Episode 462: Kilian Korth | The Rise of 200 Milers

Kilian Korth recently won the Triple Crown of 200s, which is a three race series, including Tahoe 200, Big Foot 200, and Moab 240. He not only won the series, but all three of these 200+ mile races outright. We dive into many of the topics around the rise of these multi-day ultras.

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Episode Transcript:

I tend to be more of a morning person in general. I think with workouts, if I'm doing something high quality, I tend to want to get it done in the morning, or if I'm doing something even longer, I'd much rather get up, get it done, and then get on with the rest of this stuff. So yeah, oh yeah.

I find it impossible to motivate myself to do things in the afternoon most of the time.

Yeah. You know, I sometimes I wonder about that too because it's like in I ran college, cross country, high school track and cross country, and we'd always practice at 3:00 PM So you would think like that would just build that to be the optimal time for me to find training the most the most beneficial.

But for whatever reason, as soon as I got off of that team, it was like I just moved to the morning and pretty much stayed there for the most part.

Yeah, I mean I, I've had, I had the same experience with college swimming, so that, that is I had never thought of that before, but yeah, maybe it's just like your natural proclivity takes over when you're like, out of the structured.

Collegiate athletic lifestyle.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. But yeah, anyway, Killian, I'm really stoked to have you on the podcast. It's actually funny because after you've recently finished Moab one, Moab, I should say, I was like, okay, I gotta reach out to Killian and see if he wants to come on the podcast.

So I was like, intending to send you a message, and then all of a sudden I got a DM from Alyssa, who I think you're really good friends with. She's been on the podcast before and she's Hey, would you be interested in killing? I'm like yeah, let's do it. So

nice. That's good timing.

Yeah, she's great. I mean, I immediately listened to the episode you guys did together. A couple months back. Yeah, I mean, thanks. But thanks for having me on. It's really a pleasure to be with you. Yeah,

yeah. I've got a bunch of stuff I wanna jump into, but as we were kind of talking about before I hit record too, is I guess five years ago at this point, you had reached out to me and we did a consultation as you were kind of diving into the sport, looking into the different nutritional approaches that were available for ultra runners, I guess.

So we actually do have a history of chatting prior to what I think has really kind of put you on the scene more or less within the ultra running world.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I told you it's a full circle moment for me, like paying for a consultation with you to help me transition to low carb, which I'm sure we'll get into 'cause I've had an evolution in fueling that I think has helped success this year.

But yeah, I mean five years ago, kind of being new to a lot of the multi-day scene and kind of knowing where I wanted to go and I mean, I also remember listening to it. When you had Mike McKnight on after he broke the Triple Crown record, and he's the person who made me want to get into two hundreds too, and one of the first times I heard him was on your podcast.

So yeah, there's a lot of history for me on, on, on my side of listening to you and learning from what you're putting out there.

Yeah. Yeah. It is really interesting. You know, and Mike obviously was I, and from my ex, from my exposure to the two hundreds was one of those guys who really sort of not just showed us like, okay, this is an event that's actually pretty interesting that the ultra running community may wanna start paying attention to, but it's almost.

I have a hard time describing this in a way that I think makes sense, but when I started ultra running this the move I guess for someone who was trying to race competitively was to kind of do a lot of events and a lot of variety of events. So you'd see the best example I can think of from my own experience was Tim Olson back when he was, you know, back to back Western states champions.

Like the year he had broken the course record. At the time he was just going from 50 miler to 50 miler and had probably done five or six races leading into Western states and doing well too. So since then it's kind of gotten, I think, a little more specialized where, you know, you, if you're gonna go to Western states and think like, all right, I'm shooting for a podium, you gotta make half your year for the most part, really centered around the development and the training for, and that may come at the expense of trying to race com to your full capacity at a lot of the other stuff. So when the 200 milers kind of came up, it was sort of a similar trend, but maybe a little bit more within the event itself where, like you were mentioning just before the Triple Crown aspect where it's not enough just to do one of these and to say 200 miles is really giving it a less credit than it deserves because Moabs 240 miles Coca, which isn't one of the triple Crown races, but it's probably I'd be curious about your opinion.

It's probably the most competitive 200 miler in the last couple of years, and that's 250 miles or 255 miles. So these are like, actually like two to 300 mile races at the end of the day.

Yeah, I mean it's, it is strange to look at charts, the evolution. 'cause I think, you know, someone like Mike McKnight, I think back in the early days of the two hundreds, it's weird to say back in the early days because it's only five or six years ago, you know, but the evolution has been so fast, showed us that okay, you can do these things pretty fast.

And I mean, I don't wanna speak for him, but I think even when he was winning in 2019, when he set the record, he was still able to kind of take time at aid stations a little bit more than I think most people are doing now. And then you look at the evolution with someone like Jeff Browning getting into it.

Like he's, who really inspired me to focus on the efficiency side of things, you know? So I think as the distance has become more saturated with talent, it has totally shifted from not a non-competitive space, but having pretty thin fields typically to now. I mean, you've got a lot of people who I think are.

Specializing in the two hundreds. I mean, for me, certainly, it's totally my passion. The multi-day stuff I want to get into even longer, like FKT sort of things. But yeah, it's, you know, going even when you're talking about being able to be competitive at, you know, multiple 50 milers going into Western states and that sort of thing.

I think just the fact of ultra running, growing so much as a sport is probably why you see so much of the specialization. You know, I mean, knowing myself well enough, it's like I don't have the speed, I think, to be competitive at a fast hundred miler, you know? So that's part of the reason I wanted to focus on two hundred.

It's like, where can I carve out a niche for myself that I'll be able to, you know, push the sport forward in some way.

Yeah,

That's a great point. And let's maybe just back up a little bit. So people who are kind of learning about you or at least learning about what you were up to before this big year, you just had, it was, it's kind of interesting, like looking at your ultra sign up because you had you could tell you were getting interested in the 200 milers in 2023. I think you did Coca Donut and it was Bigfoot 200, yeah. That year. And you showed a lot of promise. I think you were eighth at one and second at the other. I'm blanking on which was which, but obviously,

yeah, Coca Donut and Bigfoot eight, Coca Donut eighth, Bigfoot second.

But Coca has a whole story, the whole backstory for 2023. Does it? Okay. You had some some hurdles to get over for that one,

or,

oh, yeah. I mean, I was leading the race until about Mile two 20, but I was having breathing issues starting halfway, and then that's the year that Mike McKnight came back and won from like 30 miles back.

But I mean, I got to the last crew aid station with 22 miles to go, and my O2 saturation was 82%. Ah. So I was in the pain cave for a variety of reasons, and then I managed to finish, but ended up in the ICU later that night. And yeah, that was an experience in and of itself.

It's fascinating to think

that you'd have an experience like that puts you in the ICU and I'm, I, you have like metrics that support why you were feeling that way. But I don't know if there's really a solution to that where you go back and think, oh, if I just do this differently, I won't have that experience.

But the idea that you would say, okay, this is something I wanna not just do again, but do again in a frequent enough manner to do three of them in a year is pretty inspiring. What was the thought process around that when you recovered from all that situation? Was it sort of, alright, I'm going to go back to the drawing board and really figure out what to do with these sort of events?

So I've, I first tried Coca Donut in 2022 and I dnf my first ever DNF and I tore my hamstring. You know, then I had my 2023 era where I ended up in the ICU just chatted about it and. Then, I mean, last year I had a DNF at Coca and a DNF at the Tahoe 200 right in a row. So three years of serious struggles at the 200 mile distance.

But every single time I started one of those races, I believed I was gonna win. You know, there was never a doubt in my mind that this is where my strength lies. It was just a matter of figuring out how to make it work for me. In Coca Donut, it might be kind of a specific issue, I think it's allergy related.

I recently got an allergy test and I was allergic to 55 of 55 things they tested for. So that's great. But I'm, my solution to that is, you know, I'm starting a course of allergy shots that'll last for three to five years, but they're supposed to take about six months to take effect.

So hopefully before I tow the line at Coca Donut next year, I'll have a little bit of a better immune response to some of those specific plants that are causing me issues. But yeah, I mean, I've got a documentary coming out about the Triple Crown in Moab, and the title is Forged in Failure. And I think that really does encapsulate what happened to me with the two hundreds.

You know, it was like, I always felt like I had the ability to do this just, and I'd come close and I'd have these near misses or I'd have failures in DNFs due to things that I would say are outta my control. You know, injuries, breathing problems, those sorts of things. But yeah I mean, it was just back to the drawing board after each one of those.

And, you know, I wrote a blog post called Delusional Self-Belief. And that's really kinda what I feel like, it felt like it was just, there was never a question to me of giving up. I was just back to the drawing board. Let's see what, how we can make this work. And, you know, there's some specific changes that I think I made going into this year that have really helped, you know, spur the success and then.

Also just the mindset of, you know, going into it, knowing that you can't control all the variables, you know, failures taught me so much. It's like I, I think embracing the fact that these events, there's so much up in the air is real. That's like from a mindset perspective, the way to be successful.

Yeah, absolutely. I can definitely respect and agree with that a hundred percent. I know like my best races are just basically a culmination of multiple failures, or not even failure, sometimes just races that went quite well. But there was a clear reason to believe you could do better. And if you fix that issue and learn from it, you can do better in a future event.

And those line up to kind of give you the, both the mental, and I think to some degree the physical ability to really kind of get to that next level of or maybe a one step closer to your physiological potential at any given event.

Yeah, definitely. And just you know, there's only, I think from the there's a few changes that I think I made the past few years that I've have really helped, you know, fueling differently.

But from a mindset perspective, it's like I struggled so much with trying to have fun in my races the past few years because I felt all of this self-imposed pressure you know, I need to be somewhere my career needs this, blah, blah, blah. You know, kind of these egotistical, unhelpful ways of making these races kind of miserable from the get go.

And so letting go of some of that and focusing on having fun, you know, like my goal for the first 60 miles in each of these races is just to enjoy myself now rather than focus on, and obviously I'll be taking care of the things I need to, but I think that has really helped alleviate the bigger perspective that you can find yourself looking in on what you might call your career that just doesn't.

Will lend itself to actually tasting that success that is ul the ultimate goal, you know?

Yeah. And I would imagine that feeds in really positively for these long events where that first 60 miles, you can almost do, you can do plenty of damage, but you can also, if you pace yourself in a maybe a little more relaxed, that probably feeds into your ability to even mentally tolerate the last stretch when you really have to be focused and determined to get to the finish line.

Yeah, I think being relaxed is key. I mean, even just physiologically, if you're running tight, you know, your shoulders are tight, that sort of thing, you're just gonna be wasting more energy. So being relaxed and you know, then getting into the point where you're like, okay, now we're racing, you know, it's pretty rare in a 200.

There's exceptions, and there was one big exception this year where I was racing before mile a hundred, it's. I think the embrace of the first 60, knowing that it's also just nice because in a 200, you're going slow enough. The first 60 just can be fun. If your heart rate is too high or you're causing yourself too much muscle distress in the first 60, you're probably doing something wrong.

And so it is genuinely just enjoyable a lot of the time.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's dive into some of the specifics. I know you said you made a fueling change in the last couple of years, and that's something I'm really interested in at the moment too, because I'm, I think 16 weeks into a high carb approach to what'll ultimately be the first a hundred miler I've done on a high carb approach within ultra running.

I've done a few 50 milers with high carb, but never a hundred. So I've had all sorts of thoughts and experiences and kind of just been documenting the process more or less. So I'd be curious what was the nutritional shift that you looked at?

Yeah I mean, I've listened to your episodes on your high carb reporting and I think that's pretty interesting.

It's, I think, I don't know if you'd agree with this, but I, I feel like. 90% of the knowledge we have about how to feel for these things actually based on studies has come about in the last five years. So it's kind of interesting to see where it's going, but for me specifically you know, I actually started taking currents because I listened to the podcast with you and Alyssa.

So that's one thing that I've done differently as well. But more than that, I have shifted pretty much to a completely gel strategy for these races. So shifting away from real food with that I've upped my carbohydrate intake per hour for the races. I don't even really know how to describe my overall diet, because if I have a true recovery day, you know, I'm getting less than 30 grams of carbs.

But if I have a lift or anything going along with a run I'm periodizing carbohydrates around that. If I'm doing a long run, I'm aiming for 90 grams of carbs an hour. So it's a little bit all over the map with my intake day to day. But it does make sense, I think, around the intensity of workouts.

But specifically for the races, I've typically been aiming for 90 grams of carbs an hour for the first half. And then once your metabolism kind of shifts and the intensity drops a little bit for the second half, I'll bump it down to about 60 grams of carbs an hour. And that's kind of where I find my sweet spot.

All of that, almost all of it is coming from drink mixes and gels. I'm, I've been. I have partnered with Precision for the past few months and I've been using their stuff before. I was partnered with 'em too. So precision gels, precision drink mixes, and that has been so helpful. Like just, you know, eating in the races is my least favorite part of doing these long events because there's just a point in all of them where everything sounds disgusting and so just to be able to put some water in your mouth and slurp down a gel is super helpful.

So just upping the carbs per hour and being able to tolerate it has made, I think, a huge distance or huge difference to how I'm feeling, especially at the back end of these races. You know, keeping the muscle glycogen topped off. I do think that I still am. I'm a reasonably efficient fat burner because I try to test it out during my training every now and then, you know, do a sub two hour run fasted and just see how I'm gonna feel.

But the fueling with carbs on the long runs and increasing the grams of carbs per hour has been massive, I think both for how I'm feeling on the run and then recovery afterwards too.

Yeah it's a great point. I think you're right. I think there's a couple things to think about with that. One is there's just the multiple levers that you pull to improve fat oxidation rates and dietary manipulation is going to be a bigger lever, but you get to a point where.

You have to ask yourself from a performance standpoint, are you doing yourself a disservice by pulling too many of those levers or pulling all of the levers? In some cases to the degree where you don't actually need better fat oxidation rates. You just need to be more kind of mindful of which ones are gonna not compromise performance and which ones are gonna feed into your ability to still fuel with carbohydrates, but at a rate that your body can tolerate.

And like you, I've been kind of playing around a lot of that with the long run and just testing kind of what I'm able to tolerate, what my experience is and I've, I have done a few where I go back to say like a 20 mile long run where I don't fuel at all just to see am I struggling anymore during this?

I ran longer than I did in the past when I was low carbohydrate. And I've had a couple examples now where it just hasn't really felt like an issue at all. Not something that it's yeah, I can't overcome anyway. To the degree that I notice it being a benefit in the sense that oh, I feel better or as good without any carbohydrate in a 20 miler.

I wouldn't say that's the case, but, you know, these are all done at low enough intensities usually that it's not something where I'm noticing like a huge compromise where I'm like bonking at the end of the long runs if I'm not carbohydrate, if I'm not fueled with carbohydrates. But I'm also able to, I did one 30 miler where I got up to just about a hundred grams of carbohydrate per hour, and that went pretty smooth.

Getting in kind of the right amount or a high amount seems to be at least tolerable in training. And I've got the big test to do actually in about a week from tomorrow. When this podcast comes out, it'll probably have. Either happened or about to happen, but where I can kind of really test how that translates to the longer duration stuff outside of training.

So it's exciting stuff.

Yeah, I mean I think we do all have David Roche to thank for No doubt. Yeah. He is just, you know, experimenting on himself. And then, I mean, that's actually another thing too, is he totally inspired me with my caffeine intake. Like I've just been all in on caffeine for these two hundreds and I think, you know, I just look at all of the things like.

Fueling shoes, gear. Everything is the same. It's all a tool, you know? And I like caffeine has been a game changer for me too. I mean, I broke down everything for Tahoe and I didn't really do it for Bigfoot 'cause it was very similar, but I think I had 3,100 milligrams of caffeine Oh, wow.

Over a 50, 52 hour race. So it's that's another thing to touch on with the fueling change. And that's mostly coming from caffeinated gels. But it is, I do think there's enough individual variants where everyone's gonna fall someplace slightly different on the likes of carbs per hour, what's gonna be optimized for you.

And I do. For most people at this point. I think trying to up it a little bit is probably having big benefits, you know, and I feel the same way you do, where I've done a few longer runs faster and haven't noticed that I'm really struggling. Do, I don't feel like necessarily I'll have the pop that I would want if I, you know, try to start running uphill or anything like that.

But I am, I do still feel that I've got good enough fat burning that I'm kind of bonk proof in these races where if I did have a stomach issue, I'm not gonna just totally bottom out and tank. I'll still be able to kind of muddle my way through, even if it's suboptimal.

Yeah. I wanna dive into the caffeine stuff a little bit because I find that one really interesting.

Are you doing a structured protocol with your caffeine or are you just kind of dosing it in when it feels right and that's how you're arriving at that number?

Yeah, so I, during the first day, I'll take a hundred milligrams every three hours. The first night, I'll change that to a hundred milligrams every other hour.

The second day I'll change it back to every three hours. And then basically for the last 12 to 20 hours of the race, I'm just all in whatever I need, you know, a hundred milligrams an hour. Every now and then I'll have a, I've had a Celsius energy drink, which is a 200 milligram dose right away. I will say when I like to drink one of those and chug one of those, there's like a minute where I feel like everything's about to explode and I'm gonna vomit and pass out, but then it kind of settles down.

You know, and with that I do think there's some, you know, caveats to be said. If I had a heart problem or something like that, I probably wouldn't be diving into the caffeine, his heart. And I think that it would be reasonable to say this is obviously not good for you, you know? But I sort of joked with one of my athletes a while ago.

I was like, if you wanted to run for your health, you could have stopped at a half marathon, you know? I'm, this is. Not something I'm doing every weekend. This is to optimize for this one activity over these few days, you know? But yeah I have developed a protocol that has worked for me and ha I mean, I just think there's no reason to feel less alert than you could otherwise be.

Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, there's gonna be some individual variances there. I think if you're doing a decent amount of caffeine in a race and you're noticing anxiety and things like that's probably a sign you've crossed whatever your personal threshold is from a value standpoint.

But if you're, if you've vetted it the way you have and you're noticing you're getting the response you're looking for out of it, then you almost just end up building kind of a personal template towards what, what's gonna work.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I drink coffee every day, so I have some level of caffeine tolerance going into these things.

And you know. Everyone's gonna have a different experience with that, especially just because, I mean, caffeine is a drug, so like we can just be honest about it. It'll have some sort of effect. And I do think that it is very worth training with for one. So if you're planning on, you know, trying an energy drink at all during a race, drink one during a training run to see how to fix your stomach, that sort of thing.

Because it is, you know, especially towards the end of a race when you're kind of teetering on the edge between my gut could blow up or this could help me. You know, it's, it is a risk, I think to take that big 200 milligram dose for sure. But at some point the risk becomes worth it. So there is a feeling out process that will have to happen as everyone kind of approaches how they're, how they want to use that specific tool.

Yeah. It's worth paying attention to. I know I had a, an experience, this is one race where I always kinda wonder if I could go back and do it again, what the outcome would've been is when I did Tunnel Hill in 2018 and ran at the time, it was the a hundred mile trail, the fastest trail, a hundred miler in the world, which I mean, we can quibble about whether Tunnel Hill should be considered a trail or not.

I think I probably actually would say that's an aggressive definition for it, given that it's basically. Maybe a degree slower than a paved road. Yeah, but the point here is like I was, I had this product that was fairly new and they had a prototype product that I was using that day.

And I thought it was a hundred, or I'm sorry, I thought it was 50 milligrams per serving and it was actually a hundred milligrams per serving. So I was dosing it as if it was 50. And I got, I did get a little kind of jittery and it had some digestive issues that day. That definitely slowed me down in the last quarter of that race.

That if I think about back when I kind look at everything I did that day, like that's the thing that stands out that would've maybe drove that. 'cause that was a little bit of a different experience than I normally would've had. But to some degree I look at it as, it's kinda like we were talking before.

We make these mistakes, we learn from them, and that kind of informs how we do. Now I have like at least a data point of a thousand milligrams of caffeine for me over a 12 hour timeframe is more than I need and probably detrimental. So I need to stay under that. And yeah, without that experience, I wouldn't have that foresight in future races to know what to stay under at least and do accordingly.

Yeah, I can imagine accidentally taking double the amount of caffeine would be a surprise. I mean, if I did that, maybe I would have a heart attack. Who knows? You know, like my palms would be sweating. I'd be all, I'd be all over the place.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy stuff. I want to go back a little bit to your fueling too, because when I actually heard you talk about this on Next Aid Station podcast, when you popped in there for a little bit after, probably right after the race, actually, based on kind of when that one was released and you were talking about doing 90 grams per hour.

So I wanted to talk to you about that and just your transition into it. I find it really interesting. You're basically doing sports products with precision fuel and hydration for that long period of time. You didn't notice any palate fatigue or anything from that. Or maybe what I should ask is, are you dosing in anything that has a different flavor profile or texture or something like that kind of allows you to kind of maintain those high inputs with one product and one type of substance?

Yeah, so at some crude aid stations, I will do like buttery rice and cheese for something savory, but I think that's less than 5% of my overall calories. So it's really minimal. And in the first two races, so Tahoe and Bigfoot, no noticeable issues at all, period. Just everything with fueling went perfect.

But Moab, I had this really strange problem where, and it wasn't just gels, it was literally anything other than water. We would touch my tongue and I would gag so I've never had that problem before. I don't know what it was. If I could swallow things, my stomach was fine, but it was like a reflex in my mouth.

It was so unpleasant. And so I, but I struggled to call that like palate fatigue. 'cause it wasn't just gels, it was like rice or gum. Like I love chewing gum towards the end of races to just kind of clean my mouth out. And I would struggle to chew gum. It was so strange. But I just overcame that by, I would put some water in my mouth and then take like the tiniest dollop of a gel, put it in, and then just take it like a shot.

And so I would do that, you know, 10 times for 30 gram gel. I mean, I don't know what that specific issue is, but I wouldn't really call it palate fatigue. I mean, to be honest, a lot of people have expressed this to me. I don't know how you eat gels for that long. And part of it I think is just, I find the eating so unpleasant that it's actually easier for me to do gels than it is for me to do something that's chewable.

You know, like I, there's nothing I find, I don't find any enjoyment in eating anything in these races. And so again it's sort of like caffeine. It is just a tool and it, the gels are the easiest one to get in on the go. They seem to work for me and I mean, I get tired of them the same way. I get tired of everything else, but.

It's not to the extent that I have really struggled other than that one mouth reaction issue at Moab. Yeah, that's a good

point. And I can relate. I know when I did my high list, my highest fueling test, I did notice, like in the beginning I was using Precision nineties. And in the beginning I loved those.

Yeah, I would take like a pretty good dose out of one of those and I would, I'd have it in my mouth. I'd kinda nursed it down and after about two hours I noticed it was getting a little more there was a little bit of resistance to that. Like I didn't really want to swallow it, so I kind of intuitively did what you did based on what David would, I think David just does this out the gate.

He basically just tries to mainline it down his throat without hardly even touching his tongue. And he's sort of bypassing that kind of like almost what I could describe as maybe like a gag reflex and. That seemed to work really well. You almost swallow like a pill with a little bit of water and you sort of eliminate that, that first sign of okay, here's this thing coming in again that I've been doing at a pretty high dose rate.

But yeah, I think, you know, to some degree doing 90 to a hundred grams of just precision nineties is probably more than what I'll want to try to tolerate. But then I'm gonna have a pretty similar, it sounds like a pretty similar setup to what you did, where I'll do that gel as kind of an anchor point for my fuel intake, but then I'm gonna tie some of my fuel to hydration where maybe I'm getting in around 30 grams of carbohydrate through liquid nutrition when I'm just hydrating and stuff so that I don't have to quite be as on top of gels the entire time.

Yep. Yep. I think adding in the drink mixes is really important. It's just, it's an easy way to get a constant slow drip of carbohydrates. I will say though, that there comes a point in every race where I switch from two bottles of drink mix to one bottle of water and one bottle of drink mix. You know, just for flavor reasons.

And I think you know, after I eat anything, at some point I'm just washing my mouth out with water. 'cause it's the only thing that feels tolerable. So there is, I think each person, again, there's enough variability between all of us that everyone will have a different point where that happens.

And for me it's been different even in, in some of these three races. But yeah, I think having the slow drip of carbs from a drink mix and especially for something. That's shorter and faster. I feel like that just has to make sense when you're like, I'm not spending a ton of time at aid stations, but I'll have a couple 12 minute stops, you know?

Whereas I imagine for your hundred miler, you're looking for one to one minute, two minutes at the max for everything.

Yeah. Yeah. I think my two fastest hundred milers were one was like two stops for 60 to 90 seconds total, and the other was three stops for I think, maybe about three minutes total.

So yeah, when you're doing that sort of stuff, it's basically really the only reason that you can stop and justify it is if you gotta use the bathroom to the degree where if you don't, it's just gonna slow you down by not going to the bathroom, or you have a disaster that you don't want and which is gonna also slow you down.

So you, you have to account for a few minutes probably. But outside of that, yeah it's grab and go and you gotta just learn to tolerate that.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think I. I've only done a couple hundreds where I was really focused on efficiency. But yeah, I can imagine trying to do something fast and just, it's just there's nothing you really need to, unless there's something that you absolutely, desperately need to address.

You know, you can tolerate a lot for 12 to 16 hours. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. You're in a different world when you're looking at multiple days and trying to make something sustainable for that long. So that's very impressive that you've found a path forward at those numbers.

It's been a journey to get here, but thanks.

I mean, and part of it too is, you know, we're talking about the aid station stops. It's like with the two hundreds, you know, if you're having foot problems, you need to take care of those. You know, like you can tolerate a lot for 12 to 16 hours. Can you tolerate that for 12 to 16 hours after another 30 hours?

You know, so there's a balance to all of that. And you know, with Moab specifically I had a couple longer stops just 'cause of the conditions being so wet and muddy. It was like. I tried to take care of my feet and then gave up after a while and just accepted that they were gonna be mangled.

But yeah, I do with anyone I'm telling you know, giving advice to about the two hundreds, I'm like, address problems early, you know, take the time to do it. It kind of sucks that you're gonna lose a little bit of efficiency, it's not gonna get better. Nothing will get better over the course of running 30 more hours.

Yeah.

No kidding. One other question about nutrition. I'm curious about, have you noticed when you're hitting those higher numbers during these 200 milers that your recovery is different afterwards?

I, yes. It's hard to say because I've had so many just bad races at the two hundreds prior to this, so I struggle to judge my recovery this year based on those past experiences, you know, but I mean, I.

If you're just going based on the objective numbers, clearly I managed to recover pretty well between Tahoe and Bigfoot and Moab. So I think that it has to make a difference that you're not, you know, I do feel like whatever I can drain the tank to, you know, whether it's one or 2%, I've been able to do that all my races at the finish.

But that being said, maybe my muscle glycogen isn't totally empty. You know, like maybe these things are able to be topped off a little faster than they otherwise would be. I mean, on the unpleasant side, I am incredibly bloated for the next few days after a race. Like my stomach feels so bad for a few days, and I think that just has to do with how much it's processed.

You know, over the course of 45 to 60 hours. So there are some pluses and minuses, but I think on the muscular recovery side of things it's gotta be a plus.

Yeah, you mentioned that on like total off days or rest days, you're actually going down to maybe 30 grams of carbohydrate, so you're almost like pulling a ketogenic lever for a short period of time.

Are you doing that after races too then, or

not so much So after races, I, you know, will typically allow myself to eat some french fries or something. Like I know that I know what my high inflammatory foods are, so I'm like, I'm never touching gluten again in my life 'cause it's just, it murders me.

But like I'll typically allow myself to eat some stuff that's not a part of the diet on recovery days necessarily. You know, potatoes, some more rice, that sort of thing. But I mean, really what I'm focusing on is protein more than anything else. It's just protein. And I eat protein shakes.

I'm eating, I already eat a lot of meat anyway, but I'm, you know, I don't go outside of the parameters of my diet, like anything that I might normally eat. But I am a little bit more flexible with you know, I'm not gonna do anything this week, but I've had, you know, a few meals where I've had some french fries along with some meat-based products too.

So a little more flexibility, but I'm definitely not. I'm not taking the route where I'm like, okay, now you can eat what you want. You know, because I do think I'm, you know, fragile enough with what causes me inflammation, that it just isn't worth it. Yeah,

no, that makes sense. You have to know, again, just like caffeine, you have to know yourself at the individual level to know what inputs are gonna be potentially problematic, above and beyond just their calorie load.

Yeah. Especially looking at the race series, you know, like it's very different trying to peak for one 200 a year than it is for the three. And so between them I'm in, I was. Even more so than after Moab, just incredibly diligent about not increasing any of the inflammation, not attempting to, you know, do everything possible to accelerate recovery.

Between the races, it's like you just have to pull all the levers you can to help you be ready for the next race when it's only seven, eight weeks away.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I'm, I've been thinking about this. I'm somewhat on the fence too, because this race, I'm doing again next week, is in route to desert Solstice.

So Desert Solstice is just probably a little bit of a faster venue. So originally my plan was, use this one as a way to kinda learn, practice the fueling strategy, get a data point of where I'm at, and then kind of do another round of peaking for solstice. But my last three weeks of training have been by far my best three week block that I've had since we moved to Austin almost four years ago.

And all my fitness metrics are trending at a historically high level. So part of me is okay, if I get out there and I feel good, it would be almost it would be I'm just gonna go for it if it presents itself and. When I was talking to David, he was telling me about his protocol after races where for one, he's leaning on some recent case studies that I was aware of.

I found it interesting. That looks at just your metabolic rate after an ultra marathon where it can be elevated by two acts for almost a week. And he took that as I need to just be mainlining carbohydrates for the days after a race to stay on top of energy intake at a much higher rate than maybe you would imagine a what becomes a sedentary person for essentially a week and.

I think I'm on par for that. 'cause I mean, just historically after these races, I have no problem, like greatly exceeding my resting metabolic rate on the days after a hundred miler or an ultra marathon. But then it comes into what input? So I'm on the fence of 'cause ideally if I could recover really quick from this, even if it's a really good race and I can get back into training and get an extra week of training in between there and solstice, I'll definitely take that.

So I'm like, do I get like a gallon of orange juice or do I sit down and eat it. 32 ounce ribeye, or maybe I stick both. I mean, why not both? Yeah. Yeah. That's where I'm currently at. I'm gonna, I'm gonna somewhat let my body decide what it wants to, to a degree, but yeah, I think there's probably room for both.

We don't necessarily have to treat it as a black and white.

Yeah, definitely. I, and I mean, I think, are you referencing that study of those two Wasatch? Yeah. A hundred runners. Yeah. Yeah. I read that too. And I mean, it totally makes sense. It makes sense just based on how you feel after these races.

You know, like it's weird after the 200 adds in the sleep deprivation perspective. So you know, later today at around 2:00 PM I'm gonna crash and probably take a three hour nap, you know, and in the middle of my day, and then I'll slip and sleep a full night. But yeah I mean, I'm starving all day long.

I just feel like I'm a lump of mush sitting around my house, just mainlining calories let's go. I think the body knows what it needs and it may make sense too. When. I ended up in the ICU after Coca Donut. So typically during these races, I don't lose a ton of weight. But when I ended up in the ICU after Coca, I wasn't allowed to eat for the 14 hours following that race, and I lost 16 pounds.

Oh, geez. So I think, yeah, I think your metabolism is just like, Hey, we are in repair mode and we need materials to do that. You know, it's like a construction site that's run out of bricks. It just started banging into the earth.

Yeah. Yeah. There's, yeah it is interesting 'cause I've had a few races where I'll get four or five days out and I'm just like, man, I'm still eating like a horse.

Like I'm still eating as if I were training full throttle. And you just do a quick, like back of the napkin type of math and you're like, I've easily made up for whatever caloric deficit I inherited during that day. And I'm still like at first before that case study, I was thinking maybe it's just some sort of like.

Like overdrive that just stays in place a little bit longer than it would technically need to. But based on that information, it seems like it, it actually is a demand that is very necessary. And if you meet it, it'll probably help you get back to training a little bit quicker.

Yeah. And I mean, who doesn't just wanna sit around and eat tons of food following a race?

Okay. Kidding. Yeah. So if I'll just justify that for my, for myself, for, from a, I, I want this to be true perspective. Yeah. The,

The buy-in for that study is gonna be very high. No one's gonna want to even ask any further questions. Oh, if that's the way, that's the way.

Yeah, exactly.

We're all just oh, I accept that conclusion N of two. Good for me.

No further research needed.

Yeah, totally.

Awesome. I do wanna dive into just the kind of nuts and bolts of this whole procedure of running three, 200 milers in relative close proximity to one another. I would imagine you're looking at it through the lens of, I wanna do all the necessary training that you find beneficial for this type of race.

Leading into that first one. So that's all sort of maximized. And then after the first one, how are you going about the balance between recovery and training? Are you doing like a block of training where you're ramping back up or is it basically all just alright, get what I can in with still making sure I'm recovering and sort of recovering between the events or what does that all look like?

Yeah, I mean you, you nailed it on the head. It's like going into the series, I was like, I am going to be in the best shape for Tahoe. You know what I think. It's just inarguable that you're gonna show up for Moab a little bit worse than you showed up for Tahoe, you know, a little worse. Or where you've got 400 miles of racing and however many miles of training on your legs.

So my Tahoe training block was first of all, the best training block I've ever had in my life. It was amazing. But I'm, I, you know, trained in the mountains in Colorado, went to your rail all the time, doing huge vert, and then making sure that I've got my mountain legs under me. All the fueling experimentation done and taken care of.

So I showed up for Tahoe. You know, the fittest, most confident I've ever been in my life after Tahoe. I basically had this moment of panic where I was like, oh my God, I have to do two more of these. You know, because I'd never quite experienced the full 10 days of feeling like a slob before that.

And I think probably because in the previous two hundreds I slept a little bit more. But yeah, after that 10 days, I was like, okay I'm kind of getting back to normal here. But approaching the rest of the year was just a safety first perspective. So I was like, if I can maintain as much of this fitness as possible while eliminating as much risk as possible of getting injured that's gonna be the goal.

So instead of optimizing for shoving training. Into the time in between the races I was gonna, and I did optimize for showing up to the next race as healthy as possible. That being said, I was really happy with how my recovery went. So I did between Tahoe and Bigfoot, and between Bigfoot and Moab, basically got a full, you know, three weeks of training for each individual race.

So that felt really good. I was extremely cautious with any signals my body was sending me. So I was totally happy to add in a rest day if I had a day where my heart rate's too high, things like that. If I felt anything muscularly, I was like, Hey, let's pull back. We're going to address this.

You know, I was incredible. Diligent with strength training. You know, before Tahoe I was kind of maximizing all of my lifting. And then afterwards I was just maintaining. But I made sure to do that despite having incredibly low motivation to do so at times. And then, yeah, just going into the races, making sure I was gonna show up on race day healthy.

And it was interesting going from Tahoe to Bigfoot. 'cause Bigfoot I think, was my best performance of the year. And so that's the race that suits me the most. It's the steepest climb up and down. It's got the most vert per mile for sure. And you know, having the mountain background going into Bigfoot felt incredibly confident.

But then transitioning from Bigfoot to Moab, I was a little bit worried about. Whether or not I'd be able to get quality training in, because Moab is my, was gonna be my worst race from a topographic standpoint, like having so much runnable, so much flat. But I did manage to get in three solid weeks where my long runs were runnable. I was training in the heat because Moab is typically kind of hot.

It didn't end up being that way this year. I should have just run through a pool. But yeah, I did manage to get a lot of flat training in. And so I think even though I would still say that I showed up to Moab in less good, less optimized just in terms of fitness than I showed up to Tahoe. I think that I did manage to recover in time that I was able to, you know, put a little shine on the specific aspects of the running game, whether it be runnable stuff or herbal stuff going into each of the races.

But. Was again, just optimizing for showing up as healthy as possible. I didn't shove miles where they didn't belong, and I was extremely cautious with any kind of negative signals I got in return from my body while training. Yeah, it's,

it's really an interesting thing to think about because I always look at this, and I think this is what informs a lot of my training, kind of programming for ultra specific stuff is the thing that's hard and not, no, not necessarily hard, but the long-term thing that takes just time is just developing like your cardiovascular system to be where you want it to be so that all those efficiencies are there.

The shorter window of time, this still takes a lot of work, is the course specificity stuff for the type of mechanical loading and variance you're gonna have there. So you know, the difference between a steep mountain course or a flat more runnable trail. So it's almost like you do all those longer term things, which are gonna, to some degree be.

A foundation of what you've done over years versus anyone training block. But if you have that in place, then it's really impressive how quick or how short of a timeframe you actually need to just put in the core specific stuff leading into a race to be able to just tolerate the durability aspect of your legs.

Being able to either go up and down steep stuff or kind of mechanically very similar across flat stuff. So it's interesting how you focus on those course profiles on the between time and the overall fitness stuff in the lead up to the first one.

Yeah, and the big change was from Bigfoot to Moab.

Moab is just Runable, you know, like my first hundred at Moab was my PR for a hundred. It was like in 1928 or something like that. And you know, the vast majority of those miles are running, whereas that cannot be said for Tahoe and Bigfoot. So it was. Both from a mindset shift and okay, you have to be ready to do what you don't like doing, and you have to be ready to suffer.

In that regard, it was difficult. And then also just from the mechanic standpoint, I mean, I remember, you know, training my first kind of real week of training for Moab. I did two long runs back to back that were both, you know, about 24 miles, 2000 feet of climbing. So like a very runnable man, my glutes and my hamstrings were just on fire at the end of the second day.

And I was like, oh my God. If this is what I'm feeling now, what if I feel that at mile 50 in Moab, you know, this is, this could be bad news. But those, I think thankfully with that, like you said, the background of focusing on fitness and I think strength training has a lot to do with it too.

But just your muscles were, the muscles were able to adapt much faster than even I anticipated. And so I was able to go into Moab with a lot of confidence and that I would be able to run the sections that I needed to make it a successful and solid time.

Yeah. And I think some of it is just also knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are.

I know this, I always love this one because Nicole, my wife, we have almost the opposite like mechanical load needs where if I'm gonna do a race that has a lot of downhill running, I have to get out and do some downhill running, or I'm just gonna get destroyed, eaten alive. And she just naturally is more, probably just more gentle based on her gate mechanics or something on downhill running.

So her need for that is much lower. And we've seen this in training where, you know, we'll go in, the best example is probably when we were still in, in Arizona. We were training for it, we were both training for some kind of trail race at the time. So we'd go out to do a long run on a steep climb followed by a steep descent.

And after that first day, or the first round of that, like my quads would just be like, post-race, soar. And she'd be like, oh my, I'm fine. Like we did the same thing

and we, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Good for her. That's got a, that's like a superpower. Yeah. I'm more like you where with the downhill running where like the first time I go to u every year I go to the mountains in the San Juans.

I'm like, I've got five to six days of my quads getting back to normal. You know? Yeah. I totally get that. And I think it's hard for, you know, when you're, like if you live in a flat area training for a mountain right, like how are you getting that downhill? The stimulus, you know?

And that's the hardest one to really kind of backdoor with an alternative exercise program.

Yeah. It, you almost just gotta go out and do it to some degree.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I know that for me, like there's some strength training that I think might lessen that, like doms that you get from your first time out, but nothing does it other than downhill running. And it's just it's sort of like altitude, you know?

It's like you can't, you're not making yourself better at it without going and experiencing it.

Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you too if about just maybe some of the things you're expecting or hypothesizing about with the future of these 200 milers where, like we were saying earlier, we're kind of in this era of there's an incentive to maybe be the Triple Crown winner like you were where you won all three of them, and then now it's been in the rotation of the ultra community long enough where there's an a triple crown aggregate time target out there and things like that.

Do you think, how long of a timeline do you think we have for that to even be on the table for someone to realistically do with still having a mindset like you did this year where you wanted to win them versus just be at them and go for that maybe aggregate goal? I just see it getting more competitive enough where like someone is gonna say, you know what?

I'm gonna zero in on Tahoe 200 this year and they're gonna be good enough at it. Where if other people don't do that same thing, they're gonna get beat by that person. Is that coming down the pipe soon or do you think there's still a pretty long timeframe of people being able to be doing multiples of these in a year and come up winning all or most of them?

Yeah, I do think that's probably going to be the case pretty soon. I mean, just with the increased popularity in the last five years, it's huge. I mean, there are some specific dynamics like race organizations and stuff that may prevent the Triple Crown specifically from kind of becoming as popular as Coca Donut say.

But I do think, you know, if you were to do Coca, let's say a hundred in the middle of the summer and then Mammoth or something like that, like you're, those fields are competitive enough that it's so unlikely you're gonna win all three. You know, I was going into the Triple Crown. I had several people who got injured right away who were in the Triple Crown with me, so that there was less of a deep field.

But it, I do think it's becoming more like the hundreds where, you know, are we ever gonna see someone win? Hard rock and then UTMB again, right? I think probably not, you know, if I had to bet on it, but it's, so are you gonna be able to peak for all of these races in the same year? Who knows?

I mean, one thing looking at my year that I am happy with is that despite having done all three and winning all three and having, you know, relative levels of competition at all of them you know, I had a really close race at Bigfoot, but my other two I was always in front. Like I still managed to put down historically competitive times at all of these.

And you know, we're still early in the two hundreds, who knows what's possible. I'm not gonna say that it'll never happen again, obviously, because I think it probably will, but I, if it gets saturated to a point where it looks at all like the hundreds, then we're gonna have the time where it's okay, you might be able to peak for two of these things in May and September, but you're not gonna be able to throw another one in the middle.

That'll be an exciting time for the two hundreds.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, and I do think it's coming, I mean, with Coca and the live stream and the success that race has had just popularizing itself. I mean, and then if these races like Mammoth start offering pro prize money, like how it's going to, it's gonna explode. I think we're still at the beginning of the wave of the two hundreds. And I hope that it becomes more and more popular because it is, obviously, the place where my passions lie, the multi-day. And I think, you know, I hope that this year I have managed to move the game forward a little bit, but I'm just excited for what's coming down the pipe.

'cause someone's gonna come along and be like, oh, that killing guy he took too long at that aid station, or he didn't, you know, he ran that flat dry valley marathon in five hours. I think I can do it in four, you know? So you've got there's a lot of improvements left to be made and it's gonna be interesting to see who is the one to push it all forward and kind of come out with something where we're like, oh, that.

It seems like the tip top, you know? 'cause we're definitely not there yet.

Yeah, and I think we're also seeing as the sport grows, you, certain events tend to be ones that offer professionalization to people where like Western states has been this one historically where if you go and you do really well at Western states, if you were unsponsored or if you had like maybe a lower tier sponsorship.

You're looking at getting an offer if you want to from a company that is gonna allow you a lot more flexibility with what you have to do outside of just the training and racing side of things. And I think Dan Green is probably one of the best recent examples of this within the 200 Mile world where Dan was a very strong ultra runner, you know, sub 13 hours at Hve, which is historically fast time.

Yeah, you'd think that would be like, you know, if I have a brand and I'm looking to bring an athlete onto a team, I'm looking at Dan running under 13 hours at Hove. That's a guy right there. That's a guy I should yeah. Get signed and locked in. And it wasn't really until he went and crushed Coca Donut.

That you know, he got an offer that he found suitable enough to say, okay, this is something I can get behind and can kind of build a career around. So I think the more we see that, like the big livestream and the brands see the value in having athletes that are gonna be showcased on like these tens of thousands of live viewers and then all the aftermath of it that comes with, you know, winning a race like that.

And then just the promotion you get from these big organizations like Aero Vipa as you know, an asset to a brand and your value to it. We're gonna see people looking at those as I could try to scratch together two or three solid years at a bunch of different events and hope a brand picks me up.

Or I can really go all in on a race like Coca, blow it out of the water and then get signed into a contract and then maybe have a little bit more flexibility about what they're able, what they have to do from a racing standpoint.

I think that goes hand in hand with the increased importance of social media for sponsorships.

You know, it's like I, what I, what brands ultimately are looking for is Oz. You know, they want eyes on their athletes and if you're able to provide that, and I mean, Coca Donut had, I think 800,000 unique IP addresses over the course of the whole live stream this past year. And I think 150,000 people watch Dan Green finish.

You know, I, that's pretty astounding when you think about it. You know, like what's, what is actually going on there. As far as the marketability of that, I think we're not even. I don't think we've actually figured that out, you know, like we're still at the beginning stages of all of that too.

And I mean, speaking for me personally. This past weekend has just been an explosion, an unexpected explosion in, you know, my own ability for that kind of outreach. So it feels good from my perspective to be able to negotiate with some brands now and be like, Hey, I can offer you this.

You know, so I do think we're now in the world of, you know, pick the races that have the eyes if you want to professionalize and then man with professionalization has the ability to train better. You know, this is the first year after Bigfoot. I became a full-time remote coach with everyday Ultra.

And you know, it makes a massive difference. I just don't have these demands on my time. I've been doing a lot of jobs where. You know, I would stand around for 12 hours a day, and if I'm doing that, like I'm not recovering as optimally. So I think it's sort of strange that once you reach a certain level, then you've just got like afterburners attached because now you have so much extra time to do these things or you know, you start getting your gels for free.

Stuff like that. It's like you, you're able to make leaps and bounds improvements in leaps and bounds that otherwise would've cost you a ton of money or meant you had, you know, zero free time. And so yeah. With the professionalization coming into the two hundreds, I do think we're gonna see more and more people you know, pushing the boundaries of what we probably think is possible.

Yeah.

Yeah. It is really interesting when you get into the world of just like the eyeballs on your type of a scenario and how that drives it. And yeah, there's gonna be events like the western states, the Coca Donuts. If you do well there, it brings that along with it. And then there's also kind of the other side where if you're like, I mean if we wanna go to the extreme end of this, you're David Goggins, right then.

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't matter what the event is, if you go there, you're bringing eyeballs. So like you kind of have that end of it too, where or Cam Haines is another great example of this. Ka Haines could go to any event he wanted to, and he's bringing the eyeballs. So if a brand wants to work with one of those two guys, it's okay, just keep kind of doing what you're doing.

You already built that market for us. So yeah, we'll just let you plug it into wherever you want and we'll watch our sales go up.

Yeah, I mean, I think those two guys are part of the reason that I've had such an explosion in the past few days that was totally unexpected on my part. It was like, Goggins being at a race, like people are paying attention.

Campaigns posted and shattered to be out on his podcast yesterday yeah, I mean. It's an interesting world we're in that regard, and I am so bad at navigating it, it's gonna be it's all very new to me. You know, I think I really struggle, I think, to express myself on social media.

So I'm hoping that I can, you know, kind of lean into the podcast. I feel like I'm reasonably well-spoken in the long form, but the social media stuff, whew. I find it challenging. You know, it's a weird position to be in, to be like, Hey, I can offer you these things, but I'm also clumsy.

Yeah. There, there's gotta

There is a balance there where these brands also have a lot of assets available to them from the promotional side of things, and I think we're gonna see a larger incentive from these brands in terms of putting athletes in a position to help them with that versus just making it easier for them to train and race.

You know, something as simple as oh, you know what, we're actually gonna hire a videographer to go and just follow you around for a few days and we can make a six part YouTube documentary and a ton of short form stuff that, so you have this package of assets that you can push out into your channel or both of your channels and really kind of leverage that side without as much friction as it would be for like, you know, me to go out and produce all that content on my own, or you to go out and produce all that content on your own.

Totally. Yeah. And I mean, yeah. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think that pro even makes sense just from wanting a certain level of authenticity. 'cause if you have everyone trying to do their own thing, there's gonna come a point where it all sort of starts to, to smell and taste the same, you know?

And I, there's already some kind of influencer stuff that feels that way. Yeah, hopefully I don't fall into that trap. But I think that you're right about the brands being motivated to offer a lot of those resources.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too, 'cause I know, like from my experience, I've often focused on really small events that historically have had very few eyeballs on them, just because that's kind of the nature of these flat, fast runnable stuff.

And where I got really fortunate was I got into the podcasting stuff really early, as a gasp back in you know, 2011, 2012, before people even really knew what podcasts were. So as podcasting grew, you know, you kind of grew with it and. As you're doing that you just get to know people within that, that ecosystem a little bit.

So like when I went on Joe Rogan the first time in 2017, you know, I didn't, I had some I mean, I had broken some world records, but it wasn't nearly potent enough for brands to care a ton about, it wasn't even the race itself, it was the fact that for whatever reason, Joe Rogan caught wind of it and was like, I wanna talk to you.

And then I went on the show and now all of a sudden it's I mean, I still get messages today from that interview back in 2017. That's eight years ago. Yeah. So it's yeah, when you get in, when you get on a platform that's gonna expose you to not just hundreds of thousands or a million people, but tens of millions of people now all of a sudden.

It sort of, kind of has this really long tail too. And then that kind of led in the second time I went on, I got a lot more attention when I broke the world record for a hundred miles, just independent of itself. 'cause at that point it was just it was kind of an interesting stat line too, right?

You know, you can get really specific data points, like 6 47 per mile or like qualified for Boston four times in a row and all these kind of fun little talking points that people can wrap their heads around. But then, yeah, going on Rogan again after that was really what moved the needle for me from just getting attention to the degree where like it was, okay, I can really build a sustainable business here, you know, outside of continually producing really high quality race results and things like that.

Yeah, I mean, I can only imagine what that was like. My small taste of that is, it has been crazy. So it must have been insane. And I mean, just to. I like that I can see why you say you feel lucky and stuff and that makes sense. But you also, with your podcast offer something really specific.

Like it's very different, I think from your typical ultra endurance podcast where most, I think are, you kind of hear people saying the same stuff and it's like a lot of stories, but your podcast is a resource. Like I have learned more from your episodes with sports scientists and that sort of thing than I have from any other running endurance related podcast.

So you do, I think offer, like you've found yourself a, an, a niche in the podcast world that is super different from what a lot of people are doing. So I think that's gotta be a part of the way you've found that success was just having a, you know, a specific. Deliverable that is, you know, like I've made changes to my training because of things I've heard on your podcast.

I can't say that about a lot of places.

Oh I appreciate that. It's good to know that it's creating that level of value. So I'm just gonna, you know, take some credit for that triple crown while I'm here. Do it. Yeah. Not just teasing. But yeah, I mean, I, the funny thing with that is when I first wanted to start hosting a podcast, my mindset was I want this to almost be different enough from ultra running.

So I felt like I had an outlet outside of the sport because I knew myself well enough to know, like I can really geek out and deep dive into a specific thing. And that's fun for me. But it's also not something I necessarily think is always sustainable to be all invested in this very one specific topic, because then if you have any sort of bump in the road there, you feel like your entire.

Like lifestyle or your entire life, input is being negatively impacted by this one thing. So initially it was like, I'm also really interested in the nutrition side of the stuff, the health side of stuff. So let's just hardly even talk about ultra running. If you go back to some of those earlier episodes, like I did, ultra running was very rarely unless I had run a good race or something like that and we would just talk about it for a little bit.

It was like not a lot of that. Since then, I found other outlets to kind of get that fill. So I've been skewing it a little more towards endurance, ultra running and stuff like that. And solo hosting it now too gives me a lot more flexibility in terms of just directions to go and things like that.

But, but yeah, I've always kind of wanted to have that element to it where it's more than just you know, race recaps, like ultra running news recaps and things like that. Which is nothing wrong with those. Those are a lot of fun. And I do like to do those too. But yeah, diving in with researchers on a topic that I just happen to find interesting because it popped up in the kind of whatever it happens to be.

Maybe it's like a nutrition thing or something like that. Or like when I have David Rohan, it's like I, I wanna d I've got a very specific thing I wanna talk to him about that is maybe a little bit different and also kind of feeds into a little bit of I like the idea of I don't have the answer to this, or I'm trying to find the answer to this and this person has some resources that may kind of give me another piece of information to get me closer to figuring that out.

And exploring that through a podcast forum has just been so much fun.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really wise. And I mean, you didn't say this directly, but it touches on just, I think one of the dangers of ultra running and really any kind of single-minded pursuit is getting your identity too wrapped up in one aspect of your life.

And I know that I've fallen on the wrong side of that with running, you know, like when I was, like I talked about earlier in our conversation, like egotistically chasing these like arbitrary goals because I thought this is where I, like air quotes needed to be, you know, like it's it's really easy to get in one lane and just charge full steam ahead, but then you get injured and.

Your self worth is totally wrapped up in this one thing, and you find yourself sitting on your couch just thinking about how much of a POS you are. You know, it's like doom scrolling. Yeah. So exactly. So I've definitely found myself in that trap. And for me, I think part of the like the addition of being a full-time coach has really helped just because I'm, you know, equivalently as enthusiastic as trying to solve for like trying to solve the puzzles for my athletes as I am for myself.

So it still keeps me keyed in on running as a focus. But I think right now if I were to get injured, I would be a little bit more. I'm not gonna say invulnerable 'cause no one's that, but just a little more armored in the way that it affects, affected me mentally because I'd have another outlet to focus on rather than just like this job that I don't wanna be doing, plus seeing my dreams get further and further away, you know?

So yeah. The single-minded pursuit of any one thing and getting too wrapped up in it is a danger that I, I think, doesn't get talked about as often. It's not exactly what you were saying, but it's, it just sort of reminded me of you saying, you know, the podcast giving you something different.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I know when we moved to Austin, I was sort of building my coaching framework in a way I wanted, and I spent a couple years doing that and it was like, you know, it's all remote. And then, you know, the training side of things and the podcasting side of things, these were all like different enough where I had like a variety of inputs and.

It's just one of those things you gotta kind of keep learning with though. One thing I started noticing earlier this year was there was something kind of missing in that rotation that maybe felt like I was, it was taking away some piece of enjoyment to running that I had historically.

And I kind of accidentally stumbled upon it. I actually just started going to do these group runs with a training group here in town and I go there three times a week and I started realizing, you know what, there's like another component here of engaging with people within the sport of running in person versus across a screen or online.

Or even just at a random event, which is, you know, that's only gonna make up a few days outta the year. For the most part. You have that interpersonal connection with running and then also like the topics that come up when you're on a group run are gonna be way wider variety than just, you know, what I talk about on a specific podcast or talk about with a coaching client who has a.

Like clear objectives in terms of what they wanna get outta that experience for the most part. 'Cause they're trying to get ready for a race and things like that. I started noticing it's oh yeah, like the training aspect of going to these group runs isn't necessarily what I need. I can do that on my own if I have to, but how much better you feel doing that in terms of just getting that input in your life was a pretty palpable difference that I noticed.

I'm like, okay, that's just something I have to like, go through the effort of making sure I have this, I have my schedule set up in a way where I can attend those on a regular enough basis where you know that part of the lifestyle is built in.

Yeah, that a hundred percent makes sense. And that, can you mind if I ask you a question?

Yeah. Based on what you just said there. So when I was a collegiate swimmer, you know, at some point in my life I must've loved swimming enough to become a collegiate swimmer. But even still, I'm burnt out and I haven't swam competitively for a long time. So like with you running in college and continuing with it as your career, like, how have you dealt with that?

You know, have there been times when you've, you know, felt burned out? Oh God, this feels really like I'm slogging through this at this point in time, but because I mean, it sounds like what you were just saying is like a great way to kind of deal with it. But yeah.

Have there been periods in your career where you've had, you know, months or years where running just didn't sound that fun?

Yeah, you know, I would say one stood out a lot earlier. Actually, I kind of somewhat credit my fastest a hundred miles to this is there's a difference or there's kind of like a mundane type of input that occurs if you just repeat, repeat. So I was fascinated with seeing how fast I can run a hundred miles and if I at a certain point, it was probably somewhere around 2013 after Desert Solstice, I had this question in my mind, which was, how fast can you run a hundred miles if you dedicate.

Like your career essentially optimizing for that. And that's just like a question that has been in my mind every day since then. And if I just get too myopic with that, eventually it loses some of its appeal and it sort of normalizes it in a slow enough nature. You don't really notice it until it slaps you in the face and you go to a race and you're like, you know what?

I got to the point where I should have been able to push through and I just wasn't able to. And it was maybe even a layer behind where I've done in the past. So you're like, okay, I'm heading in the wrong direction. So something as simple as like, all right, I'm gonna take a season and train for something differently.

At that time I signed up for the San Diego hundred and it was like, okay, I'm gonna spend the next six months separating myself from these fast runnable track type surfaces and just train for something in the mountains. And then when I came back to it after that, it felt like I was right back to where I was when I was first really excited about it.

So that was a kind of like a shift that was maybe not a drastic shift. I still like training a ton and running a ton. It was just different. Like a different platform to do it on. I would say this most recent one is probably another one too, where maybe it's something about just like where my own personal needs are too.

You know, my, my original career was a teacher, so like I would go into school every day and I would have this like element in my life where, alright, I have this piece of information and I want, I need to make it exciting and interesting enough for these kids to wanna learn about it and get excited about it.

And there's a really unique fulfillment you get from an educator standpoint when you take something and craft it in a way where someone gets excited about it, where they wanna learn more and you can kind of watch their growth and their excitement grow about it. And to some degree, I think you know, doing that in person is something that I really look forward to.

So if I'm running with a group and, you know, it's maybe a younger runner who's a little earlier in their journey and they're really curious about something that I've just been. In the weeds for years and years, and I'm able to kind of share that with them or help them learn something and do something.

You walk away from that, like just really excited and almost recharged to kind of focus your energies on what you wanna do too and get a little bit of extra value out of it. So I think at the end of the day, it's just making sure you're aware that normalization and sort of reduction in quality if you just kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again is gonna eventually catch up.

So just always kind of keeping your eye out on what are some opportunities or what in my life am I missing that I know gives me value historically that I need to kind of reprogram into things to make sure that you are continually kind of keeping that excitement there.

Nice. That's awesome.

Yeah I really relate to everything you just said. Even just speaking, thinking about my 2024 when I dfn’d Coca Donut in Tahoe in a row, I like, I transitioned. To the end of that year to focus on shorter, faster races. So a hundred miler and a hundred k. And I think even that did a similar thing for me.

Just you know, revitalizing an aspect of the sport that I hadn't focused on for a while. You know, doing speed work, shorter mileage, that sort of thing. But it's really also just fascinating what you say is like being an educator just 'cause of, you know, what I was saying earlier about your podcast, like that makes a lot of sense why your podcast is the way it is, just like you being a teacher beforehand, because yeah, you're so good at explaining cons, like delivering complicated concepts in a way that's digestible to someone who's never approached it before.

So that, yeah, that makes total sense. And it's cool to hear you talk about, you know, the, like the kind of mutual inspiration that you can get from someone being interested in something that you're diving into, which then flows back into you to be like, oh yeah, I like, I am excited about this.

Yeah, I think that's really helpful for people to hear.

Yeah. And it's interesting too because you would think I just laugh at myself when I think about this sometimes too. 'cause it's not something that you don't know. It's almost like I know this to be true, but you actually have to go out and do it at the end of the day in order to actually extract the value from it.

It's fun to kind of explore and it's just something where I think you, you just learn it over time if you kind of pay attention and Yeah. It'll be interesting to see kind of where the sport goes with that too. 'cause it's another topic I've been interested in for a few years now is as we get more professionalized in the sport and opportunities are there where, you know, athletes can essentially say, Hey, this is my job.

Like I am incentivized financially to really optimize for performance and race as well as I can. I still think. That there almost needs to be, in most cases, like what you were saying before, like an outlet, something that takes time, takes energy, which in the short term maybe feels like a compromise.

It might feel like, oh, if I go do that, I could have done this and that would've been more specific for this race I'm training for. But if that outlet gives you that edge that you need on race day or gives you that excitement to get better quality outta the things you actually need to be doing when you're doing 'em yourself, I think that ends up being a net positive.

So I'll be really curious what a lot of people do as the sport gets more professionalized with that kind of time they end up getting, when they don't have to go in and punch the clock from nine to five or whatever happens to be, and they have that space available to kind of create what they're gonna do to kind of fill some of those things that they maybe didn't recognize that their job was giving them prior to that.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, for me it's like. When I look forward to the rest of my career, like my wife and I are planning on having kids, so I think that'll obviously, that'll

do, that'll do it. Yeah.

That'll it sounds just like trite to say it'll fill the time, but it's like something I'm really excited about as far as another meaningful journey to have in your life.

But then just like from a more practical standpoint, you know, I like backcountry skiing pretty much, just as much as I like running. I'm not as good at it, obviously, but it's a risk factor for running, you know, if I were to snap my leg in a ski accident, I'd be really frustrated that it ruined my race season.

But it's not something that I'm willing to take away because it is just, I think you have to maintain the things that you love. You know, I think we all are in the sport because we love it, but I think it's you who can kind of take that love for granted and hope that it will pull you through hard times where I think you actually need to cultivate.

The love of the activity a little bit and like really focus on the mindset of having fun and like you said, going on group runs. For me it's been relaxing and not thinking and having process oriented goals rather than outcome oriented goals, you know, so it's a learning experience for everybody.

But man, I definitely resonate with just the way you are talking about approaching it because it is. Something that everyone is gonna have to think about at some point. You know, you can only, you, I think you can only be myopically focused on, you know, your lane for so long before you probably start to have some deterioration going on around the edges there.

Yeah. And I think it's just worth thinking about, like what is, what comes next too. And, you know, there's always gonna be some opportunity there where if you're like a Jim Walmsley or Courtney Dewal, there's gonna be a career for you after your last competitive race, whether it be with the brands you've been working with or as some sort of like spokesperson or leader in the sport.

But as a sport gets bigger, there's gonna be people that have very like respectable resumes and compete professionally that maybe don't have as clear of a path as to what's next. You know, for me, like. When I first took the plunge into being all in with running and building a career around it with the coaching and the media side of things.

It was part of that was just like asking that question of just you know what, there's gonna be a time relatively early in my life that I'm not gonna be out here ripping fast a hundred miles, and if I don't have something kind of at least built in to kind of transition to that I'm excited about that's gonna be a problem.

Yeah, my, yeah, I just hope people think about that stuff as they kind of, you know, get the opportunities that they get and jump into the sport and start kind of building their careers around it.

Yeah. Not everybody will be able to be Jeff Browning and win huge races when they're 55. No kidding.

Yeah, he is the epitome of longevity though, man. I, it's I wanna emulate that cycle of a career, but yeah, no I think you're right. And it's. It's hard when you're, I mean, I just turned 30 and I think it's really difficult when you're young to think about those things for the future.

But yeah, I mean,

You also have time to think about them too. Being 30, you know? Yeah, it's true. You've got a long potential career ahead of you, so you've got time. You can afford the time to really kind of give it some thought and really do some exploring and figure out what is it that really kind of motivates you and you have a passion towards, and then that'll show itself.

So if you're just kind of, if you, I think if you keep that in the back of your mind, then those things will start to kind of pop up and you'll notice what, what interests you and what's worth you spending a little extra time on in the early days before you maybe need to, in order to have that foundation in place.

Yeah. Maybe there'll be a long run when I'm, you know, in my early forties just letting my thoughts bounce around my head and I'll be like, oh, hey. Yeah. Here's what it's, that's it. Yeah. I see the light. I. Exactly. I'll think back to this conversation.

Yeah, there we go. Awesome. Yeah, I did have one other question for you, like kind of Sure.

Training wise or calendar wise is when you're doing these, I mean 200, 240 miles, 250 miles, these long races, they sort of lend themselves to using shorter ultra marathons as like workouts essentially. Are you looking at it through that lens? Is it something where when you decide, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do the, or maybe the better way to ask this question is, you're signed up for Coca next year Coca Donut's a ways off yet, we're about half a year till Coca Donut, so you've got time.

I'm guessing you're probably considering, what does that look like building up, preparing for that? Is it something where you're like, alright, I'm gonna pick some 50 milers or a hundred milers in route to practice, and if so, how specific to the 200 mile are you behaving within those events to really replicate the race day experience?

So honestly, I just don't do tuneup races at all. Like me I don't want to pay for them and I would struggle being in a race and not ending with zero left in the tank. Got it. And I just don't think I want to go into it. But that being said, I am a big fan of destination runs. I mean, I go to Utah and I run in Utah National Parks, and I'll do, you know, multiple, back to back 50 Ks, or I'll go do room to Rim, which is almost 50 miles, you know, so I'm much more likely to go do some big destination runs in places where races can't go than I am to do some races.

So I will have, you know, I like to do what I call a shock cycle. I'm sure there's other terms for it, but like a four day stretch where, you know, I'm doing eight to 10 hours a day. And I'll do those in places I wanna explore. I'm thinking of this next year as kind of my last year of having the freedom to go wherever I want.

And you know, I've got goals of places I wanna visit. Like I want to go down to New Mexico and visit the Oregon Mountains. I've never been down there. I wanna climb the Oregon needle, and I've got huge days planned out there. You know, so big back-to-back days, multiple ultra distances in a row that, you know, would count as training races in some way.

But I, you know, we talked about keeping the fun in it, and I just don't wanna race that often. Really. I want to be out exploring, you know, I'm lucky to live in Colorado and have access to the American Southwest. Like I have so much at my fingertips that would take literally a lifetime to explore if I wanted to do it all.

And so I try to take advantage of, you know, the access to, to land that I have rather than think of Hey, is there a 50 KI want to go do or a 50 mile or a hundred mile? No, not really. Do I wanna pay the entry fee? Do I wanna? Prepare drop bags no, I'd prefer to just go and do some big long runs in, you know, truly epic locations.

I, I love that you're thinking about that because like one of the questions I'll ask a coaching client when, or to some degree, it's a question I get a lot as a coach too, where I'll start working with someone and they'll have a race they're targeting and some of the times they'll have a bunch of other races that they also wanna do and they're just curious can I do all this?

Is this a good idea or is this gonna detract from my potential at this end goal race? And one of the first things I always ask them is, are you the type of person where when you're in an event and that starts, that gun goes off, or the starting whatever goes off, that you're just gonna full throttle it no matter what because you can't help yourself?

Or is it something where you can go there and just. Race that thing at 80% capacity and treat it as if it was your goal, race intensity, and to some degree their answer. That drives my advice because if they're the person who's Hey if I'm at a starting line it's gonna be full throttle, then I'm like, we might wanna pick or choose our battles with that then, because we might take away from it.

Yeah. End goal by doing so. But if it's someone who's oh, I just love the community, I love being at events I have, I don't care if I finish 50th instead of 20th or whatever it happens to be, then that person, I think, yeah, if they really if they get their, if they get fulfillment from being at events, engaging with other people at the events and things like that, and they can hold themselves back, then there may be a candidate to be able to do it.

But you have to be honest with yourself about that. So if it's like someone like you, then yeah, you're probably better off going to a national park and just exploring all day at race intensity than you are lining up for a 50 mile and ringing yourself dry when you've got another six week block of training coming up after it.

A hundred percent. I think over the years I've gotten a lot smarter with my training inputs for myself, you know, as you would hope to do. But yeah, it's just I, you have to know yourself well enough, just like you said. And if I was at a start line, it would bug me to have people passing me, you know, and stuff like that.

Even this this summer I ran my dad is 63 and he ran his first 50 miler the summer in Leadville, and my brother and I did it with him, and even on his behalf, I was like, oh, don't let that guy pass you, you know, I was like that competitive voice in my brain. It just is not, it's not getting shut off.

Yeah. If I have a bib number on it's there. Yeah. I mean, and I've asked my athletes similar things to what you said too, just would you be able to actually do this? Can you will, and. Or is it going to sacrifice your next week of training? And if the answer is it's gonna sacrifice your next week, it's probably not worth it.

You know, like you can go and you can do this on your own, or you could find a buddy to do it with, you know, and get the same benefit without any of the risks.

Yeah. Yeah. I really actually like the Western states model with this, where they do their memorial weekend training run, where you can get on roughly 70 miles of the course in a non race format and really put in a pretty good stimulus, like a training camp stimulus without the it can turn into races sometimes I think, where people like overextend during those things too.

But it's maybe one step closer to offering that sort of a thing with the community aspect without necessarily everyone putting a bib on and trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible.

Totally. And Coga Donut does something similar with the first 37 miles of the race too, where you can go and do a big group training run if you wanna experience that.

And I think those are super beneficial, you know, and I like, I know that we just talked, we talked about Jeff Brown and he's done those training runs and like what an opportunity for people to run with Jeff and ask him questions and, you know, glean some of the immense amounts of wisdom that guy has to offer, you know?

So yeah, I think those are huge and you know, the communal aspect is awesome. And if you've got, I I, we've got a running club where I live too, and they run in the evenings, so they run at six. And I struggle so much to get there. I kind of wish I could, but could make myself do those more often.

But yeah, I mean, if you can go out and get similar benefits from a communal aspect, but not have to do it, like for me, like paying the entry fee too, ultra running is just not a cheap sport. You know, running is sort of thought of as oh, all you need is a pair of shoes. But then you enter ultra running and it's you're doing the two hundreds, the entry fees are $1,500. And then if you are doing, you know, some of the more popular hundreds, they're not cheap. And then you have to pay for shoes and gels and all these things. True flights. Yeah. I like all of those aspects too, I think play into it. And I try to be extremely sensitive when I'm talking to people about the cost.

'cause I know that I'm lucky from that perspective of being able to do the things that I do. So yeah, there's a lot that goes into those decisions. But I do think the key is being honest with yourself about how easy you can take it when you're at a start line.

Yeah. No, it makes sense.

Very cool. Awesome. Killian will, I don't wanna take too much of your time 'cause I know you've got some stuff on your schedule today and probably a nap in the near future, so I don't wanna, at some point, I don't wanna keep you here for too long. But it's been a blast to chat about your year this year and I'm really excited to see what you're able to do coming up here with the rest of your focus and all that stuff.

But before I let you go, if you wanna share with the listeners where they can find you, if you've active online or anything like that.

Sure. I've got an Instagram account, my only real social media. It's a tough mindset. And then I actually, I do have a substack and mostly I write on there and that's also at run Tough Mindset.

Both of those have the same handle. And yeah, if you're interested you can find my like long form thoughts there. I'm sure I'll be on a few more podcasts here after the Triple Crown. So there, there may be some more of me joining on about those three races if you're interested in that too.

But thank you so much for having me on, Zach. Like I said, full circle moment for me to be here with you and just like awesome to have a conversation and one that went places that I didn't expect it to go. So that's always a nice surprise, but really truly a pleasure. Perfect. Thanks a bunch, Kian.

You have a great rest of the day. Thanks, you too. And good luck with the race coming up.