good experience with the interface stuff. So like when you started kind of solving that, was it finding the right product or, or I guess there's just two questions here. It's like, have you found the right product that works well for your stomach? And then did that allow you to eat more or was it something because there's kind of like a type and a quantity piece to the equation when it comes to ultrarunning fueling? So I just love to hear kind of more about how you sort of solve that to some degree. Yeah, I'll be honest, I think. The Opener to all of it was spring energy. That really was something I found that I could tolerate pretty well. When I was starting to be more open to gels. I think I always struggled a little bit with more of the more heavily processed gels, which now seems to be better. And there might not have been a problem really at all before. It was just like maybe I think I maybe had a couple of bad experiences. I found that for a long time, two sports products were so sweet that the sweets really struggled a lot. Just sugar. It really set my stomach off. And so I think that I kept kind of trying to hammer the more traditional, like, really sugary things, and that just didn't work for me. And then when spring started coming out, I was like, oh, wow, this fruit base like this really tastes good. It's a bit more natural. it's like the more sugar from the actual fruit, etc. versus just, like, pounding. The simpler sugars. And so that I feel like it was the gateway for me to start being like, yeah, I can take it. I mean, I would try to eat something maybe every hour, maybe. I mean, the last 30 miles of the first time I did hurt were fueled off of I'm saying sugar was yeah, I was like Coca-Cola and tailwind and just it's just way too much. and so spring really helped that I got to the point where I was like, oh, I can take in a gel every 40 to 45 minutes. This is insane. I've never been able to do that. and so I would take it. A spring every 45 minutes. And that was it. Like that. I can feel 100 miles, a very long distance. Just gels. I'm very happy doing that. and so that was kind of the start. And then everything kind of happened with spring, when they changed their formula to, now the awesome sauce is quite a bit heavier in the fat. That really didn't work for me as well. I did struggle with that. So, now for a little while, kind of when that was all happening, I was like, you know, I'm just going to experiment with a bunch of different gels. And I found that, wow, actually, I can handle more variety of gels than I anticipated. It was actually San Diego 100. Everything kind of broke a week before the San Diego 100 that I did last year. And I was like, cool. Well, I'm just going to go to the store and go shopping and grab a bunch of gels in. Throw a little hope into the universe. This is what it is. Because I noticed that my eye was really struggling with energy levels. with the way that because I was feeling just off of spring, and I tend to think that something did change a bit from when I started back in maybe 21, 22 to 24. well, at the beginning of 24, because I did Dragon's Back, literally just off of spring. And I can tell you now, I did not have enough energy, which I should have been taking more, but like that, it should have been okay. and so now I look back at a few performances as being like, yeah, I was not getting enough fuel off of, just feeling off of spring. And so with San Diego, it was kind of the first time where I was able, I had progressively been able to move from 45 minutes to 40 to 35. And now I think I'm on for about 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes I can get a gel in. And then I also supplement with a drink mix, high carb drink mix, which is really useful. and so now, I run for NAC, and they just came out with the boost line. That seems to sit quite well with me. and so, yeah, I'm kind of at the place where I can use a higher variety of gels. and I do not seem to struggle as much with the dips and energy levels and also my stomach, as long as I get the electrolytes right, seems to be pretty good, with handling that. And to be honest, I like it very much. After. I think spring kind of pushed me into being very open to gels. I don't need gels to taste great like that kind of, you know, precisions. Really good. Like the next boost lines are kind of similar. The Martin that whole thing, that kind of high, high carb, subtly tasting thing that's just not offensive. I'll do that all day. I have no problem with that. So yeah, and I think also a bigger shift that I had to make in the way that I thought about feeling for an ultra is I think we some people are able to use food as a motivator, as like when I get to this aid station, I've got a hot cookie waiting for me, or like a muffin or, you know, a quesadilla or something. And I'm just I'm not. That has never worked for me. I really don't eat real food. I'm the. Oh, sorry. biggest disappointment, biggest disappointment to most aid stations because I will not really eat any station food. I'm only eating my own food. And so I just think of food as a part of my race plan. I'm not trying to gain emotional energy or swing or positives or negatives. It is just the fuel that keeps me able to do my job and to do what I want to do. and so I really took a lot of the emotional attachment to food out of it. And that helps a lot. It's just like, yeah, I eat something. I eat a gel every 30 minutes. I don't really care what gel it is. It goes down, I keep going, I have enough fuel to run. And I think that that shift from feeling like, oh, it's this reward, it's this fun thing. It's this thing to look forward to, which helped me to just compartmentalize what I needed to accomplish by eating that. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And so you're bringing some of your own food too. Are there some solid foods that you're able to eat during these longer races? Or are you just basically doing all gels and sports drinks under miles will be all gels and sports drinks. I'm very comfortable and happy, in that realm. I have not done a 200 miler in a little bit. It might happen again in the next year or two. We'll see. that I will. It sounds kind of miserable to just feel awful jealousy. So I probably will try to incorporate some more solid foods into it if I go past $100, but at this point, I don't really. I'm perfectly happy feeling off of gels and sports drinks for 100 miles, so I'm probably not going to change anything about that at this point. So when you did Moab, that was prior to you kind of figuring out your nutrition. So were you just barely fueling during that whole thing. Yeah. Well Moab. Yes. Moab was when I just started discovering spring. So I did have some spring on me. And I did fuel a lot off of spring, but I was just truly nauseous and miserable for my stomach. I had a great I mean, it was amazing, but from a nutritional standpoint, pretty miserable the entire race. And I would come into these amazing aid stations. They've got all this food. My Pacers were sick. This is awesome. Yeah. Jason Diaz and Ramon. And they'd be like, okay, Alyssa, you need to eat slowly and just be like, just I hate everything. I don't I don't want to eat any of it. I'll just keep eating gels. There was one section in particular. We were going up Shay Mountain. You know, one of the bigger climbs. And, the only thing that I was really getting down was candy. And. But of course, it's like you're on a big climb. You eat a small piece of candy cause I think they're like Halloween size. And then you sugar crash 15 minutes later. And so I kept doing that, and my pacer was like, Alyssa, you cannot keep eating candy. This is not sustainable. So he forced a couple of gels like he was like, you have to eat this. I will not let you eat any more candy. And I was like, but I just want the candy. So it was me. Now I'm like, I should probably just go ahead. As you say, only ultra running is taking in the gel, the vegetable that you have to eat before the dessert. Which is the candy? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. But no, I would love to. I feel like I have. Things have changed pretty significantly since Moab and it would be really fun. Yeah. I wasn't going to put any two hundreds on my radar for a little bit. And now I'm kind of feeling some pull a little bit. So I'm excited to try a few different things and just see if the evolution of my nutrition will allow me to have a little bit more fun in that regard, because I think you do. You do? It sounds like it's a big improvement. Yeah, you do have to eat solid foods in 200 like that. You're. I think your mouth would just get destroyed if you were just eating. Sports nutrition. Yeah. No, it seems like a long way to go. Just the sports products. But, I mean, I'm kind of like you. Where? I mean, I haven't done anything long enough to really know what I would do, honestly. But I know I would plan for some solid foods because like 100 milers, especially the shorter ones where it's like, you know, controlled, where I'm finishing a little quicker, I can do those on just all like fluids and. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's doable. But yeah, when you're talking about a second day or a third day, it's like, yeah, I would think your performance, if you can find something to just add some variety in there would probably benefit from it. Well, I mean, like it's just amazing that you've done what you've done, with that with, kind of just now being able to figure out a solution for, for your ulcerative colitis in terms of just like, you know, my mind goes to like, how much faster could she get at that if she had I mean, I I'm sure you're supposed to I'm only 31, so I, I, I jokingly say that I, I always thought I would spend my 20s trying to figure a lot of things out and then hopefully be a little bit smarter and maybe keep getting a little bit faster in my 30s. And so far, let's hope that keeps trending in the positive direction. But yeah, it, it's when I think back on some of the things that I've run and some of the things I've done, I was just like, wow, that was not. That was I mean, truly feeling on hopes and dreams and not on anything of substance. And so it is exciting. I mean, even just thinking about how much I messed up my nutrition at the start of Utmb last year and being like, wow, I definitely dropped 30 plus minutes just using the bathroom. during Utmb, be like, there's 30 minutes. That's top ten like that. Yeah. So I am really excited to. And of course, you know, you figure one part out, something else comes up. So I'm very realistic and like, you know there's always going to be something. But it is exciting to feel like maybe we're getting this more under control. Yeah. Yeah. No it makes sense to and it's like it's something where it's really like it's independent of your fitness to. So it's like and to some degree it's like you hate to see that be like a limiter. But on the other side of things it's like, oh, I don't actually have to do really anything. Like you don't have to spend an extra three hours a week doing some new training mode in order to get that improvement. It's just like, okay, I if I can replicate this nutrition strategy that's worked that I've discovered to work, well, maybe that unlocks, you know, 30 minutes from not having to stop and maybe another 30 minutes of just being better fueled and able to run a little faster at the end of the race or things like that. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I definitely have many moments where I look at it, and it's so interesting when you're in the race trying to identify like, oh, I'm low energy right now or like that's it's really hard to be self-reflective when you're in the race, but then when you look at performances afterwards, you're like, oh yeah, I was just out of calories. That's why I felt so bad, which is the most basic thing I feel like to say in ultras. But I look at so many parts where I'm like, oh yeah, I slowed way down because I just didn't have energy and that's that. That is something we can fix and is exciting, oh, look, I mean, I would say probably, during her until. Jesus, dude, sorry. until seven. Sorry. We welcome cats and dogs on the podcast. Okay. Perfect. Well, this is Dwight, and he very much is trying to be a part of this. Yes, I know, he's a van cat. Michael, his brother from the office, is still sleeping. He tries to get less involved in the podcast. I know you're bored. so, what I was saying is that I. I would say hurt came a lot closer to figuring a lot of things out this year. up until mile seven, where just everything kind of came up. But that's okay. It wasn't the worst. And it's exciting to be like, okay, cool. That was a pretty solid performance. Like, okay, we're figuring some things out. Let's keep going in this direction. Yeah. That's awesome. So do you, do you track or have data on like previously and currently. Like how I understand spring probably made this a little trickier to calculate in the past. But like it is, you are trying to hit a certain number of grams of carbohydrates per hour now compared to what you're getting before. So. Or is it a little more, kind of ebb and flow throughout the course of the race? Yeah. You know, I would say that I am probably not a super high carb person. I am definitely not in the hundreds or so range by any means. I would actually be curious how many women there are, I would guess not a ton. I would say I'm happy in the 70s to 80s at most. I think when I start getting beyond that, it's really hard for my stomach to digest. And actually, I think what led to hurt, Going a little bit sideways in the last seven or so miles is because I was trying to up the carbs. I went from half. I basically like half the amount of carb drink mix to a full amount, and it was because I was like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, try to as you're, you know, losing energy. You're obviously losing as you're going through the race. I'm going to try to keep topping this up. And I think I just overdid it a little bit. So I would say probably my happiest is 70 to 80. between drink mix and then the gels which I'll take I'm that's not the worst number for sure. Yeah. No, not at all. And I think, I mean, I think like we get into the speculative world when we go up into the 100 gram and beyond, even for, you know, some of the top men. Because like when you just look at just, well, what are your carb and fat oxidation rates at the intensities we're able to sustain for 100 miles. And it's like, you know, once you're up to 100 and beyond, you're, you're you're accounting for the carbohydrate side in most cases. So like, yeah, I would think that if you just look at workload per hour and intensity, if you're at, you know, those 60, 70, 80g, you're probably easily covering your bases in most of these events. Like it's actually interesting. Like maybe if you go shorter, like a 50 K or 100 K, but then you also have less total energy demands over the course of it too. So even though you might need more per hour if it was sustained for longer, eventually you get to the finish line a little quicker. And, you can rely a little bit on endogenous liver or muscle glycogen too. So, but yeah, it's an interesting math equation we've got going on now with, with ultra running on the fueling side. It is I mean, I truly. To, I guess, show where I was. I'm always happy to. Have anything go like to go from kind of, wow, this is just absolute trash to like, well, I'm getting, you know, maybe 60g like amazing. So I'm always happy when, yeah, I can kind of hit those numbers and, yeah, it's definitely made a big difference. It just makes racing more fun where you can push the whole time versus just having these huge lulls where you're just trying to survive. Yeah. And to answer your question, you said before too, like there was some data that came out of Western states last year where I can't remember who did this. I think I actually recorded a podcast on it, and with Joe Corsi on, on, on this podcast where we talked about this and we listed the numbers that were reported, but they had I think all the is like almost all, if not all the top ten men and then like a good chunk of the top ten women. just reporting on what they had. And, you know, some people were a little more precise with their, you know, their, their protocol and others were a little more kind of like, I kind of got this in and then I threw in some potato chips, you know, that sort of thing. But it was kind of across the board. I mean, there was a decent range in general, but it was higher on the men's side than the women's side. So I think like the numbers that you suggested you're getting in seemed like it was probably kind of right around what most of those women were reporting. gosh, now, now I got to go back and look and see what they actually were because. But yeah, I'm pretty pretty sure that what you were I think the lowest was maybe 60 or slightly under 60, for one of the women in the top ten. But, you're probably right in that kind of general, general amount of what they were doing. Yeah. And that's why I am so, such a proponent of. Testing and individualizing because I think we can get really and I feel like you are as well, where it's very easy to get on the bandwagon of more carbohydrates, more salt, all of the things. And it's like, I love that people are thinking about this, like, absolutely, take that, take that excitement. But remember that you are an individual. You are. Everything you do is based upon your system, not anyone else's. So it's so important to recognize that just because one person can take 90-100g does not mean that you should. And if you're feeling bad, that's probably a reflection of that. You know, just being really I think what's wonderful is that we are establishing the tools to be able to figure this out, like the sweat testing, sweat loss rate and all of that. but we have to follow through on it. We have to actually do it and not just, kind of take other people's numbers and apply them to ourselves. No, I think that's very well said. So awesome. Well Alyssa I don't want to take up too much more of your time. You've been very generous with all the information and, and time. But before I let you go I want to let you give, give the listeners a bit of an insight in terms of where they can find you on social media, online, kind of what you're up to or anything else you'd like to share with them. Thank you. Yeah, I'm on Instagram as Theory in Motion. That's mostly because I'm not in the TikTok direction. I don't know if I can handle another social media platform. So yeah, Instagram. I try to stay relatively active on that. And then I started a Substack, which is theorizing in motion. So kind of try to keep that lane going. and also, I love writing, just trying to be pretty like just, just, lean into that side of things more. and then I work for Apple Athlete. I'm the host and producer of the Uphill Athlete podcast, which we should have you on. It would be great to have you on as a guest. So yeah, you can hear my voice more on the Uphill Athlete podcast if you would like, but yeah, Zach, thank you so much for this. It's really fun to chat with you. She ate it. Yeah. No, it's a great, great podcast you guys got going on over there. It's so fun to see all the different media and educational resources that people have available and, you know, yours being one of them for sure. So yeah, I appreciate the time. And, I'll make sure I put all that stuff in the show notes so listeners can link to it if they want to. Go check out what you're up to.Project 6 I did want to talk to you a bit before we kind of dive into the big news, the new news, the with the world record news is, you know, you're not just out there running all the time. You are actually, if I'm not mistaken, I'm a middle school special education teacher and coach. That's correct. Yes. I coach high school, and then I teach at the middle school level. Awesome. Yeah, that caught my eye. I was a teacher a long time ago at this point, but I did seventh grade special ed for two years, and then I did high school. I was dual certified. So when I moved into the high school age group, they kind of had me doing both. I had like a caseload of I think it was like 15 students and then did some kind of regular ed classes as well. So it was an exciting, exciting day for sure. Oh yeah. There's never a dull moment. And we're so good, as I'm sure you know, from your experience, just adapting, like being spontaneous and just taking things as they come. Yeah. It was kind of funny because like when I went to school and decided I wanted to teach, I went in with the idea that I probably wanted to teach either middle school or high school. And my first thought was history and broad field social studies. So I got all the history and social studies certifications like the econ, the poli sci, this psychology, all that stuff. Then I taught, but I graduated mid-year, so I didn't really have a good opportunity to get a job at that point. So I just started doing long term subbing. And one thing I learned right away with that is like the jobs that you could get basically every day were oftentimes in the special ed room. So I would just take anything that was open and I was like, after probably about a month of it, I was like, I think I'd actually want to teach special ed because it's just like a lot of times, small group, you can really make an impact on the students because you're working. You're not just like, okay, I got 45 minutes to touch base with 25 kids, and then there's another group of 25. And then at the end of the day, you've done like minimal inputs, probably for over 100 students versus, okay, I, I was with this student for a good chunk of the day and I could actually see that progress, see that growth and stuff like that. So it was really exciting to kind of get that experience. So then I went back to school, got the special ed license, and then I was dual certified, which pretty much gave me access to almost any district in the state. Heads of dual certification. That's wonderful. Yeah, and it is. It is nice that you really get to know your kids so well. because I am in fourth through eighth grade. So I'll have, like, my eighth graders I've had for five years. I know them, I know, I know them, I know their families. I know their cats and dogs. You learn every little aspect of their life. and so it's nice you get to know them on a deeper level than you do. when you are cycling through, like you said, 25 students at a time for an hour. Yeah. Yeah, it's an exciting, exciting world. I definitely miss teaching. It was kind of one of those things where when I stepped away, I was like, oh, I've got like a couple really good options here, and I know that I'm going to miss whichever one I don't do. And going after the running stuff felt like a shorter term opportunity. So I talked to the principal and was like, hey, I've got this opportunity. And she was like, just chase it. You can always come back. And I did, and I haven't gone back yet. But I always do think about how much fun it was teaching and, that, that that world is a lot of excitement. So, I did want to ask you, I think I asked some people that follow me on social media after I was just posting a lot while you were doing the record, because it was just so exciting to watch you, because just the way you raised it, it was just like it was kind of like it was that 600 number was just like there the whole time. And there wasn't really any indication that you were going to slip. And it was just like, you're just waiting. We're just like waiting. And like, I would check in every few hours and be like, okay, still they're still they're still there. And. So I so I was. I had a lot of people that were following me. Some that probably were loosely even aware of six day stuff and are just into sports and fitness and things like that. So like I, I asked him, I'm like, well, what kind of questions should I ask? Ask Meg when she comes on the podcast. So they sent me a whole bunch of stuff, and one of them that stuck out to me because I remember very, very clearly how this went for me was just training, like during the school year, because it's like one of those things where you do have time in the summer. I'm not sure what it is, maybe you are more involved than I was, but in the summer I had basically 12 weeks where I could live like a professional athlete. but when I got to the school year, part of it, you know, you're on, then there's like, not a lot of wiggle room. It's like, you get up, I would run, I would go to school. Sometimes I would run again or coach, and then you basically go to bed and you do it all over again. So how does one prepare for a six day world record while teaching full time? So I definitely have the same summer schedule you're describing where it's like, you have that nice. I think it's nine weeks off now. They keep kind of shortening it. but it's about nine weeks where you get to live like a professional athlete, and I, I live out of my Jeep and I travel around the US, and I show up at these races and crew for people and pace and do my own races that I can fit in the summer. But then you're right. When you get to the school, you're limited on time. and you still have to get the miles in. And I honestly think for me, that's actually been more beneficial to try to squeeze it all in than having all the time to train as a professional athlete. because I get up in the morning, I run to work, I run, commute to work, I do my seven and a half, eight hour workday. I try to squeeze in about an hour run before I go coach track or cross-country, whatever season it is. And then when I get done with them a couple hours later, I go out and I run until pretty much the sun sets. so I'm, I'm pulling. I mean, between running and work, I'm probably pulling 12 hours, 13 hours, days. So it is like you described where they are long days. It's a lot of time on my feet. It's a lot of, just mental, training to when sometimes in the morning, you know, you want to hit that snooze button and you're like, no, I'm. Or at least for me, I'm like, I don't feel like I start my day off right if I don't go in with a run. and actually post six days, I haven't been able to run/commute to work up until today because I had a real, tight knot in my right calf that I've been, or my right thigh that I've been trying to work out. So today was just a wonderful day because I got to run and commute in. so it's about finding that time. But it is very time consuming. Yeah. It was. I think I was talking to Joe just a long time ago when he set the men's American record for six days, just about the six day event. And I'm pretty sure it was him who told me this. He said, like, it's really not a question of if you're going to get an injury or something nagging from the experience itself. It's just, what is it going to be? So it has been that way. I mean, you've done you've done like a lot of long multi-day stuff now. So like, is that kind of the reality where you're going to have something kind of flare up a little bit that you have to sort of manage for at least a little bit afterwards? Usually, yes. Usually I bounce back quickly. So usually what I have is less than a week and I'm running again. this one's been a little bit more. More angry. but yeah, my experience has also been very much the same where in the six day stuff or in these longer distances, there are things that can pop up. There are things unexpectedly that can pop up, pop up in my first six days. On day two, I had an issue with my abductor and my right leg, where my leg was just giving out, and I would have to catch myself on the inside of the track because it felt like I was going to stumble and fall. I couldn't feel my foot for a second. It was the oddest. I've never had it happen since, but it was the oddest situation and it lasted. I don't know. Maybe 12 hours. And then it went away for the rest of the race. So there. Yeah, there's stuff unexpected that pops up that you just kind of deal with and hope that it's not major, I guess I wouldn't say always run through an injury, but at that point, I didn't feel like it was getting worse. It just was bad at the moment. Yeah. Like someone like yourself or anyone who's does well at these multi days, I imagine you just get really good at kind of knowing what things are a problem, but maybe not, like you said, severe enough where it's like if I keep hammering on this, I mean there's some guesswork I'm sure. But like you probably pretty tuned in where you kind of know, like, okay, I'm gonna have to deal with this, but it's not something that's going to make me quit this race or drop out or something like that. I most definitely, yeah. There's, there's a listening to your body component that a lot of coaches and a lot of athletes talk about all the time. It's much easier said than done. I will say, because some things are guesswork. Also, you're kind of hoping that it's not that bad, but, Yeah, yeah. How long is the commute to work when you do that? The shortest route I can take is about two and a half miles. I usually try to go a little bit longer. Okay. So you're getting. Yeah. That's the other thing that I was always trying to decide what was the best setup I had. I actually had a roommate at the time who was one of my college, cross-country and track teammates. We ended up at the same school district and shared a house for a while. And, he would always be training for, like, marathons and sub ultra stuff. but he was putting in quite a bit of miles for that as well. And he would always do his training after school. He wouldn't run before school pretty much ever, from what I recall. And I would like, usually gravitate to getting up really early if I had to like 4 or 430 and just get a good chunk of the training in before the day, and there was a few times kind of usually in the spring when like the weather was maybe a little bit nicer because I was in Wisconsin. So it was like we got quite a bit of variability where I would just start kind of moving things to the second or to after school and do more volume there. sounds like you maybe have like a little bit more of an even split or skew it towards afterwards. I definitely have more afterwards. I'm not a big morning runner. I really struggle in the morning. my morning runs, even can be challenging at times. I don't think about my body, I am a morning person. I don't think my body wakes up to the morning run as well. So I do find that if I'm going to have a harder run or a more challenging run, that feels a little bit more like more effort. It's going to be in the morning. So I do try to put in more mileage in the evening when I'm feeling better and it's just more of a natural rhythm for me to run in the evenings. Yeah, yeah. I always wondered about why, like, the body responds differently with that from one person to the next, because like I did track in cross-country in high school and college, and those were always like 3 p.m. or right around their practices. So you would think that I would have gravitated to that schedule afterwards. But for whatever reason, I always found myself at the start of the school year doing most of the stuff in the morning, and that would usually be the direction I'd go. But, if I would switch it to the afternoon primarily after a few weeks, I did start to like it, and I would tell myself, like, all right, this is the way I'm going to do it. Then summer would happen and I would go right back to the same formula. By the time school started. That's how I am about my morning runs. You know, we're about to hit summer here. I think I have about a week left. And, what's going to happen is, my morning runs will be later and later in the morning as, as summer starts, it'll, you know, maybe I'll get up at seven and then it'll be okay. Well, I'm, I'm still up at five, but I'm not going to run until nine. And eventually those become ten, 11 in the morning that I get out. Yeah. Closer. Do you. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. No. You're fine. I was just going to ask. Do you like it? Do you look a look at your training with enough foresight where you're like, all right, I'm going to do this type of training in the summer because I have a little more flexibility and then lean on that a little bit during the school year, when maybe you have a little more tight window to train. not at all. I'll say, in the summer I am lucky enough to get in the mountains more, but I don't think that's something that I really think about. It's more that I'm traveling. The mountains are right there, so of course I'm going to go running them. and of course, here in Santa Fe, I just have more time to go to the mountains. But it's nothing like, I'm gonna train up for a race. particularly in the summer, and focus on these skills. no, I and honestly, most of my training is not any foresight. I lace up my shoes and go out the door and decide where I want to go that day and how far I want to go. Yeah. And then do you sew or do you have days where you're like okay I feel good, I'm just going to run a little faster and try to get speed working. Or are you just logging in volume basically. Oh no. I do have days where I will go and I'll try to run a little faster because I'm feeling good. The body's responding, well, I won't do, I'm not one who will do speed work if the body is telling me, hey, no. Not today. but if I'm. If I'm on the run and I'm feeling good that day. Yeah, yeah, that'll become a speed work day real quick. It's not like you need to, Walter. Okay. Yeah. It sounds like you and Courtney to Walter had kind of a similar approach where it's like, hey, I'm gonna run a lot, but I'm just gonna. If I feel good, I'll run faster. If I don't, I'll run slower. And then, clearly there's a path for that, because both of you, I mean, you two, you can make an argument. You two are like, two of the best ultra runners in the world on the women's side of the sport. So, Yeah, I always have a laugh about it just because, like, the sport is, like, growing a lot. And we're seeing a lot more professionalization and, like, you know, philosophies about what's the right way to train or who's doing it right, who's doing it wrong, and all that sort of stuff that kind of gets into the weeds with it. But, we still see quite a wide range of stuff. And it's it's really hard to argue against an approach when, when someone like yourself goes and runs 603 miles in six days and it probably opens up the conversation around, like we're sort of trying to, like, identify a process and apply it to something that would be similar to us trying to apply a similar process to a bunch of different sports. When we get into kind of what it entails running, say, like a 50 miler in the mountains versus a six day on the track and things like that. Right. There's so many different components, I think, to ultrarunning. Right? There's different races, different trains, different styles that when we're actually training for an ultra run, it is very different for each one, like a marathon training, you know, you're training for a marathon. It's kind of like a block, right? There's a there's there's been it's been studied. There's a traditional block. And this is, this is kind of the best way to train for the X, Y and Z marathon. But when you're training for an ultra, there's so many different variables that you're looking at even within distances. If we're talking about 100 K or 100 miler, like, the conditions, the altitude, the terrain, the the weather, I mean, there's so many different aspects that go into training that, I think it makes it hard to find, more of a cookie cutter method when it comes to ultra running. It's so individual. yeah. Yeah. And I'd be curious too, because, like, where you live, you kind of have access to a lot of variety of terrain. It sounds like you do get out on the trails and the mountains and things like that. Do you find that that's helpful in terms of just kind of maintaining durability on the flatter stuff and just having some variety in there so you're not just kind of hammering the same thing over and over again. I think it is. I think it's beneficial, physically, but I think more so for me, it's beneficial mentally. the roads become very monotonous. I love mountain running. And so when I'm able to get the time to, like, get out on the trails, and climb up the mountains, get on the rocky terrain, stream crossings and so on. it's also kind of a, a heart day, you know, of running where I'm just. I'm just all in, like, it doesn't matter the pace. It doesn't matter. Like the speed. How quick I make it to the mountaintop. If I even make it to the mountaintop. It's just. It's just a day where I can just love every minute and not think of anything. Yeah, I definitely missed that about Phoenix when we lived there. We've been in Austin now for a little over three years. And there's good running in Austin too. But Phoenix had everything. Like if I wanted a flat Canal Path could run forever on that. Obviously there were tracks everywhere. And then there were all these mountain preserves in town that you could run out on the trails. And if you wanted to get on a bunch of mountainous stuff. You guys go a little bit out of town and or up to Flagstaff or something like that. So I can appreciate that. That whole process of just. Yeah, the physical aspect of having variability is good, I think. But then I always found if I would do, if I would target, say, a flat track 100 miler or just a flat 100 miler in general, for too long, I would start to kind of lose a little bit of that, like last edge that is most is required to kind of hit a PR when you've done it a few times already, or just to be motivated and excited to do it as much as you were the first time. And then I would usually just sign up for a trail race and spend some time doing that for a while, and then come back to it and be like, okay, now I'm ready to do this again. Yes, yes. And I agree entirely. Like it's beneficial to do both. When I get sick of the roads and I hop on the trails like I'm happy to be on the trails when I get. Not that I really get sick of the trails, but when I need something different, I need to feel fast, let's say. And I hop on the roads like I just, it's, it's fun to bounce back and forth. I really enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. Are you targeting a certain amount of volume you're trying to hit with your, with your training or is that a little more kind of. I'm guessing you just end up hitting probably a minimum. But do you think of it through that lens at all like I want to make sure I log x number of hours per week or anything like that. So through the years of training, I've kind of found my sweet spot. so anywhere from like 90 to 110 miles is kind of my sweet spot when I'm training up for a race. Anything more is usually not beneficial. I end up too fatigued, right, to train the following weeks. and anything less, I kind of feel sluggish. So, like, for me, I've kind of found my sweet spot, and I try to stay there. when I'm training for a race. If not, it's whatever. kind of wherever I fall that week. So yes, I guess I would say yes. Weekly mileage is something that I do consider. because my muscles, my tendons, my ligament, everything has to take that beating in order to withstand the duration or distance of the upcoming race. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting because there is, there's, there's, there's a, there's like a floor where you kind of, you don't really want to go below that and there's going to be some individuality here. But yeah like you said, you know you're out there for six days, you're out there for six days. And that's a lot of pounding. So if you can have that cumulative. 100 ish mile training weeks. That's probably what's going to keep that stuff durable and ready to kind of perform on it. But yeah, you don't want to cross over that too. There's that point where I think people have run long enough. They finally get to that point where they see a spot where like, okay, this spot is kind of where thin ice starts. And then beyond that, I'm just not doing myself any favors. I'm getting miserable. I'm getting injured. I'm getting fatigued, the quality is dropping. And then you just start to learn like, all right, it isn't necessarily better. Right, right. Exactly. And maybe that's also considering all those other aspects of life. Right. Like if I was a professional athlete doing this full time, maybe, maybe I could withhold like 120, 130 mile weeks, 140, but I'm not. I have other things that I do on a day to day basis and other responsibilities. And so if I, if I don't quite hit, you know, even 90, I'm not going to beat myself up over that, that's just life. you know, so I but but I do think these little aspects also that the, the rest of our lives, play a role in what we should be getting or what works best for the individual, on a weekly basis. Yeah. And you touched on this earlier too. And I definitely want to probe a little bit here because it's something I've been really interested in is there's the mental side of the sport. And when you get into the six day stuff with a multi-day stuff, it just seems like that's I mean, it's just a long time to be on and be focused. So there's that mental training of just knowing, like you can wrap your head around just being on point for 12, 13, 14 hours in a day. So you can't really train. You can't really do the activity that long on a regular basis, maybe in a week, but like to go out and just do like 14 hours of running and training. It's going to be counterproductive. So physically you get what you need in a couple hours in most cases. But how do you train the mind to be able to tolerate that longer stuff? And I always wonder about that with the professionalization of the sport too, is are we going to start seeing people looking for things or finding they're missing things when they don't have, like this block of obligation that kind of forces their mind to stay on and train their brain to be focused for longer periods of time and build up that sort of durability and robustness of just your mental focus side of things. You know, I think for me, as I had a personal goal, I always have a personal goal. It doesn't it doesn't matter what other people are doing at the race. It's what I want to come and bring to the table. and so that's my focus going in. and you can break any race down into smaller blocks, whether you're running a 50 K or running a six day. Like, you can break that race into smaller blocks that have many goals for yourself. whatever. Like for me, what my major goals for the six day race was to really have a strong day too, I blew by day two in my first six day race. I had poor mileage, a poor day, lots of sleep, lots of whining and complaining. And I said my big thing, like, my first goal of this race is to have a strong day so I know I can do day one. Let's focus on day two. And so all of those little goals along the way, they make a difference in maintaining that focus over the six days. Because if you can check one of those off as you're going along, it just empowers you even more. Yeah I always explain this to my coaching clients. It's like using the things you have in your life to your advantage. And the more intuitive it becomes the easier it's going to be able to do that without burning a bunch of mental bandwidth during the race. So like you know, we all get like projects and like to do lists essentially in life. And over time you start realizing if it's something that's larger, has multiple steps to it. You know what those steps are, but you don't start thinking about that last step when you're on the first one because, you know, you have to get the first step done first anyway, and we just get good at doing that. And if you can apply that to the race the same way, you're really leveraging something you've probably been practicing for years, if not decades. So I always kind of think like where, where can I, like, train my brain to help me do the things in the race that are going to be hard for me to actually practice in training to that same degree? Most definitely, yes. And having those little little things is important. Like those little goals along the way. Yeah. So going into the six days this time was 600 miles, a number you were considering, or was it something where you were like, hey, I'm going to just go for the world record here. we'll worry about anything else as it comes. Or was there a reason for you to believe that 600 was something that you were going to be able to achieve? So I got to tell you, the first six days I went into the dome, the very first six days, like not even a track runner has a track background. I think I ran on a track a handful of times before going to the dome, and I went into the dome and I'm like, I'm going to hit 600 miles. Like, I come in and I'm like, this is what I'm going for. This is exactly what I want. and I knew, like, I didn't go in thinking, you know, this is going to be easier. I'm going to get it on the first try or I. But I went on, this is my goal for six days. This is exactly what I want to do. I may not get it this time. But this is. This is what I'm working towards. and I didn't get it the first time. I did, like, 526 miles. had a ton of learning curves. Like bunches. Like, day two was a bad day. I learned about sleep. learn not to sleep on the floor, because if your air mattress deflates, you can't get up. You know, all of these little little tidbits here and there. It was just a huge learning curve. So then I have all this knowledge, and I'm going into six days in France, and I still have that same goal because. Right, I didn't get it the first time. And I had set this and I want it. And, it was more important for me to get 600 than it was, the world record. Like, I want it, that 600 mile mark. And even if another woman had done 620, I just wanted 600, you know? So going into this one, I applied for my husband's crewing. He was crewing me for my first six days. So we both had that learning curve, and we applied what we had learned from those first six days. We used a very similar model and tweaked it to make those little accommodations. And we went after 600 again. I mean, that was the goal from the very, very start. Did you have it broken down too? Like, I want to hit this many number of miles on each of the days, or was that that kind of a loser target that that was a much looser target? Yeah, that was a much looser target. I knew I needed a very strong day. One, just because of fatigue over time. and then also knowing that later on in the race, I would need a bit more sleep here and there, to maintain. So I knew I needed a stronger day. One. and then focusing on days two and three and improving those mileage there. And I knew based on the dome, I had had a really poor start to my race and a very strong finish. so I had that working in my favor, knowing if I could hold on while I was fresh in the race and have a good first three days, I could rely on my experience hopefully, and hold on to the last three also. yeah, I was thinking about that too, because it's like there's there's there's all sorts of conversations I did dove deep into kind of like, how should you pace an ultramarathon? And I think this probably varies to some degree from one person to the next, but then also from one event to the next. But when you get into something like a six day where you know there's going to be some sleep component, that. Allows you to go further than you would if you didn't sleep at all. You sort of do have that little bit of extra buffer on day one because you're going in there rested versus say, like, you know, day three or day four, where some of that 24 hour cycle has to be rest and sleep and making it sustainable. Is that another reason why you kind of frontload a little bit of the miles for an event like a sex day, in your opinion? somewhat. Pace is still comfortable. It's comfortably fun. on the first, on the first day. But yes, I am out there, longer on day one, than I am on day 3 or 4. Because, yeah, sleep does become a thing and your body is fighting you for its normal. Its normal circadian rhythm. Yeah. It's like, what are you doing to me? Yes, exactly. Oh, and especially early on, it really, I find for me, like night two, it's really, really battling, trying to get me to sleep. Like I said, I fell asleep while running, on the second night, and that's the only night that that happened. so it really becomes quite a battle early on, and then eventually it's almost like it gives up. Time almost becomes irrelevant later on in the race. Yeah, that's been something that I've been told a bunch of times with multi-day stuff. I've had quite a few, like, runners who've done things like the TransCon or Appalachian Trail and things like that, and they've said sort of that same thing where it's like you kind of hit those those first few days can sort of be this weird, kind of like drop down where your mind sort of is playing weird games with you, where it's still trying to get you to give up or still trying to talk some sense into you probably is the better way to put it. And and then eventually kind of it kind of says, okay, well, this is the reality. Let's just make do with it. And I found that really interesting too, because it's like you get this mindset in these races. Sometimes I think where you start to see this dip in energy or this dip or this, this accumulation of fatigue. And the first thought is always like, well, if this continues linearly, there's just no way I'm gonna be able to sustain this. You start thinking too far ahead. And then eventually that kind of misery sort of just plateaus a little bit. And it's like, okay, I can tolerate this if it doesn't get worse. Is there a lot of ebb and flow after that point for you, or is it like, do you feel great at some point on like day five and just like, okay, I'm going to ride this while it lasts? Or is it kind of just like managing suboptimally as best you can? Oh no. There's definitely some random great like you feel wonderful moments. you feel like you can run forever. and nothing's going to stop you. I remember at some point thinking, you know what? If they close the course, I wonder if I can just keep going to 1000km. You know, I wonder if they'll, like, keep counting. and it was some point on day five, you know, I was like, I bet, I bet they'll let me keep going. but it's really funny how the mind does go in and out of. Okay. I don't know if I can do this anymore, I could do this forever. Yeah. It's the runner's high and you can have multiple ones in the day. but, but you're right in the sense of like your, your mind starts to try to kind of make you stop. you're not going to quite make it. You're, you know, early on especially I find, like cruise, really important. and that sense kind of, Day two, I was asking, well, what's my pace? What's my pace? Cause I was worried I was falling off. I was really worried about day two, and I was worried I was falling off pace, and I kept running by my crew asking, am I okay, am I good? I can't see the time clock. I don't know where I'm at. And they kept saying, well, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. And I'm like, well, what does fine mean? Just fine means I'm okay. Does fine mean I'm too slow? Does fine mean you're just telling me I'm fine? Like I was convinced they were lying to me. so your mind does these crazy things where just even sometimes, you. It seems like you're running in quicksand. Like you're not going anywhere. but yet you're cruising at a decent pace, so it tries to trick you in every way it possibly can. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like one question? I have got. I've got no perception of what it's like to be out there that long. But one question I'll get from folks just about like ultra races, especially the more monotonous ones. Like, if I do like a track hundred miler, someone will ask me, well, what are you thinking about the whole time? And I never have a great answer. I feel like I it's always like, I don't know, because when you get into these like controlled type of settings either, I'm like turning my memory off from it or getting into, like some sort of like rhythm or flow where whatever was passing through my mind or that I'm thinking of in the moment is just like kind of out one ear or in one ear and out the other sort of type of thing. And I don't recall that afterwards or sometimes, I mean, there'll always be like a few things I distinctly remember. And then I'm just asking myself afterwards, was I just thinking about that the whole time on repeat, or was that just what I recalled and things like that? So what's it like for six days? There are things that stand out like a bunch of stuff that you're like. I wish I remembered what I was thinking about for those 12 hours on day three. Or, you know, if somebody asked me what I was thinking about the whole time, I don't know. I really couldn't tell you either. It's almost like you get in a meditative tunnel. this is the only world that exists at that point. One of the crews on day five left with their backpack to go to the grocery store to get things. And I looked at him like, you're going on an adventure because you forget that anything. It's like I had forgotten that a grocery store even existed. You know what? What existed to me was this loop that I was doing. And, you know, sometimes you're thinking of, oh, I wonder how so-and-so is doing at that tent that I'm just passing. I haven't seen them in a while. I wonder if they're sleeping. I wish I was sleeping or, you know, I wonder what they're like. At one point there is a gentleman who had Phantom, and I'm like, that sounds delicious. So I spent a few loops until I remembered to tell my crew, I want it to, you know, it's like these random random thoughts sometimes. but I don't. It really does become a meditative state because it is so repetitive. You learn every, every speed bump, every little crack in the track, every. Yeah. Very monotonous. Yeah, yeah. It's miserable, but it's not right. Yeah. No, I understand what you're saying, too, because you sort of, like, build this alternate world for a period of time that you're existing in. That's separate from the real one. And then you finish and you're back in the real one, and you're just trying to like, how do I reconnect to that other one that I was in and explain what was happening there? And it's really difficult to do, you almost just wish, like, the person who's asking the questions could just get in your head and dig it out of there themselves. Yes. Yes. Because I don't know the answer either. Okay, good. I'm not going crazy, then. I'm glad to hear that. What is that like, coming back afterwards? Is it really difficult for a few days to sort of just reconnect with everything? Does it? I'm guessing it just feels very distant. It does. You know, and honestly, I experienced it after Biggs, and I have experienced it after this one, too. and even after the dome, I'll say it's kind of depressing. I mean I really I it's, it's exciting, but it's also I don't know why I have reacted this way, but I have a few days where it's just kind of sad. sad that I'm not on the track. Sad that, you know, I'm not, with the people I just spent six days with. And we experienced all this stuff with, It's a shock, almost, to go back into reality. And then then, of course, you readjust and life returns to normal and everything's fine. But it does take a few days. And I've actually experienced post-race depression after these longer distances. Yeah, yeah. The way I always think about it is when I was a kid, my family would do every other year we'd have this family reunion where my dad's side of the family was, was big. He had seven brothers and sisters, so they all had a bunch of kids. So I had like over 30 cousins on that side. And we'd go up to this, this, kind of camp. There's like these cabins and this place up north in Wisconsin. And for a week that whole side of the family would just hang out. And then when it was over and we'd go back, it was just like it felt like we were gone for years. And then it was like, I'm going back to something completely different. And I was like, yeah, I was just there seven days ago. It wasn't that long ago, but for whatever reason, just that reintroduction to the thing that should feel normal feels awkward. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. So. Yeah. Well. And then on top of, on top of, you know, being done with your normal routine for six days or whatnot, you also have, just all the post-race, healing happening to which, the night sweats or the odd sleeping hours and like, you would think you would crash, but, my experience has been I, I can't crash after a race for about 12 hours at least. And then it's only like limited sleep for a few hours at a time. Yeah. So all this readjustment for sure. Yeah. You'd think you would just be able to pass out for like 24 hours straight and sort of reset. But yeah, the body has another mindset that you've already convinced it through day two, that you're doing crazy stuff. And then it's in that world versus the normal world. Yes, yes. It's like, well, let's just if we're gonna do this, let's just keep going. Yeah. It really doesn't know when to stop. And it honestly takes about a week to return to normal, sleep schedule and even eating everything takes at least a week, if not longer. Yeah. What is the fueling strategy that you use for a six day period? Are you looking at it through the lens of I know I'm going to need to eat a lot, but I'm also probably going to need to respond to what my body's asking for or what I'm craving. Or do you have a pretty specific set of things that you tend to focus on? You know, on the sixth day, protein intake is extremely important because of the number of hours that you're out there. and days. Right. So I really focus on getting protein in, especially with those main meals, because I still try to keep those, those three main meals of some sort in there, along with the midnight snack. But, so the protein is extremely important, but the rest, kind of boils down to like, whatever my body is craving. so it can be anything from gummy bears to pasta to, I'll do scrambled eggs, chips. lots of liquid calories in multiple forms. so it's pretty much whatever. Yeah. Free for all. And are there any calculations you're doing to make sure you're getting in enough, or is it sort of just I'm going to eat as much as I can tolerate and then see how that goes. I know, like with the shorter ultras, it's gotten to a point where now people are like, okay, I need to get x number of grams of carbohydrate per hour. And people are kind of building these plans around that strategy. Is it a little more loose for something like this where you're probably not going to stay on top of calories? My guess is you lose weight during these things. So, like, at what point do you. Yeah, I guess maybe just. Did you put any thought into that, or is it just like, I know I need to eat, so I'm going to try to eat as often as I can and not worry about any sort of totals or anything like that. Yeah, I'm definitely even in a 50 K, not a mathematical runner. so I am just eating as I feel like eating, knowing that I need to take in more. So the one thing I do in these is I make sure I have a larger meal before I go to sleep. So I'm getting, it's a bit more calories than you would if you were, like, continuously running, and getting them hopefully more well digested and put to good use. but no, I don't calculate anything. We literally are calculating, so I'm going to hand you a handful of something. I'll give you two options. I'm going to give you a handful of something. Something salty, something sweet every 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And you just have to grab one. And that's literally my husband and I are calculating calories. It would be awesome if there was an insane amount of money in the sport, to the degree where you could have someone there that was just tracking that stuff for you. We did have. So my first six days we had an amazing couple, Jeff and Joanne, who came out to help the crew, because we weren't sure what that was going to look like. And he just sat there and just calculated. He wrote down how much of everything I ate and the estimated calories. And he was so. So we have a log, actually, from my first, first six days on day two. Day four and day five and day six. I think of what I was eating, which was just a great reference going into this one to look back on, to see how often I ate and how much I ate. Yeah, yeah. No kidding. Because even if it's a loose target, from there, at least you kind of have an idea of like, this is the amount of volume of food that should be going to you and not coming back versus. And then your crew can maybe adjust if you're not taking in as much. with, with that. That's what's interesting. Yeah. That'd be cool. Do you have a blog or anything where you publish that stuff too? no, no I haven't. People are going to be asking for that. Well, it's just fair warning. It's gonna have Oreos and gummy bears and bunches of Fritos. It's gonna look like one of your students, like sleepover parties or something like that with just a bunch of. Yeah. Got the candy bowl and. Yeah. It is. I do remember when I had Pete Castleknock on to talk about his trans con record. He had, one of his, his crew chief was very, very dialed into the nutrition side of things and she had it all kind of pre-planned and just knew kind of like through this section, you need to make sure you get this many calories in. So I think this was like something in the neighborhood of like right around 10,000 calories a day. but, you know, you start getting into that sort of stuff where, you know, Pete's out there for six weeks, then I think you maybe have to be a little bit more calculated with it, perhaps. But, you know, six days. It sounds silly to say this, but six days is like you can still go a long way on a bit of a deficit, I would imagine, before trouble starts coming your way. Right. And you can kind of like in any race you can kind of feel that deficit coming. And on the sixth day you do have enough time to go. Oh, I feel like I'm just kind of starting to bonk here. I'm not feeling great. I'm gonna step off the track for a minute. I'm gonna take in some good calories. You know, I'm gonna drink some things and I'm gonna get back out there. So in a 50 K where you might just have to keep going and kind of push through and try to get some shoes down or gels or whatever to make it to the end. And the sixth day you can kind of troubleshoot, you can take those extra few minutes, which will benefit you in the long run. Yeah. Yeah. Is it similar to hydration? Are you just sort of drinking to thirst then? Or do you have a certain amount of fluid when you're out there to make sure that you don't get dehydrated and have to dig yourself out of that hole? Yeah. We're, I'm, I'm really horrible about hydration. I'm. I'm a runner. Even when I'm training, who will go out without a water bottle and do a 20 mile run and think nothing of it. So I will say, this is not my strong suit at all. my husband yells at me all the time. He'll hand me the water bottle, I'll do my half a loop. I'll finish maybe half of the handheld at most, and then I won't pick it up for another 30 or 45 minutes. And he's going, it's hot. You're out here for six days. You need to be drinking. so it's something I could really improve upon. It is definitely a weakness of mine. that I think if I could get my hydration, and my electrolyte intake a little bit more balanced, I could improve in that area because the heat, the heat we had days four through five or days two through five were nothing to mess with at all. you didn't want to get behind out there? Yeah, that's a whole topic in and of itself, too, is like with a single day ultra. Assuming it's not the Pettit Center, where that's kind of a nice thing about the Pettit Center is you know exactly what you're into for the whole time. But, yeah, you have not just changes in heat from day to night. You could have like, extreme days versus non extreme days, or if I remember right. You got some rain even though I didn't think you would, during this event. So you have to know what to do and respond to that. So for me it's part of it's like obviously you don't want to get really terrible weather. But to some degree when it rained it was like, hey, this is kind of something different. not really, because it rained on day one. Okay. so it rained within the first five, six hours of the race and the course flooded and our shoes were soaked. And of course, this is in France, so I only brought two pairs of shoes. So going okay, I hope this doesn't do it the whole time because we'll be using the dryers and, so and then it was hot like it was hot until day six. Day six in the morning. The last eight hours is when the storms came in. So we really kind of bookend it with storms. but the whole rest of the time the weather was clear and hot. at night, at night people said it, it got cold. I tend to run very hot, and never had to put anything more than a short sleeve on. I was still in shorts and yeah, I didn't. I didn't think the nights got very cold at all. but the days were extremely hot. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, the more I hear you talk about this, the more I think, like, man, I wonder how far you go in optimal conditions with that performance or how far you will go in the future. You know, I don't know if I would thrive as much in optimal conditions, only because part of the fun of it is like those adverse conditions coming in. I think, mentally it's a little bit of a relief to have something different. and rather than the same, I don't know. Maybe I'll try the dome again. Yeah, I was gonna say you kind of have two very, like, polarizing experiences with the dome versus Francis. You know, the dome, obviously, that's exactly 55 degrees the entire time. And the lights are the same. And very little things change from an environmental standpoint. So, yeah, it's weird. You think of optimization as like control, but your mind may not respond the same way to that. And even if it's something where it's like, it's raining now, it's not going to rain the whole time, presumably. So you have something to look forward to in the sense that, okay, I'm just going to look forward to when this rain stops versus trying to think about day five on day one and things like that. Yeah. And I will say, I live in Santa Fe. So when the rain came, both times it was very welcome. because we don't have a lot of rain here, it's not very often I get to run in the rain. Yeah. So I did actually appreciate that until the second time the rain came and it got cold. Then, I didn't appreciate it as much. But it is nice to know, you have these conditions and you, you go through them and then something else is coming, just like you have the days. and then the sun will set. It'll become night while at the dome. You don't have that. And I remember at the dome trying to, like, just getting really tired in the middle of the day. So I would step outside in the mornings to wake myself up, to let myself know it was sunrise, it was daytime. And then I would go back into the dome and continue running. but you don't have to worry about that outdoors. Yeah. Event. That's interesting too. And yeah, someone told me I was going to ask you about this. They said you wore the same pair of shoes the entire time. Is that true, or did you have more than one pair? I wore a black pair of runners, through the rain. So on day one. from noon until probably 8 or 9 p.m., I wore one pair of shoes. And then, after the rain stopped, the course had cleared. It had drained. I wore the same pair of. I switched into a white pair of R ones and wore those till the end of the race. Okay, so you had two pairs for 603. That's a great plug for, for the amount of cost that you were able to put basically exhaust two pairs of shoes probably in the buy at the end of it. but they held up. Well. I've been doing shoe reviews this year and Mount sent me all three of theirs, their originals, and that R1 like I knew they had. I kind of had an idea from just talking to them what they were trying to do with that product line. And my first experience with it was just like, I can see what they're doing here, like the shoes. Like it's got this really unique type of stability that would just. In my fear from what I would imagine would just be like a really welcome place to be putting your foot over and over again. If you're out there for multiple days, it sort of cradles your foot in a way where, guys, we're because we're thinking like, you know, feet have to be like one of the bigger concerns for something like this, I would imagine. So having the right shoe for the job is going to be the difference between having a performance like you did or having to deal with something for days. In some cases, probably that ends up taking quite a few miles off the end total. Right? Right. And yeah, I wore mountain to coast for my first six days also, and did most of the miles in a single pair, I think like 480 or so. and that's before I had any experience with them. I just didn't have a shoe for the race, and they had sent me this pair and they said, hey, these are meant for long distances. These are meant for ultra runners. I'm like, this is great because I don't know what I'm gonna wear for this race. And, they ended up, I thought for sure I started them. I thought for sure I would switch them out, and I did, but only for maybe like ten, 15 miles at a time. And then I would switch right back into them because for me, nothing felt as good on my feet as they did. And so I've done all of my distance races in them since. Awesome. Yeah. I think like when people think of ultramarathons, I think one of the questions I often get is like, should I change my shoes? Or sometimes it's like, when should I change my shoes? Should I have like multiple pairs spread out over a course to switch into? And you know, I usually tell people it's like, you know, like it's good to probably have that option, but if your feet are feeling good because you found a shoe that works really well for the course or the train or whatever you're on, and with your gait pattern and everything that's going on. I don't know what it's like to change just for the sake of changing. It makes sense. If you have something that's bothering your foot and the shoe can fix it, then yeah, that's great. Or like in a situation like you had where it goes from wet to dry and by switching out the wet pair, you're in dry shoes and they're not just going to get wet again. Those sort of situations I think make a ton of sense. Right, right. Or even a later feeling. Feeling an overuse injury or, you know, overuse something coming on. Like sometimes just switching the shoe can completely, completely make the difference. Yeah. I was wondering if you had maybe switched from the R1 to like the P1 for that reason. Just because there was a little bit of a different feel in those two models. If you had a, if you were ever like all right, I just want a different experience for a little while, maybe load your foot a little differently. But it sounds like you just found comfort in that R1 for six straight days. I did, I did just write in our ones. Did you have any issues with blistering or anything like that that you had to sort of manage along the way? I had one blister. I had one blister, the whole time. and it was from the first day when our feet got wet. I wasn't even in the shoes. It was, you know, toes how they tuck under and they. Yeah. So just one. Yeah. There are some blisters that hold up pretty well. Okay, so that's a strength of yours. probably one of the reasons why you're good at this long stuff. But, yeah, sometimes blisters are just gonna. It doesn't matter what the shoe is. It's just like you said, like your toes are going to rub against each other, and then you get the wet environment, and that just complicates things a little bit on top of it, but, Okay. That's cool. Yeah, I saw that someone said, like, I think she wore the same pair the whole time. And I was like, okay, I gotta ask about that. And, Two Shoes is in my mind impressive for 603 miles of running. but yeah, interesting stuff I did. I did want to kind of go back to what we were talking about before about sleep because. One thing I always think about is, is it worth planning to sleep to have some structure there where you think like, okay, I'm going to try to take a nap at this point, like I have a benchmark to look forward to. But the other part of me thinks like your body may not be receptive to that. And I think the worst scenario in my mind would be, all right. I plan to take a nap at, say, 2 p.m. and then I go lay down. I just lay there and don't fall asleep, and then you feel like you wasted time. So are you doing that pretty intuitively to where it's like, okay, I feel like I could lay down and take a nap anywhere. And that's how you're planning it or how is that kind of structured? So I kind of learned from my first six days when I tried to push to 3 a.m., to get more miles. I learned that your body does kind of tell you this is when you need to sleep. so at this one, I went in and said, okay, you know, I'm not I'm gonna I'm gonna push through the night until the point where, like, I the first night till the point where I can go to sleep, and the point where I went to sleep was midnight for me on the first night. And so I kind of tried to keep that 12 hour cycle of sleep. so midnight noon, midnight noon. I would go down for a certain amount of time and that was predetermined by myself and my crew of how long I needed it to go down for. And then we would also discuss it, and some of them ended up being shorter than planned. Some of them ended up being longer, just based on how hot it was outside getting out of the heat for a little bit or how fatigued I was. But I don't think there's any benefit in lying down if you're not going to sleep. And there were a couple of times that I did go in at midnight and not. It took me too long. Like I was too wound up, to go to sleep. So I probably lost a few miles. They're staring at the ceiling instead of doing them of course. but it's really hard to tell because sometimes you lay down and you're out instantly. And you don't think that's going to happen either. So yeah. Yeah, I always wonder about, like, just the signs your body sends you because it's like, it probably wants to sleep, but like we were talking about after the race, you don't just pass out and fall asleep for a full day or anything like that. So sometimes I wonder if it's like the fatigue is there and you, you're just craving stopping for one reason. Well, for obvious reasons I guess. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna fall asleep. So you think, like, okay, I could lay down and take a nap, and then you lay down and you're like, okay, you gave your body what it thought it wanted in the moment, which is just to stop the behavior of moving forward. And yeah, that one is one where I always think, like when I do a multi-day for the first time, like it's going to be an experience. I have to try to learn a little bit on the fly, at least about how to navigate that side of things. Well, there were some times that I was out there and my body was wanting to sleep badly and I and like you're saying, it really just wanted to stop for a minute. It just wants it not to be running. And so my solution was to pull off the track, take a five minute nap sitting up in a chair and get up and get going again. And a lot of times that's all it needed was just a quick reset. And I didn't do that too often. But, I did find those to be helpful when I got to the point of just being really, really tired. Yeah. That's actually an interesting aspect to ultras in general too, is when you're out there, even if you're in a bit of a flow, there is this like level of focus that just doesn't get interrupted. That is just what is required, I guess, to move forward, because I've noticed this in track events in the past where I'll pull off to use the bathroom real quick, and when I go back out there, it's super refreshing. I was like, oh, I just needed to for like 30s completely be able to disassociate from the act of making another loop. Making another loop. I just needed to turn that off momentarily. And then when you go back on there, it's almost like you kind of reset that. And really, you didn't do any resting for the most part, but you just gave yourself that little bit of a mental break I guess. Yes. And that, that can also be a very dangerous game too. Yeah. You start taking it too often. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Or you don't go back. I've had that experience. I speak from experience there. Where? Oh, I have to use the bathroom. I'm just gonna just take a couple. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to the bathroom every 15 minutes after a while. Right. Oh. That's funny. Yeah. There was another question. Oh, you know, what I was going to ask you about was caffeine. Because obviously that's like a super potent performance boosting piece of the equation here. But it's also something where there is a margin of diminishing returns. So were you following any sort of structure with that, or was it sort of like I'm going to have this or maybe I should just ask, do you some people don't respond to caffeine. Do you respond to caffeine? Oh, I completely respond to caffeine. yeah. I don't drink a lot of caffeine on a day to day basis. So when I, when I do an ultra, yeah, it's a pretty significant response. Okay, cool. And are you trying to plan that for certain parts of the day? Because I would imagine, like, you probably want to break through some sleep fatigue and stack some miles. But then at a certain point, are you ever thinking like, maybe I won't take caffeine now because we're getting to a point that would maybe make sense to take a nap. And I don't want to, like, interrupt that by introducing caffeine. Definitely, definitely. As we get closer to those sleep points. I'm avoiding caffeine a couple hours before, I try to not take and I don't. I think I made it to about maybe 40 hours this time before taking caffeine. I try to keep trying to go into day two or day three, like late day two. early day three, before I even introduce caffeine into the equation. I know this one was a little bit earlier than I normally do. and then because when she started, there's a sort of maintenance thing going on there, too. so minimal amounts. we're talking an energy drink is normally my, my go to. I have a monster or a Celsius or something sitting on the table, and I take a couple swings and then I'm off. So it's just it's minimal amount. Luckily, to keep, to keep it going. it just becomes more frequent as time goes on. yeah. That is always interesting because a lot of the caffeine research is done with a performance dose of like 3 to 6 mg/kg of body weight. But I always tell, like my ultrarunning clients and people are asking about it just like. You don't necessarily want a performance dose when you're going solo forever, like you probably want just enough to keep you focused and then not feel like you're shot out of a cannon. And find yourself in a situation where you feel great for, you know, an hour and then also feel miserable after that. So, I'm always interested in the way people kind of leverage that side of things. Oh, yeah, I'm definitely for the smaller amounts. and then of course, in increasing in frequency as the race goes on and, you know, I don't even know, honestly, if those smaller amounts make that much of a difference, like caffeine dose wise, as much as they do, maybe placebo effect and the fact that you're tasting this and you know, it's energy, you know, it's caffeine and, it also tastes different than water, which is just wonderful. You know, you get like the bubbly and you get it's just a nice, nice little reprieve from everything that you've been doing. so it might be a little bit of that to a little placebo. Yeah that's a great point. And are you getting a lot of palate fatigue for certain things after a while where you're just like I can't have that anymore. it goes through cycles. So I'll go through, where I want something for a good 36 hours or something, and then I'll, I'll avoid it for 24 and suddenly I'll bring it back up again. so my poor crew always have to test to kind of be ready with that item in the, in the, on the back burner. and then sometimes, you know, he, my husband will make a joke that I just think you go out there and you come up with the most random things you possibly can come up with, and we don't have it, but you just want you want to see me, you know, front around to try to get it made. So yeah, that is the whole other side of it too, is like to do these things optimally. You need a crew. And it's like that crew is there for six days to and or I mean, what was your husband there the whole time? I'm guessing just like I'm sure he's taking naps as he can as well. But how does that work? Did you have more than one person out there helping out, or was it just your husband, trying to fight off sleep fatigue as best he can the whole time? So pretty much my husband screwed the whole time. He was able to take naps because they were sharing with another crew. They were sharing a porch. So the other crew member would jump in when he would take a nap, and vice versa. So sometimes, my crew, my husband Joe, would be crewing two people at a time just so that they both got sleep. However, he, I will say, is horrible about getting sleep in these things. Day five I, I, I had more sleep than he did. I'm positive about that. And he was exhausted. Like, he was probably more fatigued than I was running all the miles. And I think it's because the crew has to go through so much mental stuff on top of just the physical aspect of running. Like, we're doing the running part, but they're trying to pre-plan all this, prepare the food, keep us moving, figure out what we need. Because of that, especially later in the race, like we're not. Most of us are not thinking completely clearly. And so there are brains too. At that point in time. Yeah, crewing is such an interesting experience because, you know, especially if it's someone like your husband, like Joe, like he's obviously got like, you know, there's a whole nother element there where like, he's concerned for you. Not that other crews aren't, but there's like a whole nother level of attachment. I'm like, I know, like when I crew for Nicole and I'm sure when she cruises for me too, it's like it's almost worse because you have this, you have all the stress and anxiety, but you don't have any of the feedback other than what they tell you. But like when I'm out there running, like I, I know when I feel bad, I know when I feel good and then I respond to that. But when Nicole is coming in, I'm like, does she feel good? Is she saying she feels good and doesn't feel good? And then you just have all that kind of working rhetoric in your head kind of spinning around in there too. So I imagine like for six days, like, yeah, it would be hard to fall asleep because you've got all your just like, just like stress and anxiety will keep you awake in your day to day life. When you're out there in an event like this, that's just a constant. Most definitely. Most definitely. And he, Oh gosh. The first two times we tried to run together, they were they were they didn't go too well. He was so concerned and there was some worry there going on. And, we actually laid down for an hour and it was a 34 hour event. We lay down for an hour and a half. and that nap ended up taking six hours. so, you know, there was a huge learning curve because he was worried about me and so on. And, over time, I think we've really developed a really good crew runner relationship. even being husband and wife, we are able to separate that aspect of our relationship when we're when we're crewing and running and, remove some of the emotions from it and make it very black and white, like there was there was one point in the race, I'd been drinking a pink drink And it was night four. And so I thought I had been robbed. And I'm like, freaking out. I've already put in all this time and I'm going, I'm gonna get pulled from the course and I'm telling my husband all this and I'm like, I don't know what I should do because I feel fine. Like everything else feels fine. Like nothing feels like it's shutting down on me. Everything else feels fine. And so we go through all of this stuff together, and then he's like, you know, I bet it's the pink drink. Let's remove that. You keep running. And if it's still. And it was like, it totally was and everything was great, but he was able to think so clearly in that moment. and just be a crew. And I know as a husband internally, he must have been flipping out, you know. but with, with, he, he, he was set on the goal just like I was. And neither one of us wanted to be removed from the course. So I'm grateful that he's able and we're both able to kind of separate that aspect of our relationship when we're out there going for these things? Yeah. No doubt. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Like you said, there's a lot of learning that goes into doing things like this before you get to an event like you had in France, where you break the world record and have like, such a probably a to some degree, a career defining experience out there like that. But, I mean, for someone like you, I mean, there's the six day world record that just happened, but it's not like you're going out here. I think when people think of athletes, a lot of times they think like, oh, well, you know, like a marathon or runs marathons or like A5K, ten k person probably kind of gravitates towards those distances. But in ultrarunning there is a little bit more diversity of events and things like that. I think what maybe the big question is, is like, how good can you be at a wide variety of stuff? And you're actually quite good at a wide variety of stuff where like, I think back to just like Desert Solstice this year, the women's field at Desert Solstice. Was just amazing. And I mean, just to think of a race where you have multiple people coming down to the last hour where we don't know who's going to be first, second, third or fourth, essentially, in a race like that, where you've been working that hard and then it's that close. yeah. So what is it? What is it like even picking events for you? Is it something where you just kind of have an intuition, where it's like, I really would like to do this next, and then that's what you decide to go for. Oh, yeah. I pick events based on what I want to do, and whatever I'm drawn to. yeah, I, I don't I don't put a ton of thought into it. It's just sometimes a beautiful location. sometimes it's the distance of the race, sometimes it's the possibility. Like, I had never done it before. So Desert Solstice was. Let's just see what happens out of 24. yeah, it's very random, but it's it's whatever. Whatever my heart's drawn to. That's where I'm going. Does the 24 hour just feel really short to you now where it's like, all right, this is going to be like a heightened sense of just urgency versus the slightly more relaxed approach. You would almost have to have something for as long as six days. Yeah, definitely a different feeling. on the 24th. Definitely more urgency. Definitely more, maintain that consistent pace. There's a little bit more structure. I feel like I wouldn't say structure because there's structure to six days, but there's a little bit more speed based and a little bit more, less room for error, let's put it that way. On 24, we're in six days. You can make a mistake and make time up later, figure out how to fix that later. But in the 24th, I don't feel like there's any room for error. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of one of those things where I feel like when you get to these longer ultras, you're it's sort of like a question of when something's going to happen you weren't able to plan for, and you're going to have to adapt. And then the longer you go, I think the more comfortable you have to be where there's just too many variables, there's no way you can account for all of them. So you have to be comfortable enough to know, like we're going to respond to things when they happen, but we won't know what they are. And then for someone like you who's done so well at these multi-day things coming down to 24, I would think would just feel like, all right, I can maybe control a little bit more or I can account for most of the variables, and then there's just fewer things that that you're going to be both get away with, not doing. And then also fewer things that could maybe pop up that would, would potentially derail you, that you didn't at least have an idea of being there before you got started. Correct? Correct. And I feel like even, even in these longer distances. Right. The more you do, the more the more possibilities you're exposed to and the better you get at troubleshooting. Yeah. Yeah. You also have, I guess from my understanding, a decision to make in terms of future events because you've done the backyard stuff, the six day stuff. the 24 hour. You've done well at all. Very well at all of them. So you're on the 24 hour team, for the women's world 24 hour this fall. But you're also in Big's backyard, which I think are really, really close in a timeline. Have you decided if you're going to do one or the other yet, or are you still trying to make that decision? They're actually the exact same day. Oh, are they? Okay, so you do have to make a decision that same day, so I'm gonna be forced to make a decision. I have thought about it, and I haven't made that decision yet. Both are really incredible opportunities. and I thoroughly enjoyed France, so it's going to be a really tough decision to make when it comes down to it. And I think I have a few weeks left until I have to start really, really thinking about which way I'm going to learn. Yeah. Is it? Obviously nothing's guaranteed, but is there one between the two where it's, like, more realistic that you'd be able to do in the future if you or maybe they both are that way, and that makes it hard because it doesn't necessarily make it an easy decision then. I think the individual years, I mean, are going to get harder and harder to get into at bigs. You know, they have 75 people who can enter. I mean, we just saw the world record drop a few weeks ago. 116 yards is now the standard the the max the world record for backyard. So I think it's just going to get harder and harder to get into the individual. However, I mean, like I said, 24. It's got it. You got to be on point the whole time. You have to be, on your paces and so on. So, I think I could qualify, I don't know, for, for either. I don't, I don't know. So that's the thing. It's going to have to be a roll of the dice, and I hope that I can. I might just have the other coin. Yeah, yeah. Flip a coin and hope that I get to do the other one at some other point in time also. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I'm sure it's obviously difficult for you, but as a fan, it's like I want to see you do both of them. So it's like when you make a decision I think it's just always going to be you'll always have in the back of your mind like maybe a little bit of what if. But also, you know, to have opportunities like that is pretty cool to be good enough at both those disciplines to have qualified for that and things like that. So, whichever one you do, I'm sure it will be a blast and memorable. Thank you. Yeah, I'm. I got some thinking to do for sure. Yeah. No doubt. Well, Megan, it's been awesome to chat with you. I know, like. I do want to make sure before I let you go that the article that they did on your profile on iRunFar was great because I think it highlighted just kind of your unique experience with the sport and just kind of like your trend. I, I don't want to spoil the article, but at one point you decided to not do A5K because you didn't think you could do it. And now you're the six day world record holder. Do you look back at that and think, like what? What changed in me from the day I didn't want to do the five K to the day I was wrapping my head around being out there averaging over 100 miles a day for six straight days? I feel, you know, I was so afraid of that 5KI was so afraid of that five k, I was so afraid of failing, I think, is what it boiled down to. I was so afraid of failure. And, I think over time, as you have more experience in life and as you age, I've just realized that failure is not the be all, end all. It's an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and try again. And so as I've gotten older, you know, I've thought, well, people are going to go for this. Why can't I go for this? Why can't Why can't I fail and get back up? so it's it's, I don't know. My mindset has changed, as I've had more life experiences. Yeah. I mean, it's just such a powerful example of mindset and how that can evolve. I mean, to such an extreme with that too, because obviously, like the, the, the amount of things that go into what you did in France versus what most people would assume for A5K are worlds apart. And if they have the same mind, kind of shift that. I mean, just because when you said in the beginning of the beginning of the practices, we were like, well, I wanted to do 600in the Pettit Center. It's like that. That same mind at one point didn't want to risk the five K, and it grew. It grew to the point where it got so confident and curious, I guess is probably another way to look at it that it was like, yeah, I think I can do this. And I just think that's really interesting because when people are trying to decide if they want to kind of take a risk or do something new and they get that kind of initial fear or anxiety of like, what if I fail and things like that? I think your, your story there is about as powerful as it gets in terms of like making people think, well, I'm going to try it, because if Megan can go from that wanting to A5K to running 603 miles in six days, then, you know, whatever my hurdle here is, is, is going to be pretty trivial at that point if they try to make a comparison. Yeah. Failure is never the be all, end all. it's just an opportunity. Yeah for sure. And then, yeah, you amass more of those and you figure out like, you know, sometimes the failures teach you so many things, and then you have a day like you did in France. I'm sure you think back to like multiple other events where, had I not done that and failed there, I wouldn't have had the tools to be successful here. So you just it's almost like a 180 in how you view it. And that's probably what really drives that mindset change. Yes, yes. Awesome. Well, I'm definitely going to link the iRunFar article into the show, notes listeners. So the or so the listeners can check that one out and dig into some in inbetween of the five K to the six day. If they want to kind of go over and check out our friends that I run for, and learn a little bit more about you there. I do also want to give you a chance to share. If you have anything you want to plug from, like social media or things like that. If you want people to follow you on Instagram and things like that. If you have any websites or channels like that. Yeah. So I can be found on Instagram at, at underscore mag Eckert and then also on Facebook. Awesome. I'll also link those into the show notes too. So if any of the listeners want to go and follow along for the next journey. Yes. Awesome. Megan. Well, thanks a bunch for taking some time to come on the show. It was, it was an honor to be able to chat with you and hear a little bit more about what went into everything. for breaking the six day world record. Yes. Thank you so much for having me on.