Episode 473: The Trial of Miles Chasing Olympic Trials Marathon Peter Bromka

Peter Bromka is a 2:19 marathoner, acclaimed writer, and passionate voice in the running community. Peter transformed his marathon debut from 3:07 to 2:19, coming agonizingly close to the U.S. Olympic Trials qualifying standard. Peter co-hosts the podcast, Road to the Olympic Trails, where collaborates with Lindsey Hein and Matt Chittim to uncover the stories behind the Olympic Marathon Trial Qualifiers. 

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Timestamps:

00:00 Highlight Reel

00:49 Podcast Introduction and Sponsors

02:34 Guest Introduction and Initial Discussion

03:51 The Journey to Olympic Trials

05:08 The Art of Storytelling in Running

09:37 Training Insights and Challenges

11:01 The Road to the Trials Podcast

28:20 Balancing Hard Work and Genetics

40:55 The Challenge of Cutting Time and Losing Weight

41:22 Training Hard and the Importance of Speed

42:37 Setting Big Goals and Facing Potential Failure

43:11 The Mental and Physical Aspects of Improvement

43:55 The Experience of Running with a Pack

44:22 The Role of Calmness and Visualization in Racing

45:00 The Reality of Setting and Chasing Ambitious Goals

45:22 The Influence of Social Media and Public Perception

47:15 The Love for Running and the Drive to Improve

48:25 The Balance Between Pushing Limits and Avoiding Injury

53:23 The Journey of Personal Growth Through Running

01:07:19 The Impact of Influencers on the Running Community

01:16:30 Nick Bare’s Unique Appeal to Runners

01:17:06 The Ethics of Endorsements and Drug Testing

01:24:35 The Rise of Ultra Running and Content Creation

01:31:17 The Influence of Social Media on Running

01:36:45 The Future of Drug Testing in Running

01:49:37 Concluding Thoughts and Where to Find More

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Alright, Peter, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, man. There's so many things to discuss that I was like, we gotta press record. I don't wanna chop it up for an hour and then realize we didn't press record. Yeah. That's the hard part about a topic, like a topic or a person when you're interviewing for a podcast is you don't wanna necessarily just have 'em show up on the recording and then just okay, let's just get into it, make it feel like too formal, but then.

You could easily spend 15, 20 minutes talking about stuff that would be better recorded and put up on the episode. And then you're rehashing it and it doesn't sound quite as authentic then. Yeah, as I just mentioned because yeah, we have only recently met, but I mean I've known of your running for quite a while and we were just talking about before we press record, like running is so many different sports all linked together.

'cause it's just like right foot, left foot. So to be like, this guy's doing really cool stuff that I guess is related to what I do as a marathoner, but like really started to break my brain, so in a really fun way. Yeah. And [00:01:00] I think that kind of gets into one of the topics that we'll hit on today too, which is just like the storytelling side of things.

Because when I find, 'cause when you think about it, it's take your story for example, which I think we should get into to some degree, is you spent. A good amount of time and energy and focus around chasing a goal of qualifying for the Olympic trials. And at the time, the qualifying time was a two 19 to get in on the men's side, and you had the unfortunate situation of being the closest to not qualify with a 2 19 0 2.

And then you followed that up at 2 19 20. And it's so you hear that and you're like, okay, I gotta learn more about this guy. And then you look into the store and you realize, I think your first marathon was like a 3 0 7 or something like that. So then it's Yeah, as a charity runner. So it's like.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just one of those things where I think the story almost presents itself in a way where it catches you. And then as soon as you'd be like, oh, okay, that's interesting. Too bad you didn't make it. You see something else, oh, I gotta learn more. [00:02:00] And then it pulls you in further and further.

And I think it just really highlights that side of when you think of it like there, there's a lot of two 19 marathoners. I don't know, I wish I knew them. Two 19 is a super impressive marathon time, but it's just, you're not gonna run into them because you just don't always get exposed to things.

But then yours I get exposed to because of the storytelling essentially. And I think that's what brings a lot of that together, where we do have this like big running umbrella and then all these little encampments underneath it that sometimes these stories transcend the little encampment and then the other ones hear it and think, oh wow, that's in, that's incredible.

Yeah it's really fair and I've given it a lot of thought over the years because, so I grew up a writer. I worked in design for many years and I was working at Nike when I ran, and wrote my first essay about the marathon. So people know me online, both on Instagram and now on Substack as someone who writes about running.

But I backed into that, like I backed into a Marathon. I grew up running, ran in high school, ran a Division III college, but then was so [00:03:00] burnt out on it that I gave it up for many years, didn't compete for seven years, and then got back into marathoning after the Boston Marathon and was like, so appreciative of these moments I was experiencing that.

I started writing about them a little bit on Instagram and then I started writing essays about them, and I, it's a little bit. I'm very thankful that I did that, but I didn't have a grand plan for putting that story out and this was over a decade ago, the idea of being an influencer or like being a storyteller or content creator just wasn't being talked about at that time.

And so I'm a little conflicted and we can get into it. I'm very thankful that I captured my journey in a format that left the work till after the event. So I got to take in the event very viscerally and then I would sit down, sit down with a pint the day after and write it all down.

And so I. I'm both like, I'm of two minds. I really like that. I get to go along, ride along with people who like to document their journeys with cameras and all these things. And at the same time I'm like, man, I, I used to, I studied anthropology in [00:04:00] school and like cameras change, the presence of a camera changes the experience.

It doesn't need to always be negative, but I'm thankful that I didn't have that I lived in this bubble of this moment where social media was rising, but we weren't yet trying to document everything while we were doing it and me and my buddies are, I'm 45. Like we're a slightly different era.

And so yeah, I'm just super thankful that I put my head down, got to work with the running, and then also just got in this rhythm of telling stories on Instagram, telling essays online such that people got to follow along. But it wasn't my first. Like the following alone was a secondary positive experience.

And so I don't, I'm really open-minded to what this looks like as people tell more stories. But certainly I was in awe of the guys I at my peak fitness got to run around. And at the same time, I knew that most of them were pretty anonymous to the rest of the world. They were just like, that guy just could run two 18 [00:05:00] marathons and go about his day.

Yeah. And I was like, whoa, this is the sickest thing ever. Right behind me, for anyone who can see this, I have like my two Boston marathon bibs with my name on it that I got to run with the Profield. And those were just like two of the sickest days of my running life. And I was able to be very present for them 'cause I knew they were gonna be like rare moments that I wasn't gonna be able to hover in that space for very long.

Yeah, it is. It's fascinating. I want to get into just the, your story and how that maybe led to the podcast that you have called Road to the Trials podcast, which I think is just a genius idea because it's when when I think of it through my own like kind of a listener lens, it's I wanna hear those stories.

But there is, there's often a block from like just an accessibility block because for reasons you mentioned, these people oftentimes have full-time jobs. They often have other lives, and maybe they are introverts. They really don't want to hop up on Instagram every morning and be like, Hey, [00:06:00] I'm going out for this 18 mile long run before work.

Yeah. And I can totally appreciate that because everyone's gonna be different in that. But there's still a story there and there's still a thirst for it. So I think like this. When I think of just this sort of landscape we have now where we've got influencers who are the opposite of that, where they want nothing more than to tell you their story and they're really good at it.

So they don't even have to be fast. Yeah. They can just be good storytellers. And then we have these people who are really fast. Maybe they're, they don't want to tell stories or they're not good at telling stories. They don't know how to, they don't have time to, they don't have the resources for all sorts of things.

We have this audience that engages with both of them, tries to engage with both of them, but there's like these weird tiff differences and then someone like you steps in and says, Hey, maybe I could be a guy that sort of plays medium here and tell some of these stories that aren't being accessed and show the world of running a little bit more about these individuals who are, out there grinding out morning miles and running two 15 marathons that none of us know about.[00:07:00] 

Yeah, no, it was really interesting. I was obsessed. So yeah, my story in short is that I. I ran 2 29 in 2016 and I was just like top of the world broke two 30 is a man. You're like, yeah. And then I ran 2 28 and suddenly it was sad, these numbers are chasing more numbers.

Gonna be that interesting. And then my buddies and I ran 2 23 and people were like, are you gonna try to run sub two 19? So I've written essays about this, but I want a two year journey with my teammates to try to run sub two 19 and qualify for the trials. I ran, ended up running 2 19 0 2 like you mentioned, and my best friend and training partner, Patrick Reeves, qualified for the Atlanta trials, to go to that event.

And I'm just like, this is the pinnacle of marathoning this, of the event that I love. So fast forward a couple years and. This summer we're about to kick off. They open the window as they say of qualifying where if you run under now two 16 for men and 2 37 for women, then on 20 March of 28 you'll get to run at this big event.

And I'm [00:08:00] like I described it as like a buffet of stories that were just gonna be left untouched until maybe January, 2028. Like we celebrate the fastest marathoners in America when they run at Chicago or Houston Boston. But there's a whole bunch of men and women who qualify and it's just yeah, we'll get to you in two years.

And then in the final, 12 weeks before the race, some stories are told and there's a lot of commotion, but there's really not much time left to tell these people's stories. And I am, we were like, what if I just attempted to interview every single athlete who qualifies? And this could range maybe on average from 300 people over the next two years to 500.

We'll see. It's growing in excitement and I'm both super excited by it. It's like a dream come true for me, and yet I am nervous because like you're saying, I need to meet someone and try to understand quickly, like what is it about their story that would be really interesting to the listener. So there's any number of podcasts where I just let someone tell their story.

And I'm like, that's [00:09:00] good. But great would be, connecting the dots a little bit. Helping them not only tell their backstory, but illuminate some of the things they do. And what I've found is that it's like any hobby you have. I've been obsessing over this marathon for a decade now.

So I, I joke about, I interviewed Turner Wiley, who's sponsored by Brooks the other day. He ran 2 0 9. He did not win the marathon project, but he broke two 10s and a super good dude who works full-time has a young baby at home and so he's a great guy. And I just look for the heat or like the things that are fascinating and he's yeah, I run 140 miles a week.

And I'm like, okay. And I'll say I love the marathon and I keep coming back to it as an obsession because of the interaction of you need speed and you need strength. And any one thing if you take it to, it's like the person who's I run 150 miles a week, I'm on Instagram, and I'm like, in isolation running 20 something miles a day is, it's not that it's not hard, but it's.

[00:10:00] We know it's doable for humans. Whereas if you're also trying to optimize for a really high vo O2 max and a really high threshold velocity, you're like, okay, now we're talking. That's tension. That's like we're playing with something that's difficult and it's not just, it's just hard to solve and there's not one way to solve it.

So anyways, Turner was like, I'm like, tell me about this seven day week where, yeah. And he is adding it all up and I'm like, wait a second, Turner. We're still short. And he is on Sundays I'll often run like three hours at, uptempo. I'm like, how long is that? He is 30 miles away. And I'm like, okay.

Like a 30 mile, three hour run is just flat out impressive. At the end of a week. So it's just, these are fun little nuggets. Turner wouldn't scream to the world because this was not his demeanor. And I totally respect that, but I wanted to scream it to the world because I'm like, that's sick man.

I just wanna celebrate other people's successes. Yeah, I, it's interesting 'cause the marathon, I think in general is maybe one of the more hardest events to really prepare for because, and in, I'm in the ultra world. So in the ultra world, it of [00:11:00] oftentimes can be, I would say, misunderstood that the further you go or the longer you go, the more impressive or the more difficult it gets.

And it's like you can make anything really difficult. I could do a hundred mile race. It would be easier than a 5K if I approached the 5K all in and then a hundred miles just casually and there's a different sort of discomfort and a different sort of challenge with that sort of, that amount of time being out there.

But the marathon tends to be that distance where it's long enough where, like you said, there's some opportunity to justify running 140 miles per week, but it's also fast enough, especially if you're running a 2 0 9, it's fast enough where you still gotta be optimizing for the higher end of the aerobic intensity spectrum.

And then there's just so few mistakes you can make with that sort of recipe that I just think it, it creates a landscape of intrigue around like, how are these people training? What are they doing? What are they doing maybe differently from their peers? Or what are they, what is everybody doing the same?

That kind of thing can give us some ideas of just [00:12:00] what we can look at as a universal principle for improvement and things like that. It's gotcha. A perfect measuring ground, in my opinion, towards that running space. Yeah. And I, there, there's a clip from a podcast that I saved years ago.

'cause Jim Mosley was trying to qualify for the 2020 trials. And that was, I'm a big fan of his, and he was like on some podcast saying, I think marathoning might be the most difficult of the heart. Or I forget exactly how to phrase it. He's basically saying the trickiest training. He's very fluid at like a hundred mile trail or, the, that type of training comes naturally to him.

Whereas he qualified for the 2020 trials with a half marathon. 'cause that was more challenging and something that just inspired him, so he was on the track with guys down in Arizona and I was like, oh man. One of my favorite runners describes the difficulty of piecing these little systems together.

Similar to yourself, like running a hundred miles blows most of our minds. But I was, you drew me in with. As my friend likes to say, without a goal, you can't score. [00:13:00] And so you were like, I'm going for records. And I'm like, okay, now I'm interested because he could fail. And with failure as a potential, then I'm intrigued.

Whereas I really try to stay positive as people tell their stories, but I quickly sort in my mind whether the things someone's going after has limiting factors that would define success or failure. Like a lot of people nowadays take on challenges that are not easy, quite unquote, or by definition, but if they say they could take another day or two or three to complete that challenge and it would just be more content, then I'm like, all right, that's fine.

I wish that person luck, but it's different then. I'm gonna try to break two 10s, or I'm gonna try to run a hundred miles at a pace that is right at the edge of my ability. I'm like, ooh how are you gonna do that? What are you gonna get after? So yeah, like marathoning, oh, the amount of mileage people run is, I always say you need to run as much mileage as you [00:14:00] can.

Now that you can part is, yeah, there is the key. Because yeah, if you, it really breaks people's brains. And I'm a marathon coach, I backed into it 'cause I am not, I don't lead with science, but the science is fairly straightforward to understand and then the human element of people being like, why didn't this work?

It should have worked. I've run a hundred miles a week before. And you're like, yeah, but were you also doing the intensity that now I think we're gonna try to turn that dial up. And so the need for speed work, the need for sort of threshold training and. Oftentimes trying to convince people who run a few marathons to get interested in, say, a road race of a shorter distance or even a track race.

And then they ask how am I gonna do that? And then you're like, okay, let me talk to you about some hill training. Some track workouts that then allow them to be like, whoa, this is a lot of systems and it's stressing my body in different ways. I'm like, oh, don't forget [00:15:00] about lifting because lifting.

And I'm a big fan of being short, intense. I developed a lifting program with a strength coach at Nike years ago. That's about 20 minutes that I do a few times a week. That more just keeps like I say, keeps my chassis in line. So I, then you can stack the work on top of it. But yeah, that's why it starts to get really fun. All these, you can't ignore any of the systems for too long.

And for the road to the trials, I try to touch on training, but I'm. Hyper aware that it could get boring quickly. So I'm always listening for what are the things they're interested in that for their athletic career is the system they're working on, or like the unlock that they're, and by approaching it that way, we often end up discussing different things with different people because some of them are coming from, just tons of mileage, but haven't really done speed.

So they're really trying to speed up. Other people have been, the NCA athlete who's oh, I thought I was like a golden god because I was all American, [00:16:00] but now the marathon is long. And so those stories of like people that we would think of as superhuman, suddenly hitting walls and having muscle breakdown that they had not ever experienced when they were racing, like the 5K, 10 K.

So it's. It's definitely fun to dig into the details with people, and I'm hyper aware as a host that A, we can edit it on the back end, but really can we search for those nuggets that make this person tick or that they're grappling with? And so it's not just like rinse and repeat yeah, everyone does the same thing.

You're like, right, sure. Ballpark. Yeah. Yeah. It is one of those things where when you get into training, it's probably something where there might be some wow factor and some listener interest on the polar ends, where you get someone, oh, this guy ran 180 miles per week. Yeah. Or, this person got in with 60 miles a week.

How did they do it? That's maybe a little bit of an eye catcher, but then the majority of people are probably gonna fall more towards the middle of what we would expect, where they're, hitting like right around a hundred miles per [00:17:00] week and they're doing certain types of workouts.

There may be some variance in the order of operations with all of that, but it probably doesn't deviate too drastically to the degree where you're gonna be able to tell that story 300 times and have people still interested in it every time. Exactly. And that's where social media is really designed to like.

Rapidly I figure out like, what's this outlier, what's this interesting story? So I'm running the highest mileage. Or there's a woman, Felicia, who we haven't interviewed yet, but she qualified at New York and she has put a lot of content out about running about 60 miles a week and doing tons of cross training.

And then, because she's an outlier, and now she's a former, like very good swimmer. Okay, her aerobic system is very elite. And then she's pairing it with cross training that I'll have to learn more from. From afar, I'm able to see okay, so she's now getting strong through like lots of elliptical, lots of stair climber so muscle resiliency [00:18:00] and, but man, she's then able to make a ton of content out the haters coming out of the, woodwork and being like, this can't be true or you're lying about this and she's probably not lying about her training.

But she's also probably, it's easy to, for certain people to yada over I don't inherently know what a good swimming athlete is capable of on the roads, and so she's making, there's a margin there, she's playing well off of, which is she's a very good athlete and it can, you can tell the story that she's pretty new to it and she's just like approaching it in a certain way and you're like, yeah, but she's sitting on a reservoir of aerobic capacity.

Yeah, I think these things are, like, the outliers and the different ways of approaching are fascinating. And, but again. It has a central through line for me because they're really trying to hit this, they have hit this threshold that's empirically, like it's just set statistically to be very difficult, for the women, for those following, like two cycles ago it was, the qualifier was 2 4, [00:19:00] 2 45 marathon, six 15 pace, and like 450 women made it. It was like a big celebration. And then a few years later they were like, actually we're gonna lower that to 2 37. And there was a lot of shock whoa.

That's a six. Flat pace is really, or five 50 nines are really intense. But sure enough, like a bunch of women qualified and we're on pace now in this next cycle, we still have two years to go for quite a few women to qualify because, there's a lot more, there's a lot of inspiration out there.

There's a lot of information. So the shoes, the drinks, the collective pack running, there's a lot of explanations for it, but as the bar rises, people are stepping up to it. I will say for me and my friends who've run, one buddies run two 17, some friends have run two 18. I've run two 19.

When they moved the standard to two 16, I was like, thank you. I'm out. Yeah. I'm ready to go home. And I just think it's fascinating. Maybe you could talk about this in relation to some of the [00:20:00] events you do. It just sounds like more numbers to people. They're just like, I don't know, man. Two 16. I'm like, okay.

When they moved it from 2 8 19 to two 18 for the 24 trials. I was, I spent about a year and a half going like maybe that's only 62 seconds faster than I've run. Now, it turned out for any number of reasons with my life I have, I was unable to harness that same fitness, let alone more fitness.

But it's just that when you start to plateau and the work can compound, but the incremental gains get really small and you're assuming you're gonna have another great day. It's, for a lot of people it's like inputs and the output will just be a pr and you're like what about the good weather day?

What about not getting injured in the six weeks before? What about life just co cooperating such that you're not ill on the day? When it went from two 19 to two 18, I spent about a year and a half trying and just wasn't able to harness the fitness, and then they moved it two minutes down.

And I like to [00:21:00] say the people I ran, let's say four marathon attempts. Where I was trying to get in that realm. And there was only about three miles amongst, I think let's call it a hundred miles that I ran. There were only about three of them that were at five 11 pace or faster. And that's what you have to average to run under five 16.

And two 16 is five eleven. And I was like, so I have never proven to myself that I could harness enough oxygen and flow to sustain that for an hour, let alone two hours two hours plus. So it's just fascinating 'cause that can sound like being a hater to yourself or it can sound like, just work harder, Peter.

Yeah. Just work harder. And I'm like so I came up with an analogy about this because this idea of hard work, I really struggled with, and we'll get into it. It wasn't making this mantra online, like hard work wasn't really computing in my brain. And then I realized. It's because everyone I [00:22:00] was around when I was training was working super hard.

And like then you interview qual trials, qualifiers and certainly some of them still have capacity where they hope to improve in the next two years. But my son is big into Minecraft and Dungeons and Dragons. I'm like, these are players where if you look at their attributes, their hardworking skill is maxed out.

They're just not, there's no more hard work capacity that they then need to work on the other things. They're by no means perfect athletes, but you're just like, oh, maybe for some people, particularly like newer runners, people who are like getting, we have such an amazing wave of new runners post pandemic.

They're like, their minds are getting opened up to how much this sport can consume you. Which I'm super into, but. I, because then, sorry, lemme say, harder work does not always equal better [00:23:00] performance. And I learned that the hard way in college by burning myself out season after season and really being upset about it.

I'm writing a book about the marathon and it is just as simple as in college. I thought if I really wanted it, if I really wanted it, I would, it would lead to success. And that led to, you can't want it more when your left calf is totally shredded or like your hip is off. And so then your stride, your gait is not aligned.

And so then you're losing X percent of efficiency per mile and suddenly. I was like, oh, I thought I was just, my intent was true. My heart was pure and I wanted it. And sure, maybe we have better science and technology and understanding of the systems nowadays, but I'm like, oh, wow. Wanting, it was never the issue.

It was balancing wanting it with overdoing it. And that's what I see with a lot of the athletes I coach is the like, being like whoa, I need to hold you back. You wanna go run [00:24:00] more and more and, or you're like, if I could do three workouts a week, could I do four?

And you're like, the question is, can you do, just as much work as yours is sustainable Right on that edge. And there were times when I was training where I was like, this is not sustainable. I am existing in the zone, being out exposed on a, like a cliff where you're like, I need to watch every step I take.

And I probably, it's not like I'm gonna camp out here for the foreseeable future. I would like tiptoe across and then hopefully stay in that zone for a little while. And the pros talk about that. Elliot K talks about how focused he got in the six weeks before Shalan Flanagan used to talk about her even her weight and like how her body composition was like, would hover in this zone where it really wasn't sustainable, but that's what training brought the edge training brought her to.

So I find it all fascinating because it's not so straightforward. It's a balance of things. Absolutely. And I think it also highlights just like hard [00:25:00] work applied correctly can take you to your logical conclusion genetically. And then there's gonna be that component too where I think a lot of times when we see some of the new people coming into running that kind of take the hard work philosophy, they assume like hard work is all that's required.

That's the only ingredient to success. And it's a big ingredient, but there is a reason why if Kipchoge ran 40 miles per week, he could probably still beat most marathoners. Yeah. Yeah. And when you get this, you get this scenario where you get someone like that or Kip them or, any of these top tier world class marathoners is, they are the, this scenario where you get.

This perfect recipe of, they applied the hard work consistently over time. They got probably a little bit lucky just because they didn't have anything crazy come up and get an injury or something that sidelined them for a long period of time. And then they also just have all the genetics, they're [00:26:00] running economies great.

Their VO two max potential is high. And it just everything lines up for them. I always go to the extremes to kinda show this point. It's if we took like LeBron James and put him on the most rigorous marathon training program, there is a limit where he wouldn't be able to get past. And it's quite a bit slower than Kip 's world record.

Yeah. And that's just the way it's just if I took, yeah, if I took Cocho and just started training him like an offensive lineman, there's no world in which he's starting for any Division one program. No world. So these are just like, there are, that just tells us like there are gonna be genetic limitations.

And I think when we move away from the extremes, that becomes something that's more worth testing than, say, let's see if we can get LeBron James to run a 2 0 1 marathon. That's probably not worth testing. No. If that's our only goal and he's not interested in doing it. But yeah. But it brings up something we talked about a little bit too, which is one thing that kind of put a spotlight on all of this was when Truett Haynes jumped he went he's a great example of this.

He's a, he's, he's a person who has [00:27:00] always been in health and fitness, but went almost the. Opposite direction to a large degree of what you would expect a runner or a marathoner to do for a good chunk of his life. And then decided after he had, exhausted his interest in certain areas maybe, and was looking for a new challenge, decided, hey, maybe I should explore what I can do as a runner.

And I think he surprised a lot of people with how fast he got in the last year. And rather than just saying you know what, that sub two 30 I ran at CIM, that 2 25, I ran on that downhill course. I showed all you because I predicted sub two 30, I'm gonna move on to another target. He decided to double down and say, all right, now the next goal is the Olympic trial.

I'm like, oh, here we go. Let's go. Yeah. And I think that brings up, I think maybe topic one with that is, which is one of the reasons why you're probably the perfect person to talk to this about is like you, you started out. Your first marathon of 3 0 7, you work that down to a 2 19 0 2 that's a huge amount of time.

Yeah. And it is one of [00:28:00] those things where I'm sure early on you probably felt like if I apply more of this, I get an equal return on that investment in improvement of my time. And then you get to a point where you've done all those things, you've been working hard, and now you're chiseling away at like fractions of a percentage and hoping you get good weather because that could be the determining factor between a PR and not a PR.

And you start getting into that. So like the big question then becomes, I think, or the debate is has Truitt hit that point in his trajectory where we should start seeing a plateauing and he's got to work just as hard to get two seconds versus two minutes? And is that ramp enough to or?

It. If he isn't there yet, is the difference between 2 29 and two 16 such that he can or can't do it? And that's where the debates and the endless online arguments begin. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing where it's like, there's the question like, can a man who's relatively new to [00:29:00] full-time running who's run 2 29, run under two 16, and then there's the like pomp and circumstance around it, there's the the bravado with which he speaks.

One thing I'll say is I definitely respect both what Truet and Cam his dad have done with their exploits. They're Oregonians, I'm an Oregonian and what I appreciate is I always say I'm just like a skinny runner dude. I grew up in Portland, Oregon and have my own view on things and not everyone's gonna have that view.

I have friends who grew up closer to sort of like the hunting culture, the like blue collar Oregonian and they're like, man, you gotta understand like. Being a skinny runner dude is not popular in some of these environments. And so I have tried to be increasingly open-minded . I'll see visuals and words that I'm like, that's not for me.

And then I'm like, you know what? If that's how they approach this sport of running and their bringing people in and [00:30:00] inspiring people to run, like I'm all for it. Even though initially I had a friend who is loosely connected to their world and he is, he grew up in eastern Oregon and he is a man, like we just wanted to, growing up we wanted to show how tough we were.

He is I loved running, but I needed to talk about it in a way of it's, staring down failure and being tough about it. Whereas I approached it from toughness it was assumed that just running is so hard even when it was the three K in high school and then the 5K and 10 K in college.

Like we. To me, toughness burns off pretty well and good by an hour and a half into a marathon. And so then it's more how I approach it and how I've written about it is more like this tranquil, like harnessing like your most positive, like jamming your system with positivity such that you still believe in yourself, like for the next step and for the next step and for the next step.

So yeah, you've been kind enough to mention like the 3 0 7 where I like [00:31:00] didn't really know what I was doing fueling wise and I definitely got super blurry eyed and was like coming through. When I started to get a little faster, someone shrewdly on one of the message boards years ago was like, Hey, that 3 0 7 was like a shitty outlier.

He had run like low 15 minute five Ks in college and he was more probably capable of a 2 35 or, whatever. So like a lot of runners. It looks sexy online on social media to say like, how slow can I have gone so I can cut off two hours? And you're like, yeah, but that's, a scientist would've a better term for this, but that's like the low end of your capacity.

So Truet ran a much slower marathon a couple years ago, just like totally untrained. And to me that's like good on him for doing it, but it's not indicative of anything. So going from four hours to three hours for him as a genetically talented, strong person, he's a world record holder in pull-ups, right?

So you're like, this guy is just a ball of muscle [00:32:00] and ability. And also just stared down very difficult tasks. I don't know a lot about pull-ups or like the training necessary for that. What I would say is I welcome what my buddy, who is like a bow hunter and owns many guns, was like.

What's up man? Do you think Truitt Hanes can run the trials center? I was like, what do you know about this? He came across my social media. I was like, okay, that's fun. Like I'm running a whole podcast about the trials and this friend has never asked me about the trials. 'cause he has no relation to it.

It's just these skinny, fast people in his mind. Whereas yeah, someone who breaks two 30 is and still is stepping into it. You posted about it and my question that I commented was, I'll be interested, I'll be very impressed if he sticks with it for a full year, let alone the two years left in the window.

And that I really, on social media, try to stick to things that I mean, and [00:33:00] that maybe push the conversation but are not intended as snark and they're not intended to dunk on anyone. At the time I was like, who is this guy? I'd heard of Truet, but I. Not in relation to the OTQ.

And a few people commented back that you have no idea how hard he's willing to work. And I'm like, okay man. Like beauty is, and this is what I come back to, all these, is you could try to shit, talk, run all you want. And I am like, have at it, just run your mouth endlessly.

Running the clock does not care. It just doesn't matter. Like I grew up a soccer player and we would like, talk shit and try to get in each other's heads. And I loved that side of the sport, but like running doesn't care about your shit talk. And so I am, if it fires 'em up and keeps people going, like by all means, at the same time, I'm a little bit.

I'm slightly adverse. I will say too, that the haters don't believe I can do it, like us versus them. I just think I really would love it, and it's not gonna be for everyone in our like [00:34:00] divisive culture these days, like to avoid some of the conflict around these pursuits. Because what I saw as an OTQ chaser was like.

We would try to compete in the final, 10 K, it would be like, but only as a mechanism to get ourselves to just run as fast as possible. But for the first 20 miles, it was just like teamwork. We're just like, Hey man, like if you'd been there, I would've been like, Hey, do you want any of this drink?

And you'd be like, no, I'm good. And then I, I, there were any number of times where I bumped into someone and I'm like, sorry. And they're like, no man, it's going both ways. 'Cause we were trying to run as this really tight pack and those were the things that I find endlessly inspiring was like, I found it first time in Chicago when I tried to run six minute pace and I found the six minute pace of men from around the world and we were just like moving as a massive humanity together.

And then I saw it trying to break two 30 in Boston. You would just see the packer and be like that, those are my guys. And we'd zip together and like I would lead Somem. They'd lead Somem and you end up in this you end up [00:35:00] having relationships with people that you might not really be close friends with, but you've really worked at a goal together in this intense way.

And I still stay in touch with some men who've stopped running and also some men who are like two 14 marathoners now. And I'm like, man, like you're the man. Like I'm just my whole heart cheering for them because it's not us for STEM when we're trying to get the most out of ourselves. Yeah. It's funny to me because now with online stuff, it feels like a lot of us first them or even like the animosity is not trust or the person who's trying to critically examine his potential.

It's all the kind of I guess almost I don't wanna say uninformed, but just like passion that comes with it. 'cause it's like, the funny thing is like I, these conversations always fascinate me because I'm trying to think like. There's a reason this person is thinking this way, and it probably makes sense if I could put myself in their shoes.

But they have, they don't know what [00:36:00] they don't know. Yeah. So with Truitt, it's like someone comes in and says, you don't know how hard he works for you, but you know how hard it is, you know what it takes. Right? So like I think of that, I'm like, okay, I actually see that as a possibility. Like a disadvantage for him reaching that goal, because I do know how hard true it works.

And I know that's not new. I know that's not something he's just turning on this year, so Oh yeah, he's already pulled that lever to some degree. Yeah. It almost would be better from a potential standpoint if he was like, you know what? I really haven't tried yet. Now it's time to start trying.

Yeah. I'd be like, I'd be like, oh, okay, let's see what this guy can do now. And you and I know those guys, right? Like the ones who were like, wait, he ran 2 22 and he was running like four to five days a week. Yeah. What I mean, so that's where the numbers get lost on a lot of people who are newer to running, which I totally respect is it's not if you run a 2 22 marathon you're quite quick and you're totally anonymous to the sport.

But we've all, if [00:37:00] you're around the sport long enough. People are always like, oh, he's a freak. Or he, like he said he took most of the winter off, but now he's already doing tempo runs with us, and you're just like, yeah. Oh my Lord. There are some, we've known the guys who can't seem to either stay healthy, which is a huge thing.

Maybe first it's want it's A, B and C on the list, stay healthy. And then there's, there are guys who I'm sure you've trained with 'em where you're like, oh, his inspiration wanes. Like it comes and it goes, yeah. And those are the guys you're like, man, I wish I could lend him some of my likes, right.

Passion for this. So yeah, no if someone wants to cut off a lot of time, it'd be great if they were eating horribly or if they, I was, my question to Truitt would be, how in one vector would be like, how skinny are you willing to be? You're used to being this totally jacked dude that the world really admires and we're gonna have to.

Lose. You just can't drag around all that muscle mass if you want the efficiency at five 11 pace. Yeah, and I [00:38:00] think about working hard, I'm not sure the type of people you've trained with. I just have a list of men. My buddy Johnny, who's a two 17 marathoner, he has not run under two 16.

He ran it at the last trial. He ran it the last two trials. He does work at Nike and has a son, but he runs 10 plus in the morning and he runs four plus in the afternoon every damn day. And so you're like, I don't think you're gonna outwork Johnny. I just don't. It doesn't really feel like the capacity now, is there ways of getting faster than he is potentially.

And I appreciate it, I've looked at some of the content Tru has put out around, he knows this endeavor will require him to get faster. And speed is, oh, it's like a tricky mistress, because you can like, do some of it and it can pay off and they can do some more, and suddenly your calf is pissed off, or you're like the, like, why, you know why I just, I didn't do that much more than I [00:39:00] did last cycle. And you're like it doesn't, it, the body is not a machine. It's like a series of soccer things. So I think the, I like how you're dissecting it, like there's these different variables and which ones could he pull more of?

Or could anyone who says I'm gonna stare down a big goal and will I, what I will say is. I appreciate that Truitt has set a goal that he could fail at, because there are a lot of people who make content who pick things that, again, don't really have a crisp definition, and so then they can just move, hide the ball, and be like, yay, I succeeded. And you're like, what? What? What even was that? Whereas this is definitely a crisp definition. My curiosity was like, how he'll approach. 'cause we talked to every runner who wants to improve. Like I interview two 14 marathoners and they just really want to be 2 0 9 marathoners.

And then it's like how mentally and physically are they gonna think about training at faster [00:40:00] paces, taking on more work, going out at races a little bit faster. I always say when they announced two 16, I was just so thankful I existed in a period. My peak fitness overlapped with a period where the qualifier was two 19.

And so I got to go out with the pack and be a part of that experience. 'cause if it had been two 16, I would've been a 2 23 marathoner at this point in my life. And I would've been like, I don't, it's a big jump I just ran. Yeah. If you run five 30, you just can't head out and run five eleven.

It's not how it works. So then you have to create a group of people who also want to go to this race and run, let's say five twenties. Somewhere in that. Like that would be a, but I got to, and I also got to witness the guys who jumped on the OT Q Pac who weren't prepared for it, and be like them. I've written about how I very mentally prepared for the first six to seven miles to be very chaotic.

'cause there would be a lot of men who were like, I'm gonna see how long I can last on this train. And so there were a lot of human bodies, very close to me. And I think to my [00:41:00] great benefit I have visualized that I'm gonna have to be very calm. There's gonna be, it might be difficult to get over to the bottle stations because, but because it's gonna be a lot of people who are very excited and they're gonna be.

Gasping for air. And sure enough, like they were just like, and so that I would use that as a positive reinforcement cycle of my calm, my breathing is calm. Can I breathe even calmer? Can I slow my heart rate even more, even as we're clipping along because we're in the first hour of a two hour and 2019 minute race.

These guys aren't gonna be there like in the second hour, let alone the third hour. Right. And then they, and they weren't. So how do you like to set yourself up for those incremental games? Because you can't just, one approach might be like, just go out with the two 16 packs at multiple races, but that's a really tough way to live, like psychologically and physically.

Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting science experience. It'll be fun to see what Truett does. I know. He definitely is. [00:42:00] Like the thing I found kind of funny about it too, is just. Some of the commentary. Some of the commentary I thought was really good and some of it I thought was ridiculous.

Where it was like, like one was like, oh, he is just doing this for cliques. That's the one that I was just like, eh, I, that kind of showed me like, oh, you really haven't really been following who this guy is. If you think that's the case. No, don't get me wrong. I think Truitt knows putting a big goal out there and going after these challenges in a document is going to get clicks and getting clicks is the business he's in.

Yeah. But I don't think he's looking at it through the lens of, 'I'm gonna do this 'cause it's gonna get me more clicks because I think he's gonna get more clicks almost no matter what he does. And he could get just as many clicks by doing something that would maybe be a little bit more approachable than what he put out there.

The target. Like he doesn't need to put in two 16 merits. In fact, I actually think if I were true, if my number one goal was to get clicks, I would've probably been like, alright. [00:43:00] I've run this running thing to its logical conclusion. I met my goal of breaking two 30. I proved the haters wrong. Ha. Here's my middle finger.

Now I'm going to do this. Who knows what. Maybe it's the sub five mile and 500 pound deadlift challenge or whatever. Oh, that thing is crazy. Yeah. There's just dozens and dozens of different, there's other stuff. D challenges that, and his community, it's not like his community. I think sometimes they'll look at this through the lens of they're like, oh, he is engaging with the running community now, therefore he should be serving us when reality is true.

Its community is massively broad and running is part of what they do or what they pay in. Pay attention to. And some of 'em don't really pay attention to running at all other than him. So like they're, he's literally there on the road to running. To me, I think that's just something like if he wanted to just amass clicks and keep that train going, he would've picked something totally different.

But, I definitely love running. It seems it just seems like he loves running which is I see it in little things again, I'm always hyper obsessed on these things. Little [00:44:00] details people say, and I'm like, dude, this guy loves running. Like he wouldn't be doing this. And some social media can get weird in terms of these straw men getting built where someone's disrespecting the OTQ.

And I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? It's a way of saying that person doesn't think he'll cc, but I'm like, dude, the OT Q does not need his respect. Or if he was mouthing off that it was too easy, I'd be like that guy's just wrong. Okay. But he also, there's no such thing as disrespecting the time.

Like it's just being. Being rude to other people online is disrespectful, but saying I'm gonna shoot for this time. If anything, I've talked to you about my progression. When I wrote two 30's, it was like a big sexy number. It's 9,000 seconds. Like I wrote a whole essay about it and people really enjoy it.

And I did, I wrote another essay a year later called Why Faster, where I was grappling with how these numbers started to be a little meaningless. And it was, I was very sad about that. I was like, I can, I could almost see, maybe I'm mapping my experience onto Truit. You break two 30 and you go, shoot, I really enjoyed this running thing.

What's next? That's like [00:45:00] big and sexy and I can go after. I think that social media will always frame things a little bit hyperbolicly. Like it's sub two 30 or death, you're like. You're just not gonna die right. Yeah. Flat out you're like, I'm like you. If he talked to his buddies, I know he is connected to the types of people who run bad water.

I'm like, watch yourself. Yeah. Could really hurt. He might die there. Yeah. You could definitely die there. And I want you to be very careful, whereas I'm like, if you go out really hard at CIM, the heartbreaking cruelty is you just slow down. And then it's just f Yeah. I am not moving.

And I've written about how, like when I was running 5 15, 5 17 pace, when I started running at 5 22 pace, like I was still moving really fast and it was super frustrating and I'm like, I'm moving. I, it wasn't like when I hit the wall running 3 0 7 or fading dramatically, you're like.

Man, man, I'm taking splits on my watch and I'm just moving five seconds a mile too slowly. There's no [00:46:00] death. Thankfully, I watched around that time when a free solo came out and I said to my wife, aren't you glad I pushed myself? And stuff that like, safer. So yeah, I think you're right that the clicks could have come from something else.

And if anything, I worry about a lot of our YouTubers 'cause I'm like, it requires such fresh content cycle, ali and is someone who I totally admire and yet I see how frequently she comes up with a new hook that she, of something she's working on and I'm like, oh gosh Ali, I wish I could just give you like three months of not having to put out content and just put head your head down and train, 'cause she'll be like, I'm trying Hill Strides now. And you're like. What if your training was working, you just had stuck with it longer. So I will be very impressed if Truett I think he can find a way to make content in different ways, but if he has any shot of running, say, sub two 20, it's gonna take work and it's gonna take time.

And I, I don't always think time plays well on social media. Or for the content [00:47:00] type cycle. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be, it's kinda one of those things where it's realistically if Truitt has a two 16 or faster in him, if we're looking at just the odds are it's not gonna, it's gonna take more than one year to get there.

Yeah. If we look at just a, to a normal kind of growth curve and how that sort of plateaus and like you, you inch and crawl your way forward at a certain point. Sure. And that's actually one of the reasons why I was suspicious of the commentary around him for clicks because, oh.

I think because I think he knows that look. I think he picked that goal 'cause he knows it's scary and aggressive. And I think that's the same reason why he tried to do 10,000 pull-ups. 'cause he knew it was like, I could fail epically by this and there will be people that criticized me for it and talk about it for however long they want to.

And I have no control over that. So to me I think that almost like when he put the two 16 goals out there, to me that said, you're actually invested in running, you're actually very interested in [00:48:00] seeing where is the logical conclusion to me as a runner. And maybe that comes from just, I know his dad told him early on you're a runner when he went into different sports and things like that and just said, this would be a great sport for you.

But he just, he was young, kids do what they wanna do and they're not gonna necessarily deal with the rigors of a sport that they don't enjoy for too long. Sure. Yeah, he went a different direction and I think maybe he thinks about that. Okay there were signs that I could have been a good runner, I was a small kid and it took a lot of work to get big.

So maybe had I been a runner, I would've stayed smaller and been really fast and then I'd be, looking at Olympic trials qualifier right now, already in the back. And yeah, I think it's a question he has that he really wants to answer. He wants to know, like, when I put myself entirely into this process, what comes out of it?

So if he does get to the end of this year without two 16 on his resume, then I do wonder does he keep trying for a few more years to see if he can keep whittling the pace down or does he eventually think, get to a point where he is like, all right, that's as [00:49:00] fast as I can go. What you get to eventually, like everyone's going to get to that point eventually where they look at it and it was like, whatever aspirations I had was just a number I came up with.

And then eventually, like I kept trying and then I reached the logical conclusion here where, no more trying was gonna get me faster and that was what I was worth in terms of, yeah. My, my time. That's, that, that's where we go. I always, I'm writing this whole book about the marathon where I did not make the trials.

I missed by a second and a half. They round up to two. And I got, then I went and tried again, like you mentioned, and came 20 seconds short. And what I have realized since the years that have passed is I got to find out how good I could be. And people like to say oh, I do this sport to see how good I can be, but there's always this assumption that I can be better.

And I'm like, I don't know, man, if when you run three marathons within 40 seconds of each other, that's a pretty good statistical data set that says that's about your limit. And sure, like on a slightly better weather day, you can always come up with [00:50:00] some factor. I probably could have squeaked up a little bit better, but I, it, it's easy to focus on what maybe was missing and lose sight of how much went right?

And I'm just like and to give the book away, I grew up not that fast, A small school mile and two miler. And then I went to division three school and really wanted it and broke myself all the time and just really thought I could make nationals, but didn't come close and stepped away from it with deep insecurity around like how painful it was to really try for a goal and fail and.

I came away from the experience of trying to make the trials just very calm. If I have given my all, I have nothing to prove to anyone. That's how good I am. I'm proud of how good I am, and I'm deeply like, respectful of the men who are faster. And that piece was like something I didn't expect would greatly appreciate.

'Cause I see that a lot of my friends are like younger athletes. Like they're just they got a lot to [00:51:00] prove and that can drive you incredibly well. It sometimes can eat you alive if you like, let try to prove to other people, to search for that inner peace.

But I was like, as years have passed, I'm like, man, I'm so proud of that. It stands on its own. I don't have to like shit, talk it to anyone, I'm just like, yeah. Yeah, that's, and I am grateful that I. I'm grateful that everything aligned that, like the standard was in that realm. 'cause again, if it had been faster, maybe I just would've done NFD at three races and you'd be like how good am I?

I still don't know. And yeah, have a deep appreciation for that. I also just really love running and I went through a knee injury last year and wasn't able to run for six months, and I'm coming back to it very appreciative of running. And so there's this grind culture around where I run every day no matter what that I'm like. Hey man, just don't, please don't break yourself.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's no fun to live a life in pain and your body doesn't give a [00:52:00] shit about your goals. It doesn't, I actually talked to a sports psych during the whole period and she's I hear you saying. You want to run for life, move. And I also say, hear you saying you wanna chase, like Masters, American Records, those could be in conflict.

And I'm like, ah, shoot. You're so this idea of it, like we love movement and we love sport. And so I see certain people who put their story out and they're like I don't know. I, when I really dig into it, like I have come to appreciate for instance, like David Goggins, bless his heart, has inspired millions of people to push him, push themselves.

But they're coming from a sense of themselves as weak. I think a lot of people who particularly didn't grow up with sport or maybe grew up outta shape and didn't feel like they were capable, they really respond to this. No, I need to beat back the weakness. Every day, whereas I was super fortunate to grow up a kid doing a lot of sports and then running was part of my community, and so it's just taken me a [00:53:00] while to appreciate like, oh, that message of beating back the inner bitch in yourself, like every day's I'm like, whoa, like it just, I am. I pretty quickly turned that.

I was turned off by that years ago. And then I've come to appreciate how important it is for people who feel down on themselves and feel like they just wanna make something of themselves. And that's awesome. Like anything that gets people doing that now, I caution them to please listen to the signs your body is sending you.

You can't just start running an hour a day. And you talk about this all time. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. I, Goggins is someone who, I think he comes ac he ends up being polarizing because it's like, if you, if Goggins pulled you out of the Drudges and you turned your life around, there is nobody on planet Earth who's gonna tell you anything negative about him that you're gonna be willing to listen to.

Yeah, I know. But if you're somebody who had all that order and structure in place, and you're like, okay, I'm optimizing for performance, you're gonna look at that and be like, oh and I was trying to think where is [00:54:00] the realness here? And you know what I had Brad Alberg on the podcast, he just had a book.

The Way of Excellence that just came out. And he framed it in a way that I really liked, where it's we're looking at Goggins as we're looking at him the wrong way a lot of times and. One of the things that kind of resonated with me was that like everyone has like a set of values or a value system that they, for whatever reason have determined is something that's worth structuring their ambitions around and, holding them accountable to doing certain things.

And to me, I think Goggins had a very big mismatch between his behaviors and his value system. And that's why he found himself in a position where he was outta shape, couldn't make it around the block and all that stuff. And I think that just. Just destroyed his soul. And yeah, eventually he got around to saying it doesn't have to be this way.

And he, now for him it's it doesn't matter if it's a 200, 4, 240 mile race, if it's him going into the gym and doing, pull-ups or whatever happens to be for him, it's like [00:55:00] his value system is like showing that he can show up and do it and continually do that and in, in his words, beat back the inner bitch.

And yeah, for him that's probably a life worth living that adds value to his life. 'cause he can go to bed at night thinking my value system is intact and I'm behaving accordingly. 'cause we all know when we're diverting from our value system in our behaviors. Yeah. And but for someone else that might not be their value system in the same way, in which case they don't wanna just necessarily plug Goggins into their framework.

They maybe wanna use them as a tool where it's okay, there are gonna be days where I know I'm physically and ready to go do this workout and I. Being lazy and trying to avoid it. I'll throw in a Goggins and I'll just really get whipped into shape and get out the door. Yeah. That's useful.

Yeah. So some of this, I think like with these type of people, you have to appreciate like where do I use them to pull a lever that I need when I need it, but maybe step away from that approach when it comes time to nurse that knee injury or I just did a 30 mile long run and it's time to take a [00:56:00] rest day.

Maybe I don't go out and stay hard. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a really good point. Like I often do, I'm the first person to like my own . I've lived a very privileged life, like a very, like comfortable life. And I love marathoning for the reason many people love Marathon, like pushing you to the edge of your ability, but it.

I've been super fortunate to not go through like true despair, whether it's, like economic despair. Like some people that we interview, come from like homelessness and, and then they pull themselves out. Or like we, I've interviewed Mitch Amens who Yeah. Describes running as like saving him from, he had kicked drug addiction a little bit, but had yet to find the next thing to really drive his life.

And running in that community has really he talks about it from an addict's perspective. I don't know how I was injured for six [00:57:00] months, couldn't run, and my wife at some point said oh, I see now that you're addicted to exercise. And it's like these terms have technical definitions, but there's also yeah.

When people are like, man, you're so committed. You work out every day. I like it. Listen, man, it's just not really like I eat every day. And I sleep every day and like no one says you're super committed to eating and sleeping. Like I just consider movement, like the other thing I'm gonna do every day.

And because at this point it's so hard wired into how I feel at my best. And so yeah, I sometimes have to, like you're saying, walk a mile in someone's shoes, who they're not, in my view, fortunate to have that as part of their life and they're just like trying to maybe find it. Different messages are gonna be inspiring to that, but yeah, when I was.

The essay I wrote about the OTQ Chase was called The Bubble of a Dream because I was really like, I'm able to read it back, and be [00:58:00] like, this guy's crazy. Like this guy was like, so I was so focused and I was so driven and all these fun experiences came out the other end as a result. But I wasn't like, what would be, I didn't spend too much time being like, how committed can I be or how, like how much fun can I have?

I was just like, oh man, it would be so cool to achieve this dream. And so all these actions came as a result. And yeah, I think there is gonna be, running is booming. There's gonna be people who come at it from all these different directions. I have a buddy in New York, we'll forward each other reels that come across our social media and we're like, we just always say there's a lot of different types of runners out there.

Yeah. More now than ever. This ain't for me. Yeah. Not for me, but it's like for someone. Yeah. And maybe to tie your experience up a little bit with the marathon is, one thing I think is really interesting about your story too, is I like, if I put myself in your position, I think of it as I think I'd rather have your experience and be a second and a half off what the goal you set out to achieve [00:59:00] and know I gave it everything I had and that's what the result was. Versus say you run the, the alternative is maybe you run 2 18 59 Sure. And you do the trials and then but the back line, you're a two 16 marathoner.

That would upset me more. Ah, yeah. You're like, that would upset me more than thinking okay, 2 19 0 2 or 2 19, 1 0.5 is what I had. That's what I had. Yeah. And that, unfortunately, that's a couple seconds away from what would've given me that big gold star of Olympic trials qualifier. But I think that sits with me better than two nine, yeah.

2 18 59 and the potential of two 16 and Oh yeah. And I'm so fortunate that again, like I almost can't believe it that my ability level. Coming close to this, what was the threshold that everyone was collecting around? Because I ran team 1902 at CIM 2019 and that was just like the fastest I ever ran.

And just like a lights out race. [01:00:00] And, I'm like, sure I can find that. It was a little humid that day. If it had been slightly less, the de point had been lower. My body has been slightly, you can find seconds in these weird ways. But that led me to run Houston a month and a half later.

And just the fact that the pack, so in this race I go out a little bit fast. I'm like, I'm tired of just staring at the clock. I wanna run like five fifteens, which I think I can do for quite a while and set myself up with a good buffer. And I get out there and it's windy and I am isolated. Some of my friends had gotten off to the front of me and I'm just slowing in the wind and I'm like, this is basically over.

Like maybe I'll drop out. And then I started to hear like the pitter patter of the proper OTQ pack is catching me. Which again, in this world of two 16, like I just would've been behind them. Yeah. But this massive humanity, including two pacers, starts to catch me. And I'm like, it's just I'm, I can never find enough words to express how thankful I am that I got to experience this.

This massive humanity is catching me. And you're [01:01:00] like, Peter, you're gonna have one chance to get the laptop. Yep. You get one shot. And I'm like, it's probably over. I can't do it. And I like to slip in behind them and the wind breaking helps a little bit. And I'm like, okay, but this is faster than I was just previously moving.

And I'm like, just give it like a block. Just give it like half a block. And I, this is some in hindsight. Like some of the best lights out running I've ever done. I like blacked out for 45 minutes, just making it one more left, right, left, right, left, right at a time. And then sure enough, with three miles to go, they started to pull away and we were going into the wind and it's just like you can just shit talk for endless hours of how much you want it.

And you're like, now is the exact moment. When you have to put up or shut up. And I gave it my all and I still ran quite quickly, but I lost 20 seconds to the standard and didn't make it that day. But that's where, why I know the road of the trials has a lot of stories to tell because that was all just enveloped.

It was [01:02:00] lost in the river of two to 1920. Okay, fine. And you're like, no, but like I, the little kid in me who like, didn't think he was fast enough in high school, didn't think he was fast enough in college, is I was able to do that and I was able to hang on for 45 minutes when I was like every stride.

I didn't think I was tough enough or could hang on. Like I'm just in awe. And it was all because I was just focused on the goal. I wasn't thinking about myself, I was just like lost in the moment and that's what made it so cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's a phenomenal story and I think it just lends you to be the guy for the job when it comes to a podcast that talks about the road to the trials and interviews these individuals.

I think it's gonna be fun as you can continue to roll those out there. I did have one other topic, if you don't mind. Oh. Yeah. Stick around a little bit longer. I don't want to keep you if you have a hard hour. Yeah. No, I got time. Okay, cool. The other thing that's changed or shifted a lot in the last few years, and probably even after you were really in the thick of it, is we have such a basically from, I would say from [01:03:00] pandemic onward, we've had such an influx of new runners into the sport.

It would be wrong to say that isn't due to new people being drawn in by new people is the way I look at it. Because it, like historically, was one of these things where when new people enter the sport, it was because people who were embedded in the sport brought them in and then it grew from there.

And that's like a slow process. I would say like during the pandemic we would have these kinds of pandemic runners who evolved into influencers. And these influencers were both new to the sport, but also carried the extra. Benefit or skillset, of drawing in a whole host of other new runners.

Where in the past it wouldn't have been someone new doing that in most cases, outside of maybe like a cel, I guess maybe I'm wrong about that to some degree. You'd always have the scenario where Oprah Winfrey runs the Chaga Chicago marathon. Now a ton of people are running. Oprah wasn't someone who just became a runner and just started talking.

Nothing about running at that point. She went back to her normal gig. [01:04:00] Whereas the influencers build a whole world around the running, the aspect of running, bringing in these new people. So now we have this kind of new leverage point of potential to draw in new runners. We've got this new point of kind of personal branded, almost media that is telling stories, giving advice, showing what they're doing and influencing, not just by oh yeah, I use this gel, and then they get paid and someone buys a gel, but also this is how I train, or this is how you go from a two 40 to a two 20 or a three 30 to a three 10.

And they show that process. And yeah, it's one of those things where it's it. I try to look at these as you're never gonna get anything that is all good and you're probably also so you, especially when it grows fast, things that come fast and big are gonna carry in some unforeseen or unintended consequences or things that we maybe [01:05:00] can focus on or should focus on to some degree.

But we also have to be mindful of not. Maybe focusing on 'em to such a degree that we throw the baby out with the bath water, which is the running community's getting bigger, more people interested in just health and fitness. Finding ways to move their body where otherwise maybe wouldn't. Or in some cases, people who I hate the idea of someone thinking I can't be a runner and just never trying it.

And I think influencers bring those people in. Like them, they bring those people in because they're so much more relatable in a lot of cases. 'cause sometimes they're where they're at because they had a story of I can't do this. And then they're literally showing you, you can, and if you're that person you see some two 10 marathoners, you might think, yeah, but that person has been running since middle school.

They competed in D one and then I can't, they're running. Yeah. What it has to do with me. Yeah. And even something as simple as just yeah. The way the person looks. So like you get someone who maybe doesn't fit that runner's mold, that skinny runner mold who is now all of a sudden [01:06:00] going out and running marathons.

Maybe someone who also thought, I can't be a runner, I don't look like that, is waiting a second. They're doing it. And then it creates, it breaks down some of these artificial barriers. So like I said, a lot there, but it's it's one of those things where yeah, we also have the scenario where an opportunity like that comes with financial gain, where you have a situation now where I think influencers in a lot of cases are probably monetizing the sport better than a lot of athletes are.

So you get this tension point of is there this finite pie of sponsorship packages that are now going to influence instead of athletes? I think that's one of the things that kind of cleans itself up a little bit with growth. 'cause with growth, the pie gets bigger too, and if they're making the pie bigger, but I think the one that kind of gets a little bit more.

Messy in some cases is, are these stories they're telling authentic enough that it's gonna actually guide people to be able to do the things they're trying to do? With elite athletes, obviously we don't have an [01:07:00] amazing system when it comes to performance enhancing. There's obviously pro athletes out there who are getting away with cheating and therefore stealing from the sport, so to speak.

But there is a system there, yeah, with influencers. There's really no system there. So you know, you get into the world of like more. Influencers that are more in line with performance versus just doing the sport. Now we kinda have to ask ourselves a question like, is that an authentic thing they're leading people on?

Are they being transparent around what they're actually doing? And that goes outside of performance enhancers too. It could even just be like the way they're training and things like that. Ah, yeah. So it definitely is muddied. Yeah. Do we need guardrails or are there guardrails we could even put in place realistically that would help keep that side of things maybe as pure as we can expect it to be.

That's what I'm, yeah. I like your point about can we keep growing this pie? Can I put up a thing around, I'm a nine time finisher of the Boston Marathon. I've run it as a charity runner, an open field runner, [01:08:00] an elite start runner. I love the race, I love coaching people to the race. And I got a little irked last year.

I was like, people are using this stage that I adore. Boston has all sorts of things that's wrong with it. And like Boston is the city. There's a lot of history. Fine. But I think it's wonderful that it's like the amateur Olympics of marathoning and then I saw these content creators really like shooting commercials during the race.

Like they're very choreographed. I will do this and then you'll stand there and then I'll finish and I'll come over to you and I'll be like, let's go to Rais and Cane's for our Cool Down meal. Really high production value. And I'm like, what is going on? And I get their time. This is where numbers get really squishy.

'cause the time doesn't really matter. They weren't, truthfully, they were probably thinking as much about running a fine time while still like making sure they looked presentable. Like they're not gonna be like passed out on the street. You can't shoot your commercial off at the end of the race.

It's just, I'm like, what am I looking at? And talking to a friend who was like, I posted on. A [01:09:00] real hey, I really love the Boston Marathon because in my view, everyone shows up and throws down. And on that day you just get to see where you land. There's a lot of races that aren't like that and this is one of them, not the only one that people, you, they literally line you up by like your qualifying time based on your bib number.

And then you just, you can try to compete. Which I think is beautiful and I am a big fan of people. I always say I am here for athletes trying to perform and that can be at breaking 2 20, 2 33 hours, four hours like I am. I coach people who are like chipping away at trying to break the four hour barrier, but they're of the similar mindset of trying to love that marathon lifestyle.

Whereas, yeah, 'cause the numbers are so squishy. I've seen people who are like, I'm a 2 45 marathoner, let me tell you how it works. And I'm like, oh, people don't necessarily realize that for any number of fit men who have run, who have done other sports and are like. Fit enough. Like a 2: 45 is both like [01:10:00] thumbs up.

And it's also not that hard. It doesn't mean that they like cracking the code, it doesn't mean they really even know why they did it, they like it so there's all these people Yeah. I like selling stuff. This is where you see it online, like the world starts to touch, like you can click a few clicks and you go from running to fitness to yeah.

I mean we, I, neither of us really wanna talk about the sort of make America healthy again movement or selling stuff where you're like, oh, so yeah, you have capitalism, like just applying itself on top of our sport. And you're like, some of this is. New and additional. Yeah. I worry about some of the budgets for pro runners starting to get cut. Hopefully, like you're saying, the whole sport gets bigger.

We're selling more running shoes and there's more funds available. With the introduction of NIL and high schoolers getting sponsored, we're like, man, there's definitely gonna be some like two 12 marathoners who don't get a contract because there's this kid, who's the future. And we [01:11:00] always love youth and potential.

So the money's gonna pull from different directions. I would say NIL is a different bucket than a content creator. But yeah it's like when you're talking to Peter at my most centered, I'm like, Hey, if this person is say like over 250 pounds and looks like a new runner, like that's gonna just visually appeal to a different type of person and be accessible for a different type of runner.

I've. For instance, like in this space is someone like Nick Bearer, who is just a big yolked dude who's told his story for a decade now. And what I appreciate about Nick is that he has said, again, certain things in certain videos where I'm like, that guy is a, when he chooses to be, he's a real runner.

Like he's really trying to do it all, he loves the sport and he's not just trying to fly by night, make a buck off of our sport. I think I get more irked by people. I'm like, are you even, I had a friend say they're just visitors, man. They're gonna pass through. Yeah, right. And like they won't be running in two years.

But I really do appreciate that [01:12:00] Nick is a, he appeals to certain runners who maybe they do come from the gym culture and they're like, man, being, running, being a runner's lame. But they're like Nick does it. And he talks about it in a way that's different from the Peters and Zachs of the world.

And so maybe I could run a marathon or get after a half marathon. And the older I get the more I look like. How are, what are, what's the incentive structure here and like how are they making their money? Like if they're trying to sell you on I broke three hours, therefore signed up for my AI training plan.

I'm like, oh, this feels a little gross. Whereas right, right. Nick can feel differently about different products and his whole brand and his whole company, but I'm like, he's selling supplements that people could take. I do think around the drug testing thing you just mentioned, the there is now precedent because of the way drug testing works and it fall, it's always we've known, it's been behind the people pushing the boundaries, that SOWE who's sponsored by Adidas, has taken on his own testing protocol in an addition [01:13:00] to being part of the world athletics sport. Protocol to say I want to really prove and have more evidence than even random drug testing, like he's submitting himself to random drug tests.

You can Google it. I wonder if it'll be, I don't know where this would come from, but like this, the chorus of athletes say to certain athletes like, Hey, we know you've gone, you've improved a ton, but could you pass a drug test? Could it be like this, like democratized way of saying I'm willing to be more transparent in how I progressed, or does do people not particularly care, but I will say as a coach and as an empathetic person for other runners, I hope that they're getting information from good sources, not just, yeah. The random person that they come across on YouTube, but we're also in an era, I'm surrounded by books that describe training theory and I'm like, a lot of that stuff has made itself, made its way out into the world.

And people find decent workouts and there's a lot more knowledge out there than when I got into running like 20, 30 years [01:14:00] ago. Yeah. So it's like a weird culture where it's good that people are moving. I try to mute people who I feel like, I just don't need to see this person.

But I do, I worry about the newer runner, the less personally secure runner or the person who knows less. They could just I wouldn't want them to chase something that's, either chemically enhanced or that's not actually being truthful. That would be icky. Yeah. Yeah. You said a lot of interesting things there.

I think yeah. With Nick, the one thing I really like about the way he's approached it is he's avoided this scenario of. All right. I'm coming to this sport and I've got this new edgy way to do it. Like he has been pretty upfront about I don't know what I'm doing. I'm here to learn. I'm gonna hire a professional that is gonna give me the program and I'm gonna show you how I'm doing it.

I'm gonna give you all that. I get up in the morning, I follow my routine, I do this workout, I set this goal. And that's what people are looking for from him. They're not looking for him necessarily, so I'm sure people would if he did, but like he's drawing a line in the sand. I'm not gonna come [01:15:00] at you as the authority in the sport.

I'm gonna come at you as a disciple, and here's the person I chose to help lead me. And this person knows their shit. So I categorize people online into two camps, like you said, one where they're like, running is bigger than me. There will always be something I don't know. And I love the process.

I definitely consider myself that. Like me, running's broken me so many times and I'm just like, man, this is a beautiful pursuit that will never end. Versus the like voices that are like, they act like they're above running. They speak as though I've cast the joint, I know how it works, I'll show you.

And it's pretty simple. And I'm like, that's just incorrect. And so what are they hiding or why are they and there's just always more to learn, even for something that's relatively simple. I did send Jeff Cunningham a friend of mine and has been Nick's coach when Nick has been focused on running.

And I sent him one video where I was like, why is Nick talking about five by miles on the road as [01:16:00] his speed works? And Jeff's oh man. Like a lot of guys do that. Yeah, five by mile is just not speed work, but it is, they call anything faster than say marathon pace. Speed work because it kind of elevates their capacity to go faster. So it's not very precise, but it's not malicious, it's just we're gonna get after something on a Wednesday morning that is gonna improve our capacity to do this thing we love.

And you're like, okay. It's not like you might, and like you said, Nick's not letting me be your coach and I guarantee I can unlock results. That's where we get into this different cycle that's separate. So yeah, I think there's a lot of people, I just. Dumbfounded by how exhausting it would be to be in constant need again, this is the next thing that I can make a video about this month to then keep the eyeballs. That's where and I'm not that successful at it to be totally honest. I don't have that many followers and I don't like it. There are people who play this game so much better, and I'm like, I just don't know how much that plays to being a marathoner. And it is one [01:17:00] of those things too where I know enough content creators and influencers that I see what they do on a day-to-day basis, where I'll see posts online sometimes where it's oh yeah, must be great for you.

You can sit around and. Train like a professional athlete all day long and just live off that big Instagram follow. He's that Instagram account that didn't get there because they accidentally got viral once and then everyone decided to stick around and pay attention to nonsense. Yeah, that Instagram count is big because they're probably spending a full week's worth of work coming up with ideas, getting the production put together and doing all the things that kind of and it's getting more and more as the competition heats up.

'cause people are realizing, Hey, there's a job here and that looks better than my job, so maybe I should try. But I think when they get down into the thick of it, like the real successful content creators are oftentimes working full time, producing that content, making that content and doing those sort of things.

Just like building a business that you would. They're entertainers, yeah. Yeah. Whoa. So I think it's like we have to be mine, I think we have to be careful [01:18:00] like running purists. Maybe not to necessarily criticize them for that, because that would maybe draw some, that would be an unfortunate reason for us to be butting heads because it's not something we need to be arguing about.

Even Yeah. But yeah, you're just like, am I lost? Oftentimes I'll ask myself or ask my friends, is that person's journey impeding your journey in any way? Right. I know that things get more contentious when it's like they got a brand deal I didn't get, or something That Right.

It is pretty far down that rabbit hole. But yeah, we can choose who we follow and like we, for some reason, this made me think of Max Joli, the ultra runner who Yeah. Sponsored by Satis. I was like, who is this guy? But then, yeah, like two of my friends who are more tattooed, like newer runners are like, dude, max is the best.

And I'm like, dude alright, like he's your guy who gets you, fired up to get after adventures. I can make my own call. I've seen enough videos where I'm like, Max seems like a pretty solid dude. And there's always this layer of confusion. [01:19:00] I saw him on a podcast actually, where the guys were like, oh man, if trail running with the Olympics you'd definitely be an Olympian, right?

And he's oh no. He's because he's I got to put MB or like CCC and finish wherever he finished and it wasn't on the podium, he is like he's deeply respectful and I, that's where. He appealed to me and his honesty that he's not saying he's like the best, yeah. He did win a long race in Moab and they made hats that said King of Moab. And I'm like, oh, that's getting really close to that. Yeah, talking about the sport, but I get that it's the hustle. Yeah. But again, someone we've touched on like multiple doors that welcome people who are not didn't walk through the, to the sport through the door, we came through.

Right. And it's yeah. And we see this in ultra running now too, a little bit because the marathon is what it is. It's 26.2. Most of the courses don't deviate that drastically. There's some contention between downhill courses, I guess and flat ones. Sure. But generally speaking, like a lot of the races like Boston qualifying now and Olympic trials qualifying will make sure [01:20:00] that's a non-issue at the very tip of the spear.

With an ultra running. There's an interesting thing going on right now where these 200 plus mile races have gotten really popular as a spec thing. This is crazy. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, listen to this. So it's like the o over the, like my kind of career in ultra running, which began around 2010, it's really been the hundred mile distance has been this like.

Fix your sport, that people are like, this is where you make the money. This is where you make your career. This is the target, this is the end game. This is what the best of, the best aspire to. Perfect. And along the way, as that grew and it's, it grew a lot and it has kept growing to the point where now, like Western states 100 and UTMB are pretty unarguably the top two kinds of premier events in the sport.

But along the way, things like live streaming have come in, storytelling has come in, and these 200 plus milers are generating so much engagement during the event, and they're creating opportunities for these guys like Max Jo. Where [01:21:00] now we're getting conversations where there is a disproportionate amount of interest, not just for the max?

Max Joel did win mo up two 40, so I would say yeah he's a podium guy. But yeah, you get a guy like Killian Kth who just won all three of those races this year in record time, and people are looking at him and they're saying, yeah, but he hasn't really been successful at the hundred mile distance.

So it's, he's playing around in the shallow end, and here we are at a hundred mile distance. Just really, that's where the talent is. And I think that's like such a silly thing to me because it's like, for one, it's like you're upset because he's getting more attention than maybe some a hundred mile specialist is.

And you think that a hundred mile specialist is faster than him, and it's part of me that just cries about it. Yeah, no, totally. He showed up. He showed up to the 200 mile stuff, not because he thought he was gonna get a big payday from it. He spent a ton of money unsponsored to do these events because he wanted to figure out how to do 'em because he [01:22:00] failed epically the first two times he tried.

And he figured out a way to do it and he figured out a way to do it in such a successful way that he won all three of those races in one year. And to me, I think that would be kinda like criticizing the original people who got into the Calistoga wagons and went from the East coast to the West coast.

'cause they didn't do it fast enough. Yeah. You come on. Yeah. It's like the things people say outta jealousy. You're like, wait, so why are you criticizing what they chose to do? I think people often are pointing out some incongruity between. What they, the person did and how hard other people think it is.

Maybe. Yeah. This is weird, just to go back to your point about downhill races, like downhill marathoning is 26 miles and incurs a tremendous amount of muscle damage because of the impact forces. And if you run a time on a downhill course, that's the time you ran on the downhill course. And it's only in this world, like [01:23:00] my peer set doesn't take downhill marathoning.

We don't pay it any mind. Like it's just, it's not discussed. It's not now in this world where people start to run downhill courses to get into Boston, they, Boston had to do some micro adjustments on time stuff there because people were running like 3000. A, I've never, I kind of wanna someday run a marathon to net lose 3000 feet.

Yeah. Whoa. I. I, to bring it back to Truett, Truett ran 2 26 on a downhill course. And then there was just like I came across like the vitriol about it and this isn't a this, or, and I'm like, it just is what it is. Yeah. Now if everyone's trying to say he's like a 2 26 marathoner, you'd be like, sure.

On a downhill course. I've had, as a writer, I get to hone in on words so people will be like, it's not easy running that. I'm like, okay. No one said it was easy, we just said it was a faster condition. Yeah. If you could run point to point with a huge tailwind, that would also be like, that's harder to repeat or recreate.

But yeah, I think that the [01:24:00] jealousy that comes out when they're like, this guy who ran three, 200 plus mile races like isn't as good as he says he is, or someone says he is that like, how much time do we wanna spend, like worrying about, that. I do think your point about storytelling is fascinating.

I was following the coca donut, just like the amount of storytelling. The reels come out live, they're interviewing the athletes while they're doing the competition. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, it made me so sad for marathoning. 'cause I'm like, marathoners are so good. They only get to compete maybe two, maybe three times a year in the big distance, and they certainly can't talk during it.

Right. And then it, and actually the coke that happened right before the Tour de France and Tour de France was so popular this summer. And I was like, man, maybe runners, I wish runners could perform at a high level, but do it more so that there was more content and more storytelling that it's oftentimes like, Hey, let's celebrate so-and-so's marathon, but they're not gonna run again for quite a [01:25:00] while.

And in today's day and age of media, it's and their peak attention too. It's like when they hit peak attention all of a sudden they can't do the thing that got 'em that attention for another six months. They're gonna be gone. Yeah. So Zohar Talavi will, he's an American citizen.

He'll be able to compete for us in 2027. We just interviewed him. He's run, he just ran 2 0 5 and you're like, this guy's awesome, but what is there to really say he's talking about the past, he's not talking about, he's not able to bring you in on like his big performance tomorrow, which is what, in these ultra races, a people are dumbfounded.

Like most people who come in, not even able to grasp what it would take to run 250 miles, which I don't know if I barely can. And so that's an instant good hook. And then it plays out over enough days that yeah, they're able to pull people in, keep them around, and then do some of the the question is like then hearing nutrition advice from that person three days later yep.

It could be good or it could be like, there's a lot of disordered behavior in all of these distance [01:26:00] types of distance, so you're like it's but it's very relatable. Whereas, we haven't touched on Killian. Killian Jeannette came to America, did something that I can barely grasp how difficult it was, and then he flew home.

Right? And you're like, that was orders of magnitude more difficult than anything I can even conceive of. But he doesn't particularly worry about it. He has his, he's at a level where he both makes his life, and you're like, okay. Whereas content creators, influencers there, but pick these little spots of heat and be like, what if I ran all six marathon majors in a year?

And I'm like, okay. Yeah. It's a I could see why it sounds, there's, you're calling out this thing where there's a, people wanna say Uhuh, that's not as hard as. That guy is making it seem, right. Yeah. And it is one thing, like that is a good point. If Killian came out and was like, I'm the best in the sport now.

Like no one can beat me. I'm the best alterna, I'm the top ultra in the world. That'd be one thing. 'cause then he would be doing the same thing from the other side of just trying to make false [01:27:00] comparisons. But he's not doing that. So like part of me is part of me is just look, this is a guy who he's also really articulate when he is telling you what he does.

And he's clearly thought through a lot of this stuff. So it's just a good story. And I think people struggle with the idea that you can have someone that maybe they're not the most talented person we've ever seen enter the sport, just have a lot of success. 'cause all these things lined up where he's got that perfect balance of failure, learning from it.

Success. He's really good at talking about it. He's articulate, informative, and there's a bunch of people who are essentially just trying to solve problems in the sport of ultra running. And he's clearly done that and doing it and letting you see it. So to me it's like that's his selling point.

That's why he wrote something. And some of those aspects about him are, he's just better at, so he should get rewarded for it. He doesn't, he gets rewarded. And also these guys, I will say I, as a fan of ultra running and trail running, but really I consider myself like in the front rows of fandom, but I'm not really a [01:28:00] participant, so I'm like, okay.

Like I was a huge, like I mentioned Jim Ley fan. 'cause I was like, here's a guy who's traditionally fast. Who's gonna just apply that, throw down. I'm gonna try to run every step of it. And, fast forward eight years and Western States, this last year was so exciting. Like it was.

It's gotten to a point where, and I don't think this is always true, like it's like throwing a dozen eggs at the wall and. If two don't break, like in this case, Caleb Bolson and Chris Meyers didn't really break, but they almost broke. They like to finish on fumes. I call it. I saw Chris Meyers at TRE and I was like, man, you finished that.

Like I talk about in an action movie where all four tires are shot out, you need riding into town on the rims. And he's dude, that was, and it's evidenced by neither of the top two finishers coming back this year. 'cause they were like, that took so much out of me. So I'm like, that's for us as our entertainment, but we're probably not gonna see the eight repeat camp.

Like winning it three years in a row [01:29:00] necessarily, or winning it eight years in a row. Like back in the day that'll be tough because competition's gotten so intense. And they were Killian at this finish line. He is like, why didn't those guys wanna run with me? We could have had a nice time together.

They just bolted off the front. Yeah. So some of these events, yeah, I think it's. I'm trying to focus my own energy on being positive. Wow, I can appreciate events that are really extreme, but have shallower competition fields. And then I can also appreciate the ones where they just keep getting steeper and more intense.

And that's, you've done this, you've gone to spaces where you're like, winning some of these races won't maybe compel you, so you're like, I wanna throw, I wanna name some times I wanna shoot after. I wanna name a place I wanna test myself. And like you find a way to make it compelling enough that is worth your all, that you've invested.

I would have to imagine. Yeah, for sure. People do like having that idea of what is your goal out of this? And are you gonna get, so they can see, people are looking for that sort of, that, that [01:30:00] journey. And it's hard to, it's if I turned on Lord of the Rings, and they were just kinda wandering through all these areas and having these little battles, but I had no idea what they were trying to do with that ring.

Like it would be like, okay, what's going on here? But because they said, Hey, our goal is to get the mirror and chuck this thing in there I'll, now all of a sudden I have a target that they're striving for. Yeah. Now you got me. So yeah, the, some of these events, and also, again, I don't even know trail running as well, but what I, in the exposure I've had, there's a lot of athletes out there who inspire people who are like, I'm never gonna be a fast runner, but man, I can be stubborn, I can be consistent.

And so they show up and they skip road running. They skip marathoning and they're like, I now run these like 50 k, 50 mile, and I'm, I'll be out there all day. I'll take the early start, and I'm just like, damn. Huge respect for you. That's technically like the same sport of running, but like such a different application of all these things and, hopefully there's space for different [01:31:00] types of runners and different types of content creators, but. Yeah, I think people sniff out and get angry about things like jealousy or maybe when they feel like people are being disingenuous or kind of not being honest about this or that. But yeah. I did wanna follow up with you too on the, 'cause you had shared something with me that I thought was really interesting with respect to just like the doping in sport as well as now it's not just doping in sport. I guess it's still a sport, but maybe we need to be concerned about doping outside of just the people on the podium and Yeah.

'cause it's interesting I've had this, I've had big influencers on the podcast, creators on the podcast, and I do get questions from listeners sometimes. They're like, you should ask 'em about doping. You should ask 'em about whether they're doping or not doping. Yeah. And I'm always I haven't found a good way to really address it because for one.

Usually, in most cases, these people have either been on the record saying, this is what I do, and okay, now I'm [01:32:00] transparent about it. Or they say, I am clean, I'm not doing anything wrong. And then, suspicion still is there because, maybe they look like Nick Bear and people are like, yeah, there's no way you can look like that and run that fast.

And you get that sort of conversation and they think he's lying. Yeah. So it's for me to ask that question, it's like a speculative question versus any sort of thing that's gonna inform us in a way where, 'cause it's if I have Nick Bear on, I ask him, Hey Nick, are you doping? You think he's gonna decide all of a sudden just to be like, oh yeah.

Yep, I am. Yep. Here we're, here we go. I lied to all those other guys, but now that I'm on your podcast, I'm gonna totally come clean. He's gonna tell me the exact same thing he's told everyone else. Sure. For me it's not an interesting topic unless there's some way that we're trying to solve for the problem that we're really trying to get at there, which is.

Is there a way for us to have these content creators and influencers show that the path they're taking is similar to someone else who is who's trying to do it clean, or if they're not doing it clean, just be transparent about it so we can apply that sort of variable to [01:33:00] their results. And that's what I'm curious about.

Yeah. And I, is there a way to, yeah, sorry. You go. Yeah, and I was gonna say, I think like you proposed like an idea that I thought is probably about as unique that you could let's say you have a big influencer on this would just be a question. You could ask 'em what they think about, and then that would be a way to introduce that topic without just saying, Hey, are you doping?

And then we just get speculation, which doesn't really get us anywhere at the end of the day. But when you described, which athlete did you say it was? One of the Adidas athletes had put Yeah, Sebastian swe, who, yeah. Yeah. See, I won Berlin. And you're like, it's a, we're at a level where, world Anti-Doping Association has their own protocols, and then that whole system is not perfect, but it is the system.

And I was like, I was curious about a world where I can go down the street and get a blood test for any number of things, like will it become more popular to say oh, would you be, due to, how do I say this? Would you be willing to submit yourself and [01:34:00] participate in that pool of random drug testing by certain standards?

I will admit I pretty quickly got to the edge of what I even know about doping because I took an iron supplement when I was doing my marathoning, and that was the extent of it. So people start to say that guy's on peptides or this, and I'm like, why is this again, like so we're, it's a little bit hard to.

Ever get your hands around because on one end you have the never ending gray area of things people might be doing. And then on the other side you have okay, we have a formalized protocol that's rather expensive to implement, tests for these things in these ways. And there's any number of amazing stories from Olympians who are like, you need to be ready to, you have to update your whereabouts.

You have to like, so that you can't avoid testing for, because testing or doping, I imagine, I grew up during the Lance era and had my heart broken by someone I thought just was pure and like a hard worker and then turns out like he just was better at doping. Very good cyclist, but [01:35:00] is better at doping than everyone else.

More brazen. And so it's hard to imagine what we would even be proposing, but I do think it will be increasingly. We were talking about how they used to, and they still do test the podium, maybe test down the first like within the top 10, some random which would be stuff, prevent, you prevent a certain athlete from doping.

'cause out of fear, it would be a deterrent. Whereas if you're gonna, we were talking about Truet Haynes because he is like the most famous person to try to go for the trials. I've been interviewing all these people who have left smaller platforms than him. So that's why we're discussing him when you used to like, finish on the podium, get the spotlight, get the camera crew, and then also get tested as a result.

And now like you could finish 70th at CIM, be dope to the gills. Bring your own platform. I'm not saying this is true, it, I'm just saying whoa, the incentive structure is totally tilted on [01:36:00] its side that the, these platforms that we're using, like for instance, everyone gets to run, the, these races, 26.2 miles, almost like precisely, they get the benefit of that. Now, technically, people have pointed out when you sign up, you, in the terms of agreement you say that you're agreeing to certain things, like not taking performance, enhancing drugs. I had forgotten that it was in that verbiage and I'm sure most of us just ignore it. 'Cause it's not really, it's who's it hurt? And you're increasingly in a world of AI and weird claims are we gonna wanna know will there be a protocol by which these athletes that we spend a lot of attention on submit themselves to saying I wanna prove that I haven't been microdosing testosterone.

Yeah. And I don't know if it'll happen mostly because the, it's two different communities that people who care about performance and pure sport are not always really paying attention to the people who have like the biggest platforms. [01:37:00] You'll click, I'll click on a profile and be like, this guy has 900,000 followers.

And I've just, I'm just hearing about him. He's having a big influence on a lot of people and I have no idea. So I think it'll continue to come up. I know that testing at a lot of these races is problematic because it's so expensive to implement that it comes about for a little while and then it, from what I hear, it likes, tends to just go by the wayside.

At a lot of races. 'cause people weren't really asking for it. It was definitely a huge expense. The race director has to make some calls and yada. What I don't want is I personally don't wanna spend much time on myself. The internet and message forums and comment sections, understanding like, what are the claims against this person?

Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's just yeah, that's where I start to be like, alright, this person can take on whatever they want to take on, but I'm only gonna, I'm gonna hold it in a certain light if they, if there was no real testing. It's like, yeah. It's interesting. It's like one of those things where.

[01:38:00] Tell there, there's a lot of moving parts. Is it reasonable to expect someone to fund that out of pocket with what it costs? Yeah, and it's once you hit a certain revenue stream from your business, you could look as look, you built this business on credibility, so just you should fix that into your expense sheet the way any business would do to get passed like any sort of regulation that gets put in place or something like that.

And I could see that being something that would maybe be a reasonable expectation if it were. I think it would actually probably be something that would have to grow within that community where all of a sudden someone with a big platform says, Hey look, I understand that is a question a lot of people have.

I'm going to have a third party testing document this and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. And then all of a sudden the next person decides to parrot that person and do their challenge. That's where the expectation got set. So if you almost have a scenario where if you don't do it, you.

I don't like guilt by association necessarily, but I think this would maybe be a scenario where if we could do a good job of it, I think it would be good to almost make [01:39:00] that the expectation when you're going to monetize the sport the way you are, based on the assumption you're clean, or at least partly you're clean.

Yeah. Like these moments of life, where there is competition and there are multiple people, we love as humans, like watching, boxing fights and like running races and clashes of competition. So yeah. I've heard reports of oh, so and so when they were running across America were just like getting IV bags and they were getting injections of this, and you're like, okay, like how do I even get my hands around that?

It's like a very uncertified, it's not a, there's, I'm sure there's elements of FKT, fastest known performances, but like it's much more loose and so yeah, you start to get into the shadows and it's smaller and smaller groups, whereas, yeah, I think if you get into these zones, like I actually don't, I'm forgetting what the drug testing protocols say uTMB but that's where there's so much [01:40:00] competition, whereas there's gonna be, we're already approaching like these two fifties and Yes. I'm not sure even if I feel like an old man. I don't even know necessarily No testing at those. Yeah. Yeah. Like some of the, like Western states have testing now and even like all some of the qualifying races do, but it's super elementary compared to what you'd expect to actually catch.

If you catch someone doping at Western States, you have probably one or two scenarios. The person was totally ignorant, or the person actually got screwed and they had some sort of supplement that was tainted and they just weren't doing due diligence in terms of making sure they were accounting for what they put in their body and saving it.

Yeah. 'cause it's just one of those things where I think if you're doing auto, if you're doing. In competition testing only you know who you had to catch at that point. That's where, I think it was Francisco Poopy who put out something saying this isn't being, this is an issue. I just wanna flag it.

Yeah, if you get popped for a positive test at the competition, you've just really messed things up because you could do, he's basically saying you can do a lot of micro dosing and such like cycles of these things outta competition and then [01:41:00] just show up. And I've heard those. It's sad, like it would be harder for me if I was super obsessed with some of these events.

Like I am a world major. If they were like, oh, no one's testing these top guys from Kenya and Ethiopia for nine months out of the year, and then they show up, that would draw down my enthusiasm. So I'm like, yeah, I'm appreciative of what does exist, even if it's definitely flawed.

Yeah. And it's interesting too 'cause it's where I also hesitate is if we're gonna apply them. The reasoning is that there's these influencers that are doping and not telling us and producing these results, and that's gonna mislead people in terms of where their expectations should be. Are we even doing a good enough job to do that with the pro athletes?

Because, Yeah. How we catch more of them and there's probably a better deterrent there, but I think it's a marginally better deterrent to, for the most part. So it's like prize money, whereas like they have, they show up with their money machine. Right. Like they, like I said, if you show up to the [01:42:00] Boston Marathon and you shoot six ads, like you're getting paid by brands that don't necessarily care even what time you run. And that's where it's a real mind bender for those of us traditionalists who are like. Why is the guy who ran 2 53 at Boston, like getting paid by all these brands right, what is going on? And you're like, Hey, it's just, it's a different thing that's intersecting with the thing we think we know.

And maybe that community will choose to decide whether they care about anti-doping protocols or not. Again I don't mean to say shade, like breaking three hours for like a healthy fit man is not that difficult. To the point where I think that's weird, the outsized when people are like, this guy's a champion, and you're like, oh, he did something that many adult men can do. But to your point from, oh. A while back, like most of those people have those platforms, not because they broke free, but because they have told, like [01:43:00] relentlessly told stories and brought people along and built like whole followings. So you're like it's just a very different thing.

It's pretty wild how it's, it shows up on the same Sundays and you're like, this is two different worlds. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is interesting. Yeah. We have the same playground, but two very different communities almost to some degree. And it's like, how do we make this work out in a way that makes sense enough to people or to some degree maybe we're just arguing about stuff that is somewhat re somewhat pointless.

Yeah. That's funny. But yeah, to me, as long as the Olympic trials still happen, like that's why they were at risk. I had heard rumors years ago that like the Olympic marathon trials might not happen because it's more, the way that event gets put together, it's very expensive.

And dah duh. And I'm like, oh, that would be such a loss. Yeah. It's like brands are like, I would be heartbroken if they're so invested in these people with huge platforms that they just stop, investing in sponsoring, America's best, definitive like performance.

Yeah. Graded best athletes. That would be hard for me, but it seems [01:44:00] like right now we're hanging in this zone where both are happening, so that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, it's so fun to chop all this stuff up with you. We went longer than we knew. I should probably let you get back to whatever else you're up to today at some point here.

But no, it's been a blast to chat, Peter. And maybe we'll have to do another one down the road when some other exciting topics come up if you're down for it. Absolutely. As you can tell, there's a lot to discuss and I'm always happy to discuss it with someone who knows this is as obsessed with these little details as I'm, it is fun for sure.

But before I let you go, I do wanna let the listeners know where they can find you if they wanna check out Podcast sub stack. Oh yeah. Website, any of that stuff. Yeah I write on substack broka.substack.com. I title my publication writing on running, and those are just infrequent essays.

I don't write like in any cadence, but that's just about the running world. I'm at Broka, B-R-O-M-K-A on Instagram. And then, yeah, I've been spinning up on the road to the trials. So I am. It's like a bounty of goodness, I don't even know where to [01:45:00] start. Like we're interviewing nurses, we're interviewing pro athletes, we're interviewing, moms of four kids and they're all just crushing it.

And yeah, my hope is that if you dip into that Instagram, jump over to the podcast speed, there'll be someone who really likes, inspires and relates to you. But I'm very aware that these are people from all over the country of very different walks of life, but the thing they have in common is they're just really committed to running fast over distance and I just can't get enough of it.

So yeah, we're two years out from the Olympic marathon trials. Hopefully I'll have much more context and stories to tell in the future, but it just keeps coming and it's been super fun. So thanks for talking about it.