Episode 465: Leadville 100 CR & 50 Mile World Record | Anne Flower

Anne Flower burst onto the ultramarathon scene this year by breaking the long standing Leadville 100 Mile Course Record of 31 years at her debut 100 mile race. She turned things around quickly for a very different experience by breaking the 50 Mile World Record at the Tunnel Hill 100/50 three months later. Anne trains and races while maintaining a career as an ER Doctor. 

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Episode Transcript:

Alright, Anne, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm really excited to chat with you because I think you might be one of the more interesting ultra runners to me right now for at least two reasons. And those are just the way that it seems, you go about structuring, running and how that kind of fits in your lifestyle.

And then between. The Leadville a hundred Mile course record earlier this year, and what is actually quite a fast turnaround to 50 mile world record at Tunnel Hill, just a week and a half out. That's a pretty incredible range in my opinion, in terms of just, not just terrain variants, but distance and things that kind of go into that are fascinating to me, and you seem to be able to really execute both of those in what I would consider maybe a unique fashion.

Thank you. That's very kind. I had spent most of the summer doing more Leadville type running, so as you know, the mountains in Colorado are absolutely incredible in the summer, so we spend a lot of time up in the mountains in our van, and so whether I want to or not most days or big days on foot. So Leadville made sense for me in the sense that it was August, so I'd been running a lot, spending a lot of time on foot.

I definitely didn't expect it to go as well as it did, so that was phenomenal. But I think the 50 miler then was also rather interesting 'cause I think historically it's something that would've fit me better. I grew up. After my twenties I ran more road marathons, so I know that I have a pretty fast, normal stride.

So something like a tunnel hill makes sense for my running economy and the way that I run, and probably my strong suits. It was also really nice after Leadville to run. Just some flat, fast stuff felt really good on my body, so I don't know if I would've been up for another big mountain adventure, but something flat and fast was definitely appealing.

Yeah, nothing makes five hours go by fast, like 17 hours, so there's definitely something there. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna dive in a little bit into that too, 'cause I think. A lot of times it's easy for us to look at some of these results and think what did Ann do in maybe the eight to 12 weeks leading into the race?

But ultimately, it's gonna be some combination of what you've been doing for years, and then maybe some specificity within the speaking phase of things. But. You're a fast runner, which I think you're right, that kind of lends you to something like a 50 mile. What does your training look like these days?

If we maybe just rewind to maybe the beginning of the year. Are you doing structured speed work and things like that through intervals to hit the higher end of the aerobic intensity spectrum at all? Or are you just pretty intuitive about that? I think it depends on the week. Days when the weather's nice and I can do something like a speed workout, I'm definitely happy to, I don't go much shorter than mile and two mile intervals, but yeah, I like seeing how fast I can do, I don't know, five by one or five by two and see how that goes.

Yeah. And I know you've done some marathons and stuff in the background, so is it, are you just borrowing workouts that you would've done in previous peaks for that? Yeah, I think that's pretty reasonable. A lot of times I'll do a four mile warmup, five or 10 miles that threshold, and then a two or four mile cool down, and that's usually enough to get me feeling good leg speed wise.

I'm not sure if I would've been ready to run a Fast Road marathon. Honestly. I signed up for a marathon the same day as Tunnel Hill before I realized that Tunnel Hill was that weekend and I was hoping to go faster than two 40. But then I got really nervous because I've had some hamstring issues and I just didn't really know if running that fast was a good idea.

So Tunnel Hill actually was kind of the sweet spot in terms of the pace that I was hoping to hit. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think with Tunnel Hill, it's always fun to think about just the specifics of an event like that. 'cause it's pretty controlled in the sense that you mechanically and pace wise, you can dial things in.

Did you go into that race with any sort of pace, target expectations? Yes and no. So when I run just around Colorado Springs, my pace, whether I want to or not, is usually like seven minute miles. If I'm doing 5, 10, 15 on the road or on a fast trail, I basically always hit a seven minute pace. So I was hoping that.

Fast shoes and no elevation that would be down to six thirties. There was a rumor that Des Lynden was gonna be there and her goal was to go out at six 30, and so I thought that would be a great place to start. See how the first 10, 20 miles go and then take it from there. I knew that I had the endurance in my legs, but I didn't know what my pace was gonna be like at mile 40, and if I could hold onto that.

Yeah, that is always the interesting thing when you get into distances of 50 miles and further on the runnable stuff, is you get pretty in tune with what does this pace feel like? Kinda within the framework of a standard kind of training protocol, but it's unlikely that you're gonna.

Get anywhere near the race distance. So there's always that kind of background of at what point do I have to start thinking about the durability of the specific pace at that intensity. But it seemed like it went quite well for you from that standpoint. Did you take splits and things like that over the course of the 50 miles to see where you were at along the day?

And did that end up being quite even, or was there a little bit of variability there? It was really even I had a few more miles later on that were in like the 6 35 range. I had to go to the bathroom one time, and so that mile was slower, but I was hitting pretty consistently between low sixes and six 30, depending if it was an uphill, downhill sort of a part.

It felt really good to go out at six 20 just felt naturally very good. The first mile, I think, was the most uncomfortable of the race. Because the women were not going out faster than six 40. So the first half mile, I was kind of confused and uncomfortable figuring out if I should hold back and try to run with folks for a while or if I should just run.

And after about the first mile when I felt like it was not going the pace I wanted, I just linked up with a couple other men and decided to see how the first marathon went. Yeah, that sounds kind of similar. I had Caitriona last week and she was talking about just the way she approached it and she went at it with an idea of what some realistic places may be.

Being her first a hundred miler and ultimately just went with what felt right, intuition wise and what felt comfortable. And it's okay, this is a fun pace. It feels sustainable. Let's just see how long this lasts. And you know, obviously it went well for her as well. So it is kind of a funny piece to that where there is like this sort of.

A little bit of intuition in there of just knowing is this awkwardly too slow for what I'm trying to do? Or is it maybe a little too aggressive? I'm gonna pay for it. But finding that spot in those early miles can make it a little bit more sustainable.

Yeah, definitely did. Did you go in with a fueling strategy of just thinking, all right, in order to hold these paces for how long I want to, I need to be hitting X number of grams of carbs per hour, or anything like that? Fueling has been a really exciting change for me this year. I historically had never really thought about it.

I would just pick up whatever was at the aid stations and didn't do much math or much preparation for what my body would want or need. But then starting at Leadville, I started using a lot of never second because they sponsored the races. And so I started figuring out kind of with caffeinated gels and UNC caffeinated mixing with something like a scratch or a tailwind, what felt really good for my body.

So actually for the 50 miler, I had a pretty solid plan. As you know, the race is. Very easy to crew. It's an out and back. And an out and back. So I had my crew there and I knew that every, it's six to eight miles that I would be able to get aid. So I was picking up a gel and a bottle of tailwind every time.

So I think that worked out. And then I ate quite a bit before we got started, including a caffeinated gel at the start, like at the line. So I think I went up about 75 grams of carbs per hour between gels and liquid, and it felt really good. Yeah. Tunnel Hill is very underrated in that respect.

I mean, you can get these short loop courses for some of these fast times, which obviously lend themselves to easy access to fueling and things like that. But if you wanna get away from the monotony of that and get on some straight line running, like you get a tunnel hill, I mean, it's just, there's that road that runs right alongside the actual track that you're on.

And yeah, your crew can jump out, throw you your stuff, and then a couple minutes later be at the next aid station without too much pressure on their end either. And since there's two turnarounds, there was the aid station at the start, and then there was an aid station about eight miles down, which I came back to again.

And then there was the aid station in the north. Similarly, I would do the turnaround and come back to, so it was really only two aid stations and then the start and the finish? Yeah. Yeah. Did you notice that it was pretty much 75 ish grams of carbohydrates per hour, just pretty constant over the course of the race?

Or were there some kind of ebb and flow with that too as you're. Stomach processed it or you felt a perceived effort shift or anything like that? I stayed pretty consistent. It just felt good to grab a bottle and a gel every time I saw my crew, and that worked well for me on the day. Yeah. Yeah, I'm always interested in that too.

'cause I think I, yeah, the carbohydrate targets have just become more and more popular the last few years in terms of not just people reaching for higher numbers, but also reporting what they did. So we've got this combination of a bit of a trend as well as better than historic documentation of some of these things.

And it's always interesting to see how people manage that. Where, my thought is like. I like to go in with the expectation of having just been locked in on a specific target. But you see some people, they hit higher numbers for certain hours for one reason or other. Maybe it's a trail race where you just have better access at a certain point so you can do it more.

Or you get these longer races where sometimes the stomach starts getting a little more sensitive to things and you pull back a little bit from that. So did I. Did Tunnel Hill vary to Leadville with that respect? Or were you at 75 grams at Leadville pretty consistently every hour as well, rather similar for Leadville, it was less consistent though just because of the way that the aid stations are spaced out.

And then also I was hoping to be able to take like quite a bit of real food heading up Hope past because I knew I would be hiking a lot of it. So that was the time when I really picked up some salt and got some. Tortilla and peanut butter carbs and trying to do a little less caffeine.

I tried the caffeine load, the first half of that race, and then space it out a little toward the end. But yeah, it was the first time that I had eaten that much in a race and it went, it felt really good. I think we can definitely learn something from our cycling colleagues that actually having high carb is good.

I think my first few road marathons, I did maybe a gel or two the whole time, and that was a lot. So this way of doing things is way more comfortable. Yeah, it's gotten really interesting. They just had a study recently that looked at marathoners and they were looking at the relative efficiency benefit of getting up to, I think it, they scaled it up to 120 grams and they noticed a jump in efficiency even up to that, which is pretty interesting to think about.

'cause like at that point it's beyond just an oxidation thing. When you're doing an event that's between two to three hours and, you have your internal options available too, for those shorter. Distance events, but you know, even kind of staying quite a bit ahead of things with that seems to have some sort of, you know, maybe it's just some sort of like a perceived effort reduction there outside of what you would actually maybe demand.

And that just opens up the window in terms of like, how much of this do I explore? It also suggests, I mean, between. Shoe technology, gear and nutrition. Like we, we really should be breaking every record compared to 10, 20 years ago. Yeah, no doubt about it. Yeah, I remember like when I first got into ultra running, it was just the options.

Shoes are a huge one, obviously back, you know, once the premium foams and plates came around, especially when we get into these 50 mile, a hundred mile runnable type tracks. But yeah, the nutrition too, it's like you have so many different options. And they just got better at making them just palatable, in my opinion.

Where it's like you'd have like maybe a couple decent options that are going to probably cause you a problem if you try to force down anything near a hundred grams per hour. And now it's just what it seems to be, something where it's quite approachable even with the running side of things.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you about shoes actually too, 'cause. I think I read in the I Run Far interview you did after Leadville that you wore a pair of Hoka Teton twos that you just had thought oh, maybe this would be a good option. That is, first of all, is that true? And second of all, did you give it any more thought going into Tunnel Hill given that like now all of a sudden you probably have an even more of an incentive to have something that's going to improve efficiency from a footwear standpoint.

Yeah, so I've actually been racing in TechCon Twos, I think for the last three or four years, right when they came out, I had a shoe coupon from a race that I had won. So I bought the best shoe I could find, which at that time was the Techno twos, and they've just been awesome. For every mountain race that I've done, 50 K, 50 miles, a hundred miles, they've been my go-to.

For Leadville. I had to find them on eBay though because they don't sell them anymore. They're like a different model. But I was able to find some that were unused and so I have a couple of pairs now, but I ended up going with the Rocket X Twos this time. So a little more of a road focused shoe that doesn't have as big of a footprint but still has all of the speed and technology.

But it's definitely a runnable shoe. I've run in alpha flies and vapor flies and it's just a different foot. For me, it feels a little less stable, whereas the rockets feel like running shoes, but they are super smart, with great foam and carbon plates. Yeah. I find the premium shoes, super shoes to be just another layer of intrigue when you get into the ultra side of things because there's always gonna be some compromise between performance and stability with a lot of that product line.

And stability just becomes more and more of a potential pinch point the longer you're out there. So it's a little bit, obviously being in the most efficient shoe for you is great, but if that shoe doesn't. Last from 40 to 50 or 80 to a hundred or something like that. Now all of a sudden you have to be mindful of how this thing is actually gonna feel on my foot and perform for me when it really starts counting at the end there.

So it's interesting how people come up with which one's gonna work best for them. Did you just do a lot of running in the Rocket X Twos in training and realize, okay, this is a shoe that I just can tell my foot's gonna be pretty comfortable in. Yeah, I spoke with one of the athlete reps from Hoka. 'cause Hoka is usually what I race in trying to get some recommendations and they were kind enough to send me a couple to try.

So I went out to our fast flat trail and did some five mile and 10 miles at pace, and then just stacked them up side by side to see if a trail shoe or a road shoe would work better for me. And those were the fastest. So those are the ones I decided to go with. My feet were very happy.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you notice any, I mean, it's probably hard to quantify this to any real acute degree, but when you were running in the vapor flies and alpha flies, did those feel like they were faster for you at shorter distance road races than what the Rocket X twos would be? Or did you find 'em to be pretty comparable?

I think they're faster for me if I'm heading closer to six minutes per mile just because of the way that the rocker is and the way that my body runs. But I stride more when I run, so I'm usually not that far on my toes ever. So I think something more like a rocket fits my stance and my stride. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. There's also the pace piece to that too, where some of those shoes definitely come more alive, the more force you put into them, and then yeah, when you're targeting faster paces for a shorter race, that might be different than when you slow down a little bit to make it 50 miles or further.

Yeah. I wanna ask you a little bit about just, your, or maybe back up a little bit and get into what makes you who you are and your approach with the sport too, because I find it to be an interesting time in ultra running over the last few years as we see it go a little more professional than it had been in the past.

And generally speaking, when we have sports that get more competitive, we get more competitive pressure and things like that. Generally trends towards more professionalization, more okay, this has to be a bigger priority in my lifestyle in order for me to compete. It seems like you've taken a little bit of a different approach where you have your lifestyle set up the way you like it and running's a big piece to that.

But to the degree that you're interested in saying okay, I need to quit my day job and just train like a professional athlete might exclusively, doesn't seem to be something that maybe is as motivating to you. I think that's fair. I think I'm also a very logical and rational person, so I spent most of my twenties wanting nothing more than to be an Emerge doc.

So from applying to medical school, getting in, completing medical school, trying to pass tests in a way that puts me. Into a residency position, getting a residency in a specialty. I wanted to complete residency. That was a solid decade of, all that I wanna do is be an Emerge doc. At that time I was still running, like I got to go to the Olympic trials and residency and that was incredible.

But at no point in my life did I think that. I was good enough to be a professional runner and that it would be sustainable for me. So it wasn't necessarily that I was taking some higher road of wanting to keep my day job. I just didn't think there was ever a world where being a professional runner was gonna be what I did either for five years or for a long period of time.

I'm kind of at a sweet spot right now where I. Still really like my day job as well. So I'm not burnt out on emergency medicine, but I'm also rational enough to know that even if this running trajectory continues for the next few years, that's probably all that it's gonna be, or as long as it's gonna be.

I think if I was maybe 10 years younger, had a different sort of career, one that I could pause and then come back to, or one that I frankly didn't like, I think I'd be much more open to the idea of running professionally and. Spending all my time training and doing physio and strength training and that sort of thing.

But I think for who I am as a human being at the point I am in my life that this is the best path forward, I may be open to taking a shift reduction. So working a couple shifts, less extra every month or something like that. But no, I don't think I'm ever gonna leave it. Yeah, it's just an interesting topic to me because I think when you get into these longer events, certainly like Leadville, when you're out there for as long as a race like that takes, there's like this mental, psychological, like training aspects to that, that you're just not getting to in your typical training the same way as you might for a shorter race.

So I always wonder about that. It's like what other life inputs are gonna actually feed into that ability to, to when it really gets tough to know. Okay. I've got another layer of just mental grit here, because you've just calloused that side of your brain and how people are using other areas in their lifestyle to tap into that.

So have you given any thought in terms of how your career may have influenced just your mental fortitude out there on race day? Oh, absolutely. Especially emergency medicine. It's funny you mentioned grit. I think I talked about Angela Duckworth's book in most of my residency interviews. When programs ask you like, okay, so why do we want you, you know, everyone has the board scores.

I'm a pretty gritty person. I have really long-term goals and I stick to them and I can run long distances and I don't give up very easily. There were a lot of days, especially leading up to Leadville, where I would do a pretty hefty workout in the morning and then have to go to work where I'm on my feet for 10 hours, and I think from a stamina standpoint, that was very helpful.

There's also, as you can imagine, the ER is very unpredictable. Things are constantly changing. You don't have a schedule. There are no appointments. People come and you are there. So I think especially with ultra running, that's super helpful to have a practice where you feel very comfortable having things change, having problems present.

You have to figure out how to manage them, and then you have to move on with some degree of grace. I think that's what ultra running is. So things hurt, weather changes, nutrition changes, and I don't think I get flustered or frustrated by that. I have some pretty funny stories of trying to DNF, but I've never actually dnf a race yet.

I tried to drop out of a Boulder marathon, but there was just nowhere to drop out and then I didn't do an extra loop at a Desert Rats one year, but still finished in the top 15, even though I had run 37 miles rather than 50 km. Yeah it is really interesting because I think I have a theory of, just like you yours, the mind side of things.

It's like a battery as well, where the more you're tapping into or asking from it, the quicker it's gonna drain and the better you're at just sorting. Absorbing what would otherwise be very draining situations, the less you're really gonna hammer into that reserve. So then when you do get to the part of the race where it gets really challenging mentally, if you're good at, say , absorbing some of those early race uncertainties, then you just have a little more to give.

'cause you haven't had to tap into that at all, or not as much anyway. And I just think there's just like an infinite way, a number of ways to maybe train that. So like when I see people like yourself or Katrina who have full-time jobs and are training and racing at a high level like this, it's I always get fascinated at in terms of just how you're maybe using that, whether it be just.

More or less happening in the background and then giving you those strengths that you're not connecting the dots or if you're like actively thinking about that when you're going through a hard patch of whatever is happening at work or in lifestyle and thinking of it as okay, this is gonna be like what I need to be like at 75 miles into the Leadville a hundred, or something like that.

Yeah. I think it's also a really nice place to be. A non-professional runner. 'cause usually I'm just so freaking excited to be there. I get to race like it's a beautiful day. I get to be out in the mountains also. No one has expectations that I'm gonna let down. I'm not gonna let myself down. I'm gonna give it all that I have, but I don't get anxious about these sorts of things.

There's, I mean, I can do the best that I can, but there's no downside to not doing well. I wanna do my best, but I don't think that I get that pre-race anxiety that a lot of folks are unfortunately burdened with if they have a performance goal or a cash prize or something like that, that they have to meet.

Yeah. There's the time after the race too that I think makes that powerful. Piece to staying in the sport longer too, where if you step away from the race, I mean even if it's a great race, you're kind of stepping into a period of time where it's just gonna be different. And having something to buffer that excites you and keeps you motivated and kind of keeps you in a routine that's maybe a little bit more predictable, can be a valuable transition point between, alright, I just did this race, what's next?

And not kind of having what, I guess we probably call like a post-race depression period. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's really interesting stuff and I think we'll continue to kinda learn about that as the sport kinda gets, keeps moving along. Ha. Have you given any thought to what you wanna do next? Ooh, very good questions.

I'm really curious what a hundred kilometer distance is gonna be like. So I'm signed up for Black Canyon and I would like to also try Canyons. I think those more Runnable courses fit me pretty well. And I also wanna line up against people who are really fast. I've not had too many opportunities to really be on the same starting line as a lot of people who are really good.

So I wanna see what I can do on the same day as those sorts of people. We should talk later. I'm also curious what a hundred Mile record is like. Seven 30 sounds so good. I don't know, nothing in the immediate future, but you know, there's always things like tunnel hill. Yeah. Yeah, nothing gets me more excited than people wanna run a fast, flat, a hundred mile race.

So having you interested in that is music to my ears. And it, you know, it is interesting. It's, you'd be a really interesting person to do it too, because. It's not like you're bridging the gap between, alright, I've done a fast 50 mile, a fast a hundred k, and now I have to kind of go into this uncertainty of what is it like in those hours after that and how do I manage that?

Because you've done longer things than what it'll take you to run a hundred on the flat. So you sort of have that lower, that kind of mental back and forth nailed and now it's just about maybe picking the right pace and sticking to it. Yeah, I mean, tunnel Hill's great . How do you feel about really short loops?

I don't know. I've never done that. It's an interesting side 'cause I always think Tunnel Hill is awesome in the sense that it's flat. I mean, you get that hill that you go up and come back down. That's maybe two or 3% grade. Yeah. For a couple of miles, which. I think that, depending if you pace it right, might actually feed into it, it might just be neutral in the sense that when you come back down it, you're probably gaining momentum.

So if you time it just that might actually be a net win for some people. The straight line running is great for this, like real mechanically, like similar stuff. But it is that kind of crushed limestone surface. So I always remember on that course you'd have that, those brief spots where you'd cross over on pavement and you can just kind of tell oh.

Man, I would probably be a little bit faster if this whole thing was paved. Absolutely fewer rocks. I didn't have any trouble with the bottoms of my shoes, but brands are not to be named. People were having rocks get caught, like in the actual sole of the shoe, and so they were having to pick them out to keep running.

So yeah, there's some challenge there. It's not as straightforward. Yeah. Yeah. The looped courses are fun in the sense that. They're probably the fastest environment you can do it on, but you have to be, depending on which short loop ones you do, they can be a little more difficult in the sense a lot of times you end up on a track or something like that, and then you have to be okay with that.

There's gonna be a little mechanical variance with all that turning, but I think that's not a tremendous bar to get over if someone's looking to really chase a fast time. But it's always interesting to see what people prefer. I know Camille she, I mean, she's done. Amazing on Track Ultras, but I think she prefers a short loop that's maybe not quite that tight or a little more paved.

You know, there's always like Jackpot, which is the US a hundred Mile Road Championships, that's a pretty decent short loop that's not quite as contrived as a track and has some variance in terrain compared to essentially no incline or decline on a track. And yeah, so it'd be fun to see you take a swing at a hundred miles on any of those types of settings.

And see what you can, what you could put up with there. So you think you would just dial up seven thirties and see how that goes? Maybe? So I have not, I've only run 100 miler and it had a lot of hiking. Yeah. So I haven't run for a hundred miles in a row yet, so I think I'd be okay, but you never know.

But yeah, seven to seven 30 just feels so good. I feel like I could do that for days, but I don't know. Yeah. Fatigue would be hard. Yeah. Yeah I think for someone like yourself, you know, like the big foundational pieces there, which is the hard part to acquire. And then it's just like the mechanical side of things, which I think you can do much quicker.

So if you spent eight weeks just doing some long runs that were a little bit more specific to the a hundred mile pace maybe stacking a couple behind each other. I bet you'd find that the durability side of things would come together and put up a pretty fast race. It'd be fun to see you and Katrina throw down and see if you can both re lower that.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Would you have any interest in the World hundred K championships? I know you said a hundred K and some of the trail side of things, but do you ever consider doing a flat fast hundred k? Potentially, yeah. I've never been invited yet. If I keep running fast, yeah, that would be incredible.

Actually, you know what, that's actually an interesting topic. I hadn't thought of that. But the way that they do for Qualifications for Worlds is they tend to prioritize people with fast a hundred K times, but recently, more recently, they've sort of switched to a little more of a subjective opinion because there's just not a lot of great a hundred K flat.

Road races in the US So you have this situation then where by the results you could end up fielding a team and leaving people off the team that are gonna just, I mean how real, the way to maybe look at it is like you're gonna be good at a hundred K. So there's nothing about what you've done that would suggest that you're like a risk factor of not being able to close that 12 and a half mile difference.

So I know when Charlie broke the men's world record for 50 miles at Tunnel Hill. He got an invite onto the team based on that race alone. So I would imagine you'll get an invite for, I think Worlds is, I don't think they know the date yet. It's usually in the fall. But it will be next year, so you probably won't have to do anything.

I bet you'd get invited just from your tunnel hill race. So that'd be a fun one to see. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be incredible. It is hard though 'cause it's so many fun races and when you have the range that you have, eventually you have to go get around to pick. And a few that are gonna make sense from a schedule standpoint.

Inevitably, somewhere gonna be on top of one another and you won't be able to do 'em both. Yeah. Too many races, not enough time. Yeah, no doubt about it. And then the recovery things that have to happen in between as well. Yeah. Yeah. How did that go after Leadville? Because what? You had like maybe three months between.

Tunnel Hill And Leadville. And Leadville was your first hundred miles, so you probably were a little in the dark in terms of maybe what that would look like. How did that timeline play out after Leadville finished and when you kind of got back to training and feeling like you could put another race on the calendar?

Yeah, I was really tired. For a few days or a week, I was sleeping a lot, eating really well, but I didn't have too many specific muscle groups or injuries from that race. So I was fatigued, but I don't think that I was like broken after Leadville, which was my main concern and why I hadn't run a hundred miles until then.

So it probably took me a couple weeks of just running pretty chill, but then after two or three weeks I was ready to be back. I was ready to run fast and run in the mountains, and I don't think I did anything longer than maybe 15 miles for the first few weeks. But I train a lot with Hannah Allgood, who also lives in Colorado Springs, and I think it was early October we just decided to do a 90 minute run and ended up knocking out a half marathon.

And so after that Nice. She was signed up for JFK and I was signed up for tunnel hail. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah, there's that, there's always that run afterwards where things start clicking again and you're like, okay, now I can start stacking some quality training going forward. Yeah. What did you do, once you decided to do Tunnel Hill, did you structure any sort of specific long runs for that one, or did you just kind of go about your normal training and assume things were gonna be fine?

I spent a lot more time on our trail here called the Santa Fe Trail that goes from downtown to 20 miles north, but it's similar. It's a little more hilly, obviously than Tunnel Hill, but it's about as flat as you can get in Colorado Springs without being on a road. So I spent a lot of time there making sure that I was doing, you know, 10 miles at six 15 or five miles at six 20.

Those sorts of workouts, rather than just going for like casual five to 10 mile training runs. Yeah. Yeah. It gets interesting 'cause you kind of get into this world of, alright, I'm the race intensity is almost a gray area, kind of from the zone standpoint and you know, it's nice to practice race intensity.

So then how do you kind of go about structuring like the volume in it? And for a hundred milers, I've always looked at it through the lens of spending a good bit of time. Getting just overall fit from an efficiency standpoint and then take eight weeks where I'm shifting training load towards very kind of specifics around the pace target and things like that.

And I've always found that it does a good enough job of preserving a lot of that overall efficiency, especially if you just keep like maybe. One interval session every week or so, but then you can really dedicate a lot more time towards that exact intensity and to some degree, just doing it a bunch of times now.

I feel like I have targets where it's if I can hit this many miles at that pace, I'll feel pretty good from a sustainability standpoint as long as I don't screw something else up on race day or get excited to go a little too fast. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. On days when everything is working well, amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. So with let's see, you said Black Canyon and Canyons coming up. That sort of entertains the question of whether Western states follow up in June? Then if things go well at either of those, I'm not certain yet. I think I would really enjoy Western states though. Yeah, I think it's a great course for you.

Yeah, I did have it kind of, in 24 when it was 95 degree air temperature and so damn hot. And I was able to stay cool without doing enough proper heat training or any of the things that you're supposed to do. So I think my sweat efficiency's pretty good. So I think I'd be curious to try something like that.

Whether or not I get in, I'm not sure. Maybe it'll be a 2027 goal. Who knows? Yeah, it'd be cool. I think it, it kind of blends, like essentially I remember I talked to David Roche about this when he did Leadville and then Javelina, not this year, but the year prior, and I was just like, Western States just seems like the perfect medium for you because it's got both of those skill sets kind of all wrapped up into a hundred mile course.

And when it comes to kind of. Trying to balance your strengths and weaknesses. You might not have a lot of holes, but you know, Western States is a whole another monster in and of itself. So it's always fun to see how things end up playing out there, but I'm sure I'm sure there's a lot of people who would be interested in seeing you on that line one day hopefully.

Cool. Yeah. For, I wanna dive in a little bit just like kind of how you schedule your training within the context of your lifestyle. Is just to get maybe a little bit of a better look at kind of how your work schedule plays out and then how you look at the available time to train.

Do you get a pretty consistent work schedule that you're able to build around, or does that vary quite a bit just based on needs and the shifts demands at the time. So every month is about the same, but in no particular order. I work about 15 to 16 shifts a month, a third of them being mornings, a third of them being afternoons, so start time, anywhere between noon and 2:00 PM and then a third of them being overnight.

So depending which of those I'm on. If I'm working in the mornings, I try to get outside after work. If I work at noon or 2:00 PM though, that's plenty of time for good morning training runs. And then I have quite a few days off as well. So I don't try to do any very big, long training runs on days when I have to work.

But I can get up to 12, 15 miles if I have enough time in a day. The weekly average is probably not that impressive. It's probably on average, probably 70 miles a week. I'm not crushing any super high mileage, but then there's weeks in the summer, like especially if we're up in the mountains where I'll be on my feet all day long, and those weeks are easily a hundred, 125 miles a week.

Yeah. It's almost like it's enough to maintain your fitness and then you do some of those. Larger volume weeks and kind of keep you in a spot where now all of a sudden the longer distance stuff is manageable. It's a really kind of interesting way to set it up.

I know I've worked with some, like firefighters in the past who always have interesting schedules too, like when they're on, but then when they're off, they have quite a bit of flexibility, so they tend to be able to do some of those longer days more consistently. But when they're working, maybe not so much.

I think there's also something to suboptimal training conditions. So on days when I've worked maybe three or four nights in a row and then I try to go for a run from the start, I don't feel very good, like low energy, not very well hydrated, but I think knocking out, you know, five or eight miles on days like that is probably like a functional 12 or 13 miles for people who.

Sleep well every night and have as much time in the day to do what they wanna do. Also, weather conditions are not always great, but if you have a shorter amount of time, you're much more likely to just get out and do it. Yeah, so I think that's good for building stamina. I'm still always excited to get to go for my run for the day.

It's either my pre-work, balancing my mind, getting my head straight, or it's my like after work let down. So I'm always excited to do it. It's very hard for me to feel like I would ever be burnt out on training or running because it's such a reward in my life. Yeah, that's an interesting point and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before in terms of just working on that mental side of things where I have found, like over my career.

I've had different scenarios where it's okay, I've got a schedule where it's pretty exact and I have to work around it. So it's yeah, when, like when I was teaching, it's like that alarm goes off, you get up, you do that run, or it's not gonna happen today. And that's like a very interesting dynamic in terms of just the way that you callous the mind.

And then, working for myself, I stay busy. So I have that aspect, but I have a lot more flexibility of being able to move things around if I want to. And to some degree I find that to be something I have to be mindful of because if I get too comfortable with, oh, I'll just move this there and I'll do what I really wanna do first, that almost breeds a level of comfort that I don't know that I want all the time.

So then sometimes it's okay, I need to put a few things on the schedule regardless of whether I feel like doing this or something else I have to do later. Even if I can technically switch it, I'm just gonna do it the way I program it, just to get myself in that kind of conditioning of, alright, this is the time you do this, whether you like it or not.

And I think that does definitely help when you get into the world of surviving these long races. I think there's also an unspoken challenge for people who either have a lot of free time or work from home is that there's just so many other things that you could be doing with your time.

Yeah. So even people who run professionally, but maybe they are doing all of these tasks, whereas if I just have my shoes in my car and I know that I'm stopping at the trail on the way home and I have 45 minutes, then I'm much more likely just to get it done. But if I went home first, then maybe things would come up or things would come in the way.

So it would be much harder for me if I didn't have a set schedule to get things accomplished. Yeah, no, no decision fatigue. It's pre determined. That's funny. Yeah. Is it something where you kinda look at the race calendar coming up and the way you have things structured currently, are you exploring like, Hey, I, maybe I should.

Reach out and see if I can get a partnership with brands and look into kind of that side of the sport, or are you looking at it through the lens of, Hey, I don't even want any of that sort of distraction from what I'm currently doing because I don't need it and it may become something, it's a, it's an undetermined variable at this point.

Has that thought process gone through your mind over the last few months now that I'm sure brands are more than interested in working with you, given what you've done recently? It's definitely come in multiple different iterations. Three months ago, I would've said absolutely not. That's not something I'm interested in because I perceived that it was this trade off of products for things like social media and that sort of thing.

Which just didn't really fit who I was. I've actually had some really interesting conversations with a couple of different brands recently who are interested in things like my medical work and my medical background, and they find that makes me more interesting as someone that they would wanna partner with.

So it's actually been pretty interesting and reassuring, and I'm much more open to it now than I have been. I didn't really know what that world was like and probably as much imposter syndrome as actually not being interested as I just didn't think that that was for me or that fit who I was.

But I've been really impressed with the product managers I've spoken with, that I could definitely see something happening in the future. I don't know if it'll be like for a year and then see what happens, but yeah, no, it's been way more exciting and interesting than I thought it would be.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I think it's evolved over the years where I remember early on when the sport was first growing and we didn't quite have social media as a, as big of a brand building piece. It was kind of like race results and things like that. And then the media would tell your story a little bit more.

Whereas now. You have this opportunity, or maybe it's a decision too. I want to build a brand and tell my story and then incentivize brands to wanna work with me, or, I think brands are catching on this now too, where it's like, Hey, we've got someone, maybe this is a little bit more your style, where.

It's like you've got this really fascinating story, this really interesting lifestyle, and you're putting up these impressive results, but you probably don't wanna sit down and record a bunch of videos and learn to edit and spend two, three hours a day like making Instagram reels either. So it's like where does that happen?

If the brand wants that, maybe they take on the initiative of doing that sort of stuff to help with it and tell your story from a creative way on their side. And I think that, I think there's a lot of opportunities now when you just, you find the brand that kind of has that resource or that interest and sort of the development side of the athlete and Yeah.

And then yeah, then you just see which one fits. I think my big question with it was what are we doing and does this matter? So much of it just seemed so superficial and so ephemeral, but one of the first groups I partnered with was I joined the Athlete Alliance for Protect our Winters. Which is a phenomenal company.

It started as a bunch of skiers and snowboarders, and I used to watch their videos when I was in high school and wanted to be a pro skier, which didn't work out unfortunately. But just thinking about it, we are people who enjoy the outdoors. We enjoy having our trails and our mountains and our clean water.

What are we doing and does it matter? So using that. Influence and that scope of people that I communicate with to say, Hey, maybe there's something happening as far as voting goes. That's really important and we need to make sure that those of us who enjoy the outsource state are able to keep it for us to enjoy.

But then for future generations and onward, and then after Tunnel Hill, I was talking with the race director, Steve, and there's cash prizes with Tunnel Hill, which is amazing, but I don't know that I'm the best person to use that. And so I was talking to him about it. I had spent a lot of time in eastern Kentucky during residency training, and then I worked there afterward.

Tunnel Hill is basically Western Kentucky, but it's in Illinois. Yeah, so there's a lot of folks in Western Kentucky who are very good people, very hardworking, do not have a ton of resources or financial backing. So I talked to them a little about what we can do. Is there a. Community organization or is there someone like that could probably make better use of some of these funds than us?

And so we came up with the Arrow Leaf Client Choice Food Bank, which is in southern Illinois, and it services a large population of people. So I told him that I wanted to give back some of the money for that, and then he and his wife decided they wanted to match it. And in my mind I was like, man, if I had brand partners, I would tell them that the goal is if we break this record.

Everyone's gonna pre donate whatever amount of money, and then we'll find either some local or some other organizations to raise money for. So I think that would get me running faster if I knew that there was like even some cheesy thing on the line of we're gonna donate this money to whatever.

Yeah, and that's a great point too. And I know when it comes to doing that sort of thing where your efforts are gonna incentivize donations to a cause, not only is that. A little bit more motivating in terms of alright, I have a purpose behind this other than just my own enjoyment of this activity.

But yeah, the brand partners on that can really help with the signal boost side of that, and oftentimes will match a lot of the contributions and things like that. So both from the actual. Monetary input that you're going to get from it, but also just the awareness side. And I think anytime you layer in an education piece to something that you're doing or you're interested in, it just gives you that extra bit of kind of incentive knowing that I'm not just doing this for myself, I'm helping other people who are maybe new to this and trying to learn or trying to get in and kind of find their way too.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of really fun avenues for you, and it sounds like you're really good and interested in that side of things too.

Awesome. Yeah. Are you in off season mode right now or have you gotten back to running now? You're about a week and a half out from Tunnel Hill. The weather's been really nice, so not in off season mode yet. I think my mode switch is more into skiing, so we like to backcountry ski and at ski quite a bit, so I'm waiting for the snow to fill in so we can do that, which I think is pretty stellar cross training for ultra running.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you just wait for the winter to roll in and then you switch to skis for the most part, or are you still doing some running indoors or on shoveled sidewalks and things like that too? I still run quite a bit. Colorado Springs is kind of the high desert, so we will get plenty of snow, but it only sticks around for a day or two.

So I would say there's probably two or three days a week where the temperatures are warmer than 40 or 50 degrees and it's very easy to get out on the road or on trail. So I still get to run quite a bit all year long, which is really nice. And then I actually have to usually go a little bit west of us to get proper skiing.

Cool. Awesome. So you kind of have a bit of a kind of hybrid training in the winter months when you have more options available. And then we have our bike set up in the basement, so if we get into a show this winter, we'll usually bike while we watch it. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. That is the nice thing I got into something more like stationary biking.

Earlier in the summer I was dealing with an Achilles issue, and it was one of those things where it's oh yeah, you can definitely. Consume more content, whether it be educational or just something that's interesting to you for one reason or another when you're on the bike versus out running. And I don't know that I would ever be able to do that exclusively, but it is a nice little trade off every once in a while when the running miles have stacked up a little too high.

And there's some really fun ways of doing it. Like the wahoo sits on your road bike and then you can bike all hundreds of routes around the world. So it makes it kind of fun. It changes the elevation for you. You can bike through the Dolomites or something like that. Yeah. Which makes it fun without being as gamified as some of the other brands.

Yeah. Yeah. I got on Swift at first and it was. You have to control yourself in that environment. It's a video game. It almost gamifies video. It's, yeah, if you're okay, I was just supposed to spin easy and now I'm on this back and forth with some guy. I have no clue who he is that keeps passing me on this route.

So yeah, they all have their purposes, but you gotta go in knowing what you're looking for, I think with those. But yeah, some of those, some of them, like the treadmills and the bikes now too, where they do that. They have the course profile or a route that's kind of interesting and kind of walks you through.

It actually adds a pretty interesting dynamic to what would otherwise be a pretty boring experience. Yeah. Certainly. Cool. Anne, I don't wanna take up too much of your time 'cause I'm sure you've got like a run or a shift coming up to, to get busy with, but it was great to chat with you, but before I let you go, I do wanna let you share with the listeners where they can find you online.

If there's anything coming up outside of the running stuff we talked about that you're interested in sharing, more than happy to link all that stuff in the show notes. Oh, thanks so much. So I'm on Instagram. Flower Pal. I am associated with Protect Our Winters, so you can find me on the Athlete Alliance.

And then I'm also the medical director of a medical nonprofit called Mountains to Mountains, which is in its starting days, but hopefully going to big places real soon. Very cool. I'll link that stuff in the show notes so listeners can check it out and we'll all be. Very excited to see what you do coming up here with the Trail Hunter K stuff and everything that comes after that and obviously I'll be rooting for you to go after that a hundred mile world record.

Yeah, I'll need some advice, so we'll be in touch. Yeah, lemme know. Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy. It's been so fun. Yeah, absolutely. Take care. Thanks.