Episode 486: Inside The Pro Running World | Jacob Thomson

Jacob Thomson is a professional marathon runner for Under Armour. He recently raced Boston in a time of 2 hours 9 minutes 51 seconds. He co-hosts the Out and Back Podcast with Rory Linkletter. We discuss elite training, innovative shoe tech, the role of high in race carb fueling, doping influence on professional sports, and how to navigate the world of influence and sponsorship in running’s modern era.

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Timestamps:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] All right, Jacob, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. Glad we could make it work. Yeah, no, I'm excited to chat with you. I know your, your co-host of the Out & Back podcast, Rory's been on twice, so I've become a big fan of your podcast, so I was like, "I gotta get the other guy on, too." Yeah. Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, Out & Back's been a lot of fun, actually. We kinda just started it, me and Rory and I run together all the time, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess it was September last year, we were just like... I was like, "We should just do a, do our own podcast and just talk like we talk on these runs, and keep stuff pretty, pretty frank, and give people a, an inside look at, into the pro running world, and, yeah, our opinions on things."

And yeah, it w- it actually grew a lot quicker than we, we thought it would, so it's been fun. Yeah, it's, it's quickly become one of my favorite kinda go-tos for just the road and kinda track and field world, even. You guy- I think you guys cover some really interesting topics, and the way I describe it is there's a space between a Sidious Magazine and a Let's Run that I [00:01:00] think you guys do a really nice job of filling, because you kinda bring in the professional athlete side of things, which is pretty unique, but you also cover the topics that are timely, fun, exciting.

You add your own little flair to it and everything like that, and I don't think you guys really stand off things, but you, you, you have good balance amongst them, too. You don't intentionally get polarizing, but you're not afraid to touch topics that are maybe a little bit more, a little more polar- I guess polarizing.

But- Yeah, I, I feel like I feel like a lot of podcasts are almost not too nice, that's not the right word, but it's very surface level. You know, everybody wants to be friends here. We'll, we'll only ask you the nice, cool questions. We don't really dive too deep into the details, and we're just like, "No, we're gonna talk to you like we would talk to you if we were, you know, out on a dirt road training here."

And I'm a big cycling fan, so, I really liked listening to The Move like Lance Armstrong's podcast. You know, a bunch of ex-pros talking about the Tour, and Geraint Thomas had one. So, yeah, I like when the athletes who are, like, in the mix of it are, are talking about the topics themselves.

I think that makes it, yeah, gives a little, little bit of an interesting insight behind the [00:02:00] curtain. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the topics I wanted to chat with you about is just in general content creation and things like that. I've been doing some episodes recently where I've talked to different people about this topic between kind of more primary influencer or entirely influencer to kinda athlete influencer or mostly athlete with "All right, I feel like I have to do some influencing too, or some content-" Yeah

creation too to make this thing work. And I find it really interesting because from the... I mean, you're, you're a sub-2:10 marathoner, so it's like you have this opportunity to train and race with some of the best in the world. But- You know, it's just one of those things where the world is the way it is, and we prioritize attention a lot of times.

It's like, how do you, how do you monetize that in a world where you're still putting yourself out onto the arena at a high level, but kind of also know there's opportunities there for you both during and probably post-career if you set yourself up right? So [00:03:00] I think it's just a really fun topic to dive into and just see why-- how people are exploring that, that are in your position.

Yeah. So I mean, the first thing I really did, like I guess I've always been fairly active on Instagram, but my Instagram had 4,000 followers, so it wasn't like, you know, it was still a lot of just f- you know, friends and acquaintances and stuff like that. I wouldn't call it like a, you know, a fan page or, or anything nearly like that.

But yeah, I feel like over the last year, like something I really wanted to focus on was just getting my name out there more, 'cause yeah, I mean, I do get, I get paid by Under Armour, that's where my, you know, my base salary comes from. But anything else you can bring to the table is always, always good, right?

Doing the podcast, started a YouTube channel, started posting, I think, more interesting things and stuff like that on Instagram that, you know, the three-hour marathoners and the 240 marathoners and stuff wanted to, to see. And no one really told me to do that or there was no big reason besides yeah, I just wanted, wanted more eyeballs on it.

I'm friends with guys who are some of the top athletes in their event, you know, world qualifiers and stuff, and they have no [00:04:00] following and they train their whole life and, you know, they accomplish all these great things and it is, it is awesome and it's like very, you know, self-fulfilling, but it's kinda nice to have the audience or just to give people an insight to, to what's going on.

'Cause now more than ever with the internet, it's like the information's out there, so like I want people to have good information and I feel like I have a lot of good information to share, so why not, why not share it? Yeah. Yeah, I think it gets interesting when you get into your world because there is, there's a lot of very precise work being done, and when you get into the influencer world, it's the content that kinda leads the way to some degree, and performance can be part of that.

But, you know, with a lot of the influencers, it's something where, you know, if, if they're, if they're, if they're five minutes away from their max potential but their path to that five minutes less than their max potential was motivating, exciting, they build a business and they, that kinda leads the way.

Whereas for someone in your situation, you know, five minutes slower and, and you're, you're barely [00:05:00] qualifying for the Olympic trials, much less competing at, you know- Yeah, I'm, I'm probably out of a job at that point ... in that-- right. Yeah, exactly. You're, you're probably not getting a contract to run. So it, it-- is there a balance that you find to be like, this is the type of stuff I'm just gonna go out and I wanna do this cameras off versus, all right, let's get some people out here with some video cameras and catch some content and, and try to do that?

Or did you-- have you found, I guess, some symmetry where you can sort of feel like you're still living as a professional athlete with that stuff kind of operating on the side to some degree? Yeah, I, I think I very much-- my goal with anything I do and- And the content stuff is I'm keeping the main thing, the main thing, which is my training, right?

So my training takes priority over pretty much everything I do besides, you know, hanging out with my wife. Sometimes she maybe arg- would argue that. But yeah, like that's, that's the man-- I'm keeping the main thing, the main thing. That pays the bills. That's ultimately what I'm interested in, is finding my absolute limit, right?

Like what, what can I do in the marathon? Can I break 2:10, which I [00:06:00] finally did. Now can I run 2:07? What... You know, how high up in the US marathon scene can I get? Can I win races? Like that-- Those are the things that are very interesting to me. And then what I found with the content stuff is that it's not so much that I have this idea of "Oh, I wanna create this YouTube video," and then I build everything around that.

It's very much "Okay, my goal is to break 2:10 at the Boston Marathon. I'm just gonna record how I do it." That's the topic, yeah. If people like it, great, and if people don't, then, you know, so be it. But I think people want an inside insight to that, right? If you got if there was an NBA player, an MLB player that showed how he went through batting practice or showed how he prepped for a game or whatever, people- people would eat that up.

People love that, you know? Yeah. And I think it's the same, same thing in the running world. Yeah. I mean, you get ex-pros from Major League Baseball that weren't mainstream professionals that have full-blown careers doing clinics and presentations and camps and things like that afterwards because they're still one of the best to do it.

And I think, like, how do you sort of [00:07:00] take that framework where there's an appetite for someone to learn more about what goes into proper training and things like that, which is something you've experienced pretty much your whole life, essentially- Yeah, I think there's good- ... to a degree. Yeah ... there's people, there's people in the running world that are very good, and this is, maybe this is why they're so good.

They're very good at showing up. The coach says, "Do XYZ," they do it at a very high level, and then they go home, and that's it. But I think the way I've always been with, with anything I get into, you know, I've co- I've been coaching now for six years I really love learning about the sport in general.

So you know, I read all the time. I'm watching videos all the time. And then I feel like I'm good at maybe translating that information and, and giving it to other people, and yeah, that's, that's what I enjoy, and I mean, honestly, selfishly too, like the more eyeballs that are on our podcast or our YouTube or Instagram, whatever it is that's gonna be good for, you know, coaching business.

I put on a high school running camp and, and these other things and, yeah, I, I enjoy it and I really enjoy working with athletes to help them meet their goals, whether that's through providing free content or working with them, like [00:08:00] one-on-one, whatever that, that looks like. That's something that I really enjoy.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I would say this has been an exciting few years with the growth of running and then the growth of the content creation side of things too, because I remember, this would have been over a decade ago, I had a buddy who was like a 13-- I think he was like a 13.45-ish 5K runner, and I remember thinking about that, 'cause I had just signed a, a, a contract to, to do some ultra-marathon target races and things like that, and I'm thinking to myself, it's like, "Okay, here's a guy who's he's faster than I am, if we're looking at the 5K, and he's got nowhere to go."

He's he's, he's in this position where it's like, graduates from college, I guess if he invests, like, all his time and energy into the 5K, he can start working that down and continuing to prove it, but really, what's it gonna get him from a career standpoint other than- Yeah ... him answering that question of, "How fast can I get?"

And I remember thinking at the time, I was like, "There's gotta be a way to [00:09:00] monetize that," and I think that's where some of this content creation has opened up the door is, you know, now that same person, if they're willing to essentially kinda do something similar to what you're doing where you're sharing that information, you actually are generally interested in the education side or the coaching side of it, then you can build a brand around that now, and that's their opportunity if they wanna go that way.

Yeah, yeah, I think there's a lot of people who are in the coaching game who maybe weren't top-level athletes, but they have really good knowledge and people will still sign up even though they're not maybe the fastest athlete themselves, and it's-- I feel like it is pretty rare to have someone who is at the top level of the sport also interested in, in coaching and interested in helping people, you know, way slower than them.

And I'm, yeah, I'm glad I kinda fell into that niche, and that's something that you know, I, I need to get better at maybe the monet- monetization side of it, 'cause that's what, you know, we're not really... My YouTube channel and stuff, we don't make any money. I just start, I just started that in the last six weeks, so, you know, maybe one day or maybe this open up, opens up [00:10:00] opportunities for outside sponsorships or to get into race announcing or being a p- hosting podcasts at races and stuff like that down, down the road.

But I don't, we didn't start any of that just for the monetization by itself. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I mean, that's the way it works best, I think, too. I think a lot of the stuff that I built around just the training and racing side of things and the podcast stuff, it was like there was very little to be had with that.

But, you know, as this, as things grew, it, it, it, it just gets to a point where I think now with the athlete contracts and stuff like that, you start seeing more, more interest in that, where maybe you're not getting a direct, "All right, I'm making this per episode by running an ad here," or something like that.

But my guess is most sponsors going forward, when you sit down and negotiate what your goals are gonna be and what that's worth, if you've got some actual data around eyeballs on your stuff, that's just gonna be a little bit of a buffer or an increase in what they're willing to work with you on.

Yeah, and I think that's something that you look at like Rory, [00:11:00] for example, you know, you gotta deal with Wahoo, gotta deal with Mace Fit, like all these kind of extra deals that probably they didn't come from any one thing or any one YouTube video, but it's like, all right, you got a 206 guy who also, you know, does this podcast, has a big YouTube channel.

When you can get more pieces of the puzzle, I think that's gonna bring more eyeballs and bring more brands in, you know, maybe over the lifetime of a career for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. And, and you're, you're 32 now, if I'm not mistaken, right? So you're- 31 ... 31. So you're- Yeah ... kinda getting into the, the, the prime phase of marathon training and racing, I would imagine is, is the mindset.

But you also have been a runner for quite a while, just with respect to your high school, college career, and things like that. I think you were, like, what? You were, like, a-- Were you a 12-time state title- Yeah ... holder in high school, and then ended up running for Kentucky for the last two years of your collegiate career, All-American, [00:12:00] so Olympic trials in the 10K.

These are all kind of just I think things that I add up over time where you're like, "Okay, how do I make this a career, or where's the path for a career here?" If that-- Has that always kind of been a goal of yours to have some version of professional athleticism? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think I would say I've been, like, at a high level in the sport since I was, like, a freshman in high school.

I started competing when I was in fourth grade, but I played baseball and basketball and everything else, and running was something my parents kinda made me do. We'd show up at the races on, on Saturday, and then, yes, probably seventh to eighth grade, I started to get kinda decent at it. I actually didn't even win a middle school track race until I got into eighth grade, and then by freshman year, I'd kinda taken off, and I won the state championship as a freshman, and that's when I gave up my JV baseball career, and yeah, kinda, kinda locked into it.

And honestly, it was a very natural progression. I honestly never really had... I think a lot of people have these giant breakout races, right? But even looking back to my high school career I ran 4:20 as a freshman, 4:18, 4:10, 4:06. So, [00:13:00] as all these small jumps, I've just been-- I think I've been pretty good at just being really consistent over a long period of time.

You know, you look back now, and that's, probably 2008, 2009. So yeah, it's been quite some time, and I've been able to get basically a little bit better almost every single year for that whole timeframe, and I don't think-- I think you look at super talented people, and I probably don't fall into that category.

I think maybe my super talent is just how often it would be really consistent for, for a long period of time. And yeah, there was a point in college, I was a finance and accounting double major. Personal finance is very much what I was, what I was into. I was gonna go into middle market banking.

I had interviews lined up at, at JP Morgan and a couple, a couple other banks, and that was the only year I didn't make NCAAs was my senior year cross-country season. And after that, I kind of sat down with my coach and I was like, I, I just blew up at the regional meet, and I was like, "All right, I need to kinda figure it out..."

He's "You need, you need to decide are you gonna go into finance or are you... is this something you wanna keep doing?" He's "You're good enough to keep doing it, but yeah, you gotta be..." It was kinda-- I [00:14:00] was starting to get one foot in, one foot out at that point, and yeah, actually ended up staying on campus all Christmas break.

I think I went home for 48 hours for, for actual Christmas, and yeah, came back and won SEC championships and was an All-American that indoor season. And yeah, that kinda opened up the doors for me. I was All-American again in the outdoor season and yeah, from then on there was kinda no looking back into the running world.

And I moved to Boston, signed with Adidas, and I was there for about three years, and that's when COVID hit. And then COVID, I kinda did the same thing. I took a bet on myself. I had a two-year extension to stay in Boston, and at that point, I knew I wanted to move to the marathon. And to be totally honest during COVID, I was not having a great time inside or outside of running, just living in, in Boston.

It was a very uptight place. And looking at my past results everything I'd done off of altitude camps had gone really well, and I'd been to Flagstaff for one training camp and run my 5K PR, 3K PR, 10K PR all later that season. So I'm like, "Well, altitude must work pretty well for me. [00:15:00] Let's just move to Flagstaff."

And at that point, I had started coaching and was making just enough to kinda scrape by for a couple months to give it a trial run, and that's, yeah, when I, I broke 28 minutes in the 10K, qualified for the first Olympic trials on the track. And then shortly after that, I was 12th in my debut at the Chicago Marathon.

It was 2021, and right after that's when I signed with Under Armour, and it's kinda been yeah, been with Under Armour ever since. Yeah. Yeah, you said some interesting stuff there. I, I, I find it really a fork in the road for a lot of runners in your position, because, I mean, even if we just look at the, the data, like the high school data they'll collect I'm sure there's a college equivalent of this as well, where they look at the different sports teams and where they kinda stand academically, and cross country teams are almost always at the top of that list in terms of just GPA for the team.

And the reason I think that is interesting is 'cause these are typically kids who are gonna do well in a college setting then. So they're gonna come away from their college experience, whether they were top on the cross country [00:16:00] track team or not, and have these opportunities where they have to kinda make a decision, do essentially like what you described, where okay, well, if I go this way, I probably have a really good middle to middle class or higher career path that if I just kinda keep progressing along that way, things will be relatively predictable and, you know, a good financial situation to be in.

Or do I bet on myself and go this other direction and attempt athletics and- Try to become a professional runner. And I think it's just maybe a little more difficult in that situation 'cause, like, when you actually have those other opportunities, you're just-- you can, you can get caught on the conservative route a little more easier versus a scenario where all I have is a chance to become an athlete, so I might as well go all in.

And I wonder how many people we lose in this pool of potential up-and-comers because they choose the opposite direction you did. Yeah. Actually, we kinda joke about this a lot 'cause if you look at the guy... And I think this is just maybe a male-female difference here. If you look at a guy [00:17:00] who's on the cusp of breaking four, probably not an All-American, maybe he's scoring at his conference meet.

If he gets a chance to go chase the dream and, you know, live in Flagstaff for a couple years and try to, try to make it work and scrape by, I feel like the guy nine times out of 10 is gonna do it. There were, like, a- ... a ton of guys in my boat who I know who went and chased the dream, and some of them it worked out, some of them it didn't, and, you know, they figured it out after that.

Almost all of the women, maybe just 'cause they're just smarter in general, they all went corporate America and, you know, just "Yeah, I think I'm-- I don't wanna live on $20,000 in Boston. I think I'm outta here." And that makes total sense when, when you look at it from a, just a numbers standpoint.

But yeah, there was, there were several times I've kinda been in that kind of position, and I've just, yeah, keep betting on myself, and it's, it's kept working out so far, so I think I will continue down that route. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that is an interesting variance there 'cause I... I-it's kinda like that there's a reason guys die earlier type of a an explanation where- Yeah

just tend to do things that are a [00:18:00] little more potentially risky in some cases. I, I wonder, too, if there's anything with respect to career paths for men have been fairly predictable over the, over the, over the years in terms of just what's available or what's maybe societally pressure towards, where the last few s- the last few decades, the opportunities for women have been just growing a lot more aggressively than they would've been in the past.

So I wonder if it's also something where if you feel like you're the first generation of someone who has an opportunity that maybe your mom or your grandma didn't have, you are a little less likely to pass up on it, too. I wonder how all those things all interact. But yeah, from my friends, I definitely have more male friends who would be willing to bet it all on some 1% chance.

Yeah, no, that's-- Our joke was always with the, the 10-man guys was just like, outside of Drew none of those guys were, like, really making that much money when they first started out, if any. And I was like, "Yeah, they're-- If you can go sleep on a couch at Drew's house, and he gives you a couple pairs of shoes, yeah, guys are gonna jump on that opportunity time [00:19:00] after time," I feel just go for it. Yeah. Yeah. What, what better than living with your buddies and training and, yeah, try- trying to make it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. A-another thing that is interesting about your timeline with respect to just competing at a high level is the shoe tech. So, you kinda had this probably semi-weird transition where it was maybe like the end of high school, early college where some kind of super shoes started hitting the market, and I'm just curious- Even later.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was even later because I, I, the, I remember the first time I put on a pair of super shoes I was in, I was still in Boston. It was at the end of my time in Boston, so it would've been 2020. Okay. So I'd already been in Boston for two years with the BAA, and yeah, Adidas was a little bit late, and then they came out with the Pro, the first the first Pro, Adios Pro, and yeah, that was like a game changer.

I used to have... I feel like people with the super shoes are very worried about lower leg injuries and foot injuries, and people say you shouldn't [00:20:00] run in them and stuff. I think they kind of saved my running career, honestly. It probably has something to do with the fact I haven't worn, worn spikes since my last track season in 2022.

But I used to have Achilles problems all the time, and since I've gone to just super shoes, I very rarely deal with any Achilles or calf or foot issues at all. So I don't know if that's just, yeah, just me. If I'm a... I feel like everybody is a, you know, an N of one study when it comes to these things.

But yeah, I definitely credit super shoes. Even if you don't run that much faster, which I think you do, there's been courses I've gone back and run the same courses in super shoes, and I run a little bit faster, but not that, not that big of a difference. But the biggest difference is that I can come back and do a second session later on, or I can come back two days later and not be crippled from a 10-mile run.

And I remember in college wearing like the Streak LT's that are basically a spike without without a spike plate, you know, and we'd do eight-mile tempos on the road and on the bike path and those things, and I'd be... [00:21:00] I wouldn't be able to walk for two days after that. Yeah. I can only imagine running- You needed to be young.

Yeah, I can o- I can only imagine running a marathon or something like that today, yeah. Yeah, it's interesting 'cause like you, like you said, we get into this topic that I think just got blown up after the London Marathon and to the Boston Marathon, too, to some degree, which is just like what of all these variables that are currently gaining momentum at the time are leading to these faster times?

And you have the super shoes, you have the higher carb targets intra-race. You know, there's always speculation around doping, which I guess you could unders- you could maybe chalk that up to that's probably of the three, that one has been there the longest, so maybe there isn't meaningful changes in that with respect to part of the sport.

Unless there's something new that we're not aware of that is getting kind of leveraged or isn't on any banned substance list yet. But of the two that we kinda can look at as these are big changes in the sport with the carbohydrate inter-race targets and then the super shoe stuff, the super shoe one is interesting to me because we don't [00:22:00] necessarily have good data that I'm aware of that would be able to really unpack how much of an improvement you have on race day just based on your training tolerance now versus what you'd be able to do for the reasons you, you explained.

It's like we have you know, I followed your training and Rory's training through the podcast and stuff you talked about. It's like you're putting in, you know, some pretty big training weeks, 120, maybe 130 miles a week at times, and seemingly bouncing back and still maintaining quality with that high volume.

Whereas, you know, in, in a shoe that was maybe a less forgiving, maybe that's 110, and then over the course of 14 weeks of training, all of a sudden what is that? Maybe a couple minutes on your marathon time. Yeah. Yeah, I think-- Well, first in regards to the doping thing, I'm sure doping is still happening at the top level.

I don't... Yeah, I think that's something that's always been there, but I think you can't credit all of this to doping because the masses are so much faster now. If you look at the means, even in the pro field and high school running and college running what it took -- I look at this, it's actually crazy.

You look at the NCAA indoor championships, it's a descending order top 16 list. [00:23:00] Guys like Grant Fisher and Justin Knight and Josh Kerr, who are, like, world beaters at the pro level, their times in college wouldn't even qualify for the NCAA meet now, which is insane. I was like yeah, I made, only made indoors once.

I think it's one of the hardest meets to make 'cause you basically have to go to a perfect setup time trial race at BU to, to make it happen, and we went to Iowa State. And yeah, the times to get into just the masses are so much faster. They call it trackflation. I coach a lot of high school kids too, and- Mm-hmm

yeah, what it took to, you know, qualify for your state meet now is just totally different. And I think, I don't think you can look at the whole picture and say, you know, these high school kids and these college kids and these, you know, 230 marathoners, everybody's doping now. I don't, I don't think that's it.

I'm sure- The 14-year-olds in high school. Yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's still, it's still happening, but I don't think you can credit just how fast things are to that specifically. But yeah, I think, yeah, like you said, it's the accumulation effect, so it's like it's really hard to measure.

'Cause if you look at a 16-week marathon block, like you said, if, you know, if it costs me 10 miles a week, probably three or four [00:24:00] workouts, 'cause sometimes I'll do three workouts, three or four workouts in a week, right? And I probably couldn't do that in, in non-super shoes. So over the course of 16 weeks, say it cost me, you know, 200 miles and five workouts, and then I'll do that three marathon blocks in a row.

You're looking at, you know, 600 miles and almost a month more of, of workouts. So, yeah I think it-- that's kinda hard to measure versus, you know, running this shoe on this treadmill and then running this shoe on that treadmill, and we can totally measure it out based on, you know, just what happens on that run on that treadmill on that day.

I think there is definitely an accumulation effect that, that you can credit a lot to, the super shoes more so than just being fast on that one day compared to a different shoe. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. O-one thing you and Roy were talking about on a recent episode, I think it was the one you did right before Boston Marathon, and you guys were kind of unpacking your training a little bit, and I really liked the way you were talking about how you were comparing at the macro sense, this training block compared to other ones, and one of the specific pieces that you pulled out of that [00:25:00] were days where you had run 20 miles or more.

Mm. And you both had data to support just your in- your-- both your increase in vol- your total volume over two-week, four-week, six-week blocks of training, but also just the, the total number of days that you kind of hit a higher amount of mileage compared to prior ones. And were kinda looking at it through that lens, which I really like, 'cause that's the-- that, that really highlights, I think, the, the whole picture of the consistency over the course of a plan is really what is going to put you in a position to race well versus getting overly fixated on maybe one cornerstone workout that isn't insignificant, but, you know, can become misleading because, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of potential vari- variables that could impact how well that goes versus the totality of everything combined.

Yeah, I mean, I look back at that, the build for Boston, and there were two long runs that I was like, "All right these are super important. We're gonna hit these I'm getting ready, like [00:26:00] it's a race," and mentally for these two workouts. But I don't think so... If I didn't do one of those, I don't think the result would change, right?

Like I, I, I very much think it was just the whole body of work that I'd put together. It's the most I'd ever run. Like you, yeah, you talked about the 20-mile days. I forget how many exactly it was, but it was over double from my highest ever build previously, and I think that just goes to... With the marathon so much of it is yeah, I can run 4.55 pace any time, any place.

That's not that crazy or that hard. You can do that after you've been running for two hours, right? And it's, you have this accumulation of fatigue. Can you do that on the 18th mile, on the 22nd mile? Excuse me.

But yeah, I think having those 20-mile days just kinda really made me a lot more durable and a lot better later in the race. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was a big thing with Boston, was like I got through heartbreak, and I was able-- my next mile after heartbreak was 4.59, and I was able to just kinda stay right in [00:27:00] that, you know, low five minutes, high, high 4.50s, which I hadn't been able to do in a marathon before.

It was definitely the best last 5K, probably the best last 10K, maybe... Yeah, the 21st mile with heartbreak was the slowest mile of the race, but take that one out, they're probably the best last five miles of a marathon I've, I've ever had by 45 seconds, at least Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, let's jump into Boston a little bit.

You, you broke 2:10 for the first time in Boston this year. Had someone told you going into Boston you're gonna run 2:09 change, what were your, what would your expectations have been from a position standpoint before knowing what happened at Boston this year? I was very confident I was gonna break 2:10.

I was also pretty confident that would... I don't, I wasn't totally sure it'd put me in the top 10, but I thought it would put me in the top 15. If you'd have told me I was gonna get 26th place, I'd probably have been like, "I'm gonna blow up and run 2:13 or 2:14." Yeah, so I, that's the first thing, like, when I-- someone told me I was, was 26, 'cause you finish, you have no idea what, really what [00:28:00] place you're in.

And yeah, I was just 26th and 11th American, and I was like, "Ooh, that kind of makes it a little less, little less impressive to break, break 2:10." But yeah, just a lot of people ran really fast that day and, I mean, yeah, I think that's just the marathon's getting faster, and if you wanna compete with the top Americans, you're gonna have to be a 2:07, 2:06.

Now we're looking at 2:04, 20- 2:05 on a consistent basis and it was a great day, it was a great weather day, but Rory and I actually talked about this on one of our episodes, too. I think if all-- you put that race at a Chicago or at a Valencia, I think people run pretty similar times. Mm-hmm ... it's just kind of the way, yeah, the way it was.

You just got a good year for Boston. Yeah, I mean, even if you look at London, obviously it was, it was super fast as well, and I think if those races had been flip-flopped and R- London was run first and then Boston was the week after, I don't think people would've questioned Boston, the Boston times and the Boston weather and stuff nearly, nearly as much.

Yeah. What do you think John Currier would've done if he would've been in that London [00:29:00] race? Man, that guy is-- To be able to run as fast as he did on the second half of the Boston course, which is a very hard second half if you go five miles of hills in the Newton Hills, that's impressive. So I think he could've closed, you know, with Solwe.

I think the only thing we've seen with John, though, is that if you look back at Chicago, when he was, like, really amped up for the world record, but he had company, he didn't really handle that as well. So I don't know if it's a thing that he needs to be on a solo mission more so, like he was at Valencia.

Yeah, some people don't handle having guys on their shoulders, so I don't know. If you have, if you have three or four guys going into the last 5K, I don't know how that would've played out from a competition standpoint. Yeah, you know, it's al- I've always wondered about that, 'cause you definitely have characteristics where some, some runners just love that grind with a group and let's see who can outlast, and the others are just like, they just thrive off being up front and just saying, "All right, I'm the one out here carving the path here."

And [00:30:00] I, I wonder how much of that is just cognitive weight, where there's a freeing sensation for him maybe when he's out front like that, where he's just not overthinking anything and just kinda going with it, versus having this little constant pinging pack around and- And that causes enough mental fatigue where it's just difficult to really give it everything at the, in the final miles, which is what it's gonna take in these marathons these days.

It's a, it's a really interesting comparator there between some of these guys. Yeah, that's what we talk about. Everybody wants to see these guys square off you know, out of Chicago or London or wherever it is. Everybody wants to see the top five marathoners all square off, and I don't think we'll get it until maybe the Olympics.

I don't know if it'll even, if it'll even happen there. It's so hard to be, you know, good and ready on- Yeah ... on the day. Especially in, you know, if you're trying to be in world record shape, you're really tiptoeing a tight line there. I think it'd be awesome, and I think it's kind of a shame we don't, we don't see it more often.

But I think that's just kind of the way races play out with appearance fees and stuff. Boston's not gonna let John go as a two-time champ, and London's not gonna let Saue go as, as the world record holder and defending [00:31:00] champ. And do we see him out of Chicago? I don't-- it's just, it's hard to, to see it all see all of them come together because one thing they'd be definitely all taking a little bit of a, you know, a pay cut 'cause that would just be a huge, from a budget standpoint, it's gonna be hard for a race to put up what it takes to get, you know, one of those guys, let alone four or five of them all teed up, ready to go for, for a record race. And, yeah, I don't know. Maybe they don't wanna face off. Maybe they'd rather be the star of the show.

It's a hard thing to say. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, and I think people don't understand that sometimes, too, how much goes into that side of, of the sport, too. I mean, I was talking to someone not too long ago on a run, and they were, like, pretty much unaware that it was even a viable career path to be a professional marathoner.

And I thought that was kind of funny 'cause I'm like, "I'm pretty sure these guys are getting, like, when you get into the, the, the world of John and Sauer, and they're getting six-figure appearance fees at some of these races. So it's like you gotta think about the, you know, the cost of that to the event, where there's only so many of those you can [00:32:00] bring in before your budget's dry.

And, yeah, what do you do about that? How do you kind of still pay these individuals what they're, what they're worth, so to speak, and make it a viable career path for them as a result, but get them all in the same spot at the same time? You and Rory were talking about a big investor or something like that, and when you, you had that conversation, my thought was Mark Zuckerberg's sister's gotten into running recently, and I was like, "Maybe someone could nudge her, and she could nudge Mark, and Mark could come in and drop- That'd be awesome

a few million on one of these events and bring all these guys together." Yeah, I mean, I think honestly that's- We can dream, right? Yeah, honestly, I think that's, you know, that's what it would take, and I think you've kind of seen that in, in cycling too a little bit where, you know, it's gonna take a big, you know, a Saudi prince or something to come in and be like, "Oh, I really like, I really like cycling," or, "I, I really like marathon running.

I wanna have all these guys at my race, and I have enough money to do it." Yeah. I think that would be-- That's, that's ultimately what it's gonna take, I think, for something like that to happen. Yeah. Yeah, it would be kind of an interesting life to live to have [00:33:00] so much money where you're just like, "I wanna see this, and-" I can make this happen because it's just gonna take a few million dollars.

Yeah, I was just, I was just home for the Kentucky Derby, and yeah, they've, they've gotten into horse racing now. So yeah, it's a-- they kind of just take over whatever sport they are interested in at the time, I think. So maybe, yeah, maybe we'll get one interested in marathoning at some point. Yeah. Yeah, the problem if it's Saudi funded is it's gonna have to probably be in Saudi Arabia, then you have to pick the right time of year.

Or I guess we could just say not to worry about times and say, what do these guys do head-to-head and take the time to hit from a weather standpoint. Yeah, that is one interesting thing. Like I said, I follow cycling and I'm from Kentucky, so I'm-- like horse racing as well. Nobody knows times in cycling or in horse racing or anything like that, but it's kinda the only thing people care about in running, so.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there has to be some crossover there. I guess it's kinda like that in the ultra world or the trail world maybe [00:34:00] where you know, people don't necessarily-- are chasing like a time at, in a Western States or something. Like you just- Right ... wanna win Western States, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, running, maybe it's just 'cause all the distances are the same.

Maybe we just need to start having a bunch of random distance races that, yeah, it doesn't really matter. It's just you know, maybe it's 50K this weekend and a, you know, 42K the next weekend or whatever. And yeah, maybe that would get people to square off head-to-head more often. Yeah. Yeah, and y- you're right.

For-- And I think that's a-- some of that's like an American thing too, to a large degree, where we get attached to these distances. I remember when ultra started growing more, there was like this divide sort of between European ultra runners and American ultra runners about wanting to have a precise race distance.

And like the Europeans, they didn't really care. It was more like, this is a cool route. Who cares if it ends up being 88 kilometers or 112 kilometers or whatever it happens to be? It's about just finishing this route, and then that kinda led to it. And then you're right, though, with the times too. It's like you, it's just too hard to really lean on that because you have things like can get [00:35:00] improved or degraded, and then all of a sudden it's no longer comparable from one year to the next anyway.

But that would be an interesting input with the marathon world was to just forget about times for a while and just do some racing. It'd be fun. Yeah, I think that would be fun. It's if, you know, you ever see a guy go after you know, a 10 mile or a 15K or something, it's like you kinda have to stop and compute okay, is that, is that good, or was there just nobody else there?

'Cause like you don't really, you're not super familiar with that. But you know, the mile, the 5K, the marathon, everybody's "All right, this is the time. This is the goal. This is the only thing that matters." I mean, it's kinda like me on this big quest for sub 2:10, right? That was the only thing I cared about.

I didn't care- Yeah ... if it happened in Rotterdam or in Boston or Chicago. I'll take it wherever I can get it, but like I just, I wanna go break 2:10 at the marathon. But now I look at it, I'm like, all right, well, 2:10's cool, but now I gotta figure out how to beat some of these guys, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Do you, do you have a next goal now that you sort of checked the 2:10 off the list? I'm actually... So I just got back yesterday. I kinda took two weeks. I got pretty [00:36:00] sick afterwards, you probably still hear it in my voice after Boston and yeah, went home, spent some time with family and stuff and yeah, now I've just gotta get back to training.

I'm still kinda sore from Boston, which is crazy. Maybe it's because I didn't do much at all for two weeks. Yeah ... Rory's getting ready to run Ottawa, and so he basically took a couple days and then started easy running and, you know, he's back to working out last week and he said he feels like 95% recovered already and he's "I think it's because..."

He was saying he thought it was basically because he just didn't give himself, like, all the off time and maybe, yeah, me sitting on my butt and taking all the off time to make it, is making me feel a lot worse now. Yeah. I went out for an hour. Well, getting sick too can slow that down a bit. Yeah, I think that, that kinda...

Yeah, that's, at, at that point I was like, once I got sick, I was like, "All right, I'm just gonna go ahead and take a full two weeks. This week I'll just run easy before I get back into any workouts and stuff like that." So I'll kinda do a full, yeah, full recovery cycle. But yeah, this summer, I'm gonna do a fall marathon or fall or winter, one, one of the two.

I'm still trying to figure that out. But I think the big thing I wanna go back and focus on at this point, at least for like the next, you know, six to eight weeks, [00:37:00] is kinda going through this speed block, right? In a marathon block we get so specific with just being right to LT1, LT2, like nailing marathon pace, being really good right over or right under it for long periods of time.

But I haven't really done a 5K workout in a long time. You know, I haven't broken two minutes on the track in an 800 in a workout in a couple years. So I think those are things the better I get at that and kinda go back and raise my ceiling a little bit, I think it's gonna only help me for, for the fall versus doing you know, a mini marathon block now with no real races or anything in sight.

So, yeah, just kinda go back, make sure I'm kinda working on my weaknesses and just kind of topping up all the other little zones you don't pay too much attention to during marathon training. And then, yeah, I'm gonna do some races. I was looking at maybe doing the Grandma's half marathon.

There's a 10K in my hometown on 4th of July, and then the week after that, mid-July, I put on a high school running camp. So I'll kinda take that as my down reset week just 'cause I'm super busy with the camp stuff. And then after that I'll kinda launch into whatever I'm gonna do for, for the fall/winter marathon block.[00:38:00] 

Yeah. Do, is that generally kind of a strategy that you or philosophy that you follow with your own training and coaching where after a marathon you're going to be getting into some things that are maybe a little less specific to the marathon build and focusing on those important things further away from your next target race?

Yeah, I think so, definitely. I mean, I ran 13:28 in the 5K, I ran 3:57 in the mile. I'm not necessarily trying to get back into that kind of fitness, but going back and doing some of those workouts, doing short reps, doing 200s, 300s, doing hills, getting back into paying a lot of attention to my strides and drills, that's something I think is super important.

And then especially-- So, a lot of the athletes that I coach you know, three-hour marathoners and stuff, they kinda went straight to the marathon. So, it's not like they had a whole track career before they went to the marathon. Right. Yeah. So for a lot of them, you know, who maybe are coming off a spring marathon, and we're not...

You know, I have a lot of people doing ND and CIM and marathon projects and stuff later in, in the fall, and they're like, they're kinda wanting to go back to marathon training. I'm like: "No no, we're gonna-- I'm gonna make you train a 5K, [00:39:00] 10K runner for most of the summer. Then we're gonna take a little, yeah, sometime in probably July, we'll take another little down period to reset, and then we'll start the marathon block."

'Cause, yeah, I think a lot of adults, especially, they just wanna go from marathon to marathon to marathon, and you can get better for a while, but at some point, for those people who haven't had a track career, they need to go chase other goals to, to raise their ceiling. If you're a three-hour marathoner I wanna get you a lot better at the 5K, a lot better at the 10K, a lot better at...

You know, it's just-- And it's also kinda fun for them- Mm-hmm ... 'cause it's, it's new ter- new territory. For me, it's okay, well, I'll, I'll probably never be in sub four-minute mile shape again. I don't know. Maybe if I really focus on it, but that's not my goal, right? But I know I need to go back and top up on those things and, you know, get quick again.

And the quicker I get and the better those workouts feel the better I'm gonna feel the next time I go into marathon training and I'm running- you know, just trying to run 4:50 pace for a long time. It's gonna feel a lot better if, you know, I'm used to running 4:10, 4:20 pace again, which I haven't done in a while.

Mm-hmm. And yeah, I apply those same concepts to a lot of the adults I work [00:40:00] with as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Do you, do you have targets for splits you're trying to hit when you get to your "Okay, I've done enough of that. Now it's time to move on," and kinda go back to the marathon specific stuff?

For me, it kinda breaks down calendar-wise. So yeah, basically now until mid-July, that's kinda what I'll be focused on, and I'll try to sprinkle in some races just more for fun and for a different stimulus more than anything. 'Cause yeah, I think if you're only racing, you know, two to three marathons a year, and that's that's all you do, and all you do is marathon stuff, it just gets really monotonous at some point.

You know, you can only do so many LT1 workouts and so many tempo runs- Right. Yeah ... and, you know, so many marathon pace long runs. It's like, all right, I kinda wanna... I need to remember what it feels like to go all out again. I need to remember what it feels like to run VO2 800s. That's not something that you do that much during marathon training, but I do think it's good to kinda have that feeling of what it is to be, you know, be on the edge at 5K pace.

That you don't really get... It's like a, it's a different kind of blow [00:41:00] up or a different kind of bonk in, in marathon running when you, you know, have a bad workout than it is if you get into a, you know, a tough 5K session and you're like, "This is a whole different world from what I was used to in, in marathon running."

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But when you get into the marathon type training stuff, do you guys do a lot of lactate testing? I do a decent amount at the beginning. I would say in the last month before the race, I didn't really because I knew I was in really good shape and... But, like, when I'm getting into stuff, especially if you know, say I'm still 12 weeks out or 14 weeks out and I'm just trying to have these really big volume days, right?

And it's like, all right, if I'm doing double T, I'm trying to get, you know, 10 miles of work, but if I can-- if, you know, the lactate's not spiking, I feel pretty good, maybe I get 12 miles of work. So I do a lot of checking with that kind of stuff just to kinda see how far I can go in a lot of the workouts.

But yeah, I do, I do a decent amount of the lactate testing. I'm always curious when people get into that enough, like how much of their own perception ends up kinda coming out of that, where you sort of start sensing things, where you're like, [00:42:00] okay, now after getting that data and just seeing the progression of a workout, you can almost just predict it without doing the testing at a certain point.

Yeah. I think actually one of my first YouTube videos I put out, I was like, "I think it's gonna be like high twos." And it was like 2.8. And I was like... So yeah, I mean, it's almost like- Fun game to play. Yeah. It's almost at some point, you know, if you're looking at, if you're looking at heart rate, you look at pace, you look at lactate, and you have you know, RPE, I know how I, how I feel running- Mm-hmm

440 pace versus five-minute pace, et cetera, you should be able to line those up pretty well, right? If you're in tune with yourself and you're running 120 miles a week and you're doing three workouts a week, like at some point you don't really need the blood numbers. The same way you could probably do a tempo run and be like, "All right.

I'm probably at 165 heart rate right now." Mm-hmm. And, you know, it's great if you have a heart rate strap on and you can, you know, verify that, but usually you can get it pretty, pretty damn close once you get, you know, tuned into those things over, over a period of time. Yeah. Yeah. Th- it's always a [00:43:00] balance with that stuff because, like you said, the more metrics you have or measurables you have pointing in the same direction, the more confident you likely get that you're, you're doing the right thing.

But then you also can just kinda get paralyzed with data too and lose a little bit of the fun and enjoyment and just the intuition that you're oftentimes gonna lean on in a race when someone makes a move and you don't wanna necessarily dull that in the, in the interest of gathering or leaning on the data too much.

So I've always been a fan of collect a lot of data, measure stuff, and then just teach your perceived efforts to really recognize what the data's showing you, and then you can kinda take a little bit more of a pull back from that a little bit and use it more as a post-workout analysis stuff versus trying to get too, too bogged down by all of it during cer- certain training sessions.

Yeah, definitely. I think that's probably, you know, more so why I don't do too much of it in the last, you know, the last four or five weeks of a marathon build too, 'cause like I'm, I'm building this toolbox of fitness, right? And it's like I'm trying to get in really good shape, I'm doing these predictor [00:44:00] workouts, I'm checking heart rate and lactate and making sure everything's in line for this long period of time, but then at a certain point I'm getting ready to race.

So, I need to be able to cover a surge you know, it's... A lot of times we train to do things like kinda steady eddy, tempo run, you know, let's run K repeats all at the same pace. But then the closer I get to a race we start putting in, you know, more variables where there's, you know, a hit mile in the middle of the tempo run, or every third mile is hard or, you know, if we're doing K repeats, you know, every fourth one's kind of like a hit rep where, yeah, you're, you're more simulating racing and building out the things you can do, the tools you have in your toolbox.

So it's like I view it as I'm collecting fitness for a long time, and in that last section both mentally and physically I'm getting ready to race. Like, all right, can I run a-- If I'm running- doing the same, doing a tempo run at a five-minute pace, on the third mile can I run 4:38 and then settle back into a five-minute pace and be okay?

Can I do that? Because, yeah, that's what, you know, you're gonna have to do and, you know, f- somebody next to you take- makes a surge you're gonna have to cover it and then settle back in. And it's kinda teaching yourself to be okay with those [00:45:00] things and the-- Nobody cares what my lactate is if I have to cover a surge in a race, do they?

So, yeah, I view it very much as I'm getting fit for a long time, getting fit, and then, all right, now I'm teaching myself to race. And I think that's a thing I do with high school kids. I coach a lot of high school kids, and it's good to get them in shape, but at some point they need to learn to race.

We'll do stuff where they do, you know, progression, like progression 600, where you're supposed to get faster every 200, like they're winding up at the end of a race. Maybe on, you know, paper that's not the most you know, smooth, best way to get them in better shape, but at some point they're gonna have to kick in a race, right?

Or like some- at some point, someone's gonna make them uncomfortable in the middle of a race, and they're gonna have to do something really hard and then settle back in and then do something hard again. And I think that's a big thing that people who are just chasing maybe the fitness thing miss sometimes.

Absolutely. I love that topic, too, because it's one of those things where it's like you look at the research and you're like, "Okay, this is the most evidence-based approach in terms of how we should be programming your intervals and things like that." And it can sound very exact and very precise, but at [00:46:00] the end of the day you may wanna do something that appears to be a trade-off with respect to what is gonna move the needle the most in a lab somewhere when your goal is to compete.

And I always think about this as like it's, it's a timeline issue, if anything, versus an either/or thing, where if we know this is the type of training that you should be doing to optimize your fitness, but you also know you wanna do things that maybe run a little bit counter to that at times in order to better prepare yourself for race day specifics, just give yourself a timeline so you can do enough of that stuff Evidence-based and then give yourself, like you described, that block of time when you're getting closer to the race to really practice those things that are gonna actually sharpen your mind in a way where you're able to confidently make the moves when they're there.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the biggest thing, I think, especially in those continuous efforts, like a, like a tempo run. So you're doing an eight-mile tempo run. Yeah, I can go run eight miles, a five-minute pace, run every mile at 5.00. That's awesome. But then like, all right, yeah, can I still run a five-minute [00:47:00] average going 4:50, 5:10?

Can I do it going 4:40, 5:20, 4:40, 5:20? Like it's... You gotta build out the toolbox at, at some point. And so yeah, my, my kinda idea of it is like, all right, let's get fit, and then let's figure out how to race. Nice. I know you've got races coming up before this, but I'm curious, you know, being a sub 2:10 marathoner, the Olympic trials for the 2028 games, have you been thinking about that at all with respect to what you're doing from a training standpoint now, or just from a maybe less about what you're doing now, but more about where you'd like to become those, those opportunities?

Yeah, I mean, I think in order for me to realistically say I have a shot at the trials, I need to be at least a 2:07 guy, and that's probably on the conservative end at this point with how fast people are running. So yeah, I look at it and I'm like, all right, over the next two years, trials are gonna be in March of 2028, so less than two years now.

What [00:48:00] do I need to do to get to 2:07? What do I need to get my half marathon down to? Yeah, and those are the things I'm trying to figure out, and that's, you know, a big reason why I'm going back now is, you know, the next eight weeks or whatever, like, all right, what can I do to get faster? So that way I, you know, my ceiling's higher in the marathon, I think I can run 2:07.

Say I run a great world, or PR again, I run 2:07 in the fall, and now it's like, all right, what did everybody else who's in that, you know, category run this fall? And like, all right, now what do I need to do, you know, before the next one? Basically and yeah, it's gonna-- I think it's gonna be like a two-year cycle of that, just trying to unlock one thing at a time, and I don't realistically look at it and be like, "All right, I need to run 2:04 in October."

That's not a realistic thing, right? And like I, like I said earlier in the episode, like I think about my talent or my superpowers, I've just been able to be consistent and like chip away for a long period of time, and that's all I'm trying to do in the marathon, really. Just keep chipping away at it and just the neck lo- next logical step, which at this point I think I do think I look back at [00:49:00] Boston and I do think I left a lot of time on the table in Boston.

I think I could have run 2:08. I think I was in shape to run 2:08, so that's, you know, why I'm saying 2:07 instead of, instead of 2:08 now. But I do think I got a lot out of myself on the day, but I think I learned it's by far the fastest I've ever gone out in a marathon, which I know the first half of Boston is incredibly fast anyways.

But now I think at a flat course, like if I go out and, you know, 1:04, I should be able to run pretty even It is interesting because you can almost get a little paralyzed when you look at a, a starting list of a big race like Boston or what'll ultimately be the Olympic trials and think okay, there's all these guys that are in these different time categories, but then once you-- We're just, we're, I mean, we're looking at their best, right?

We're looking at them when everything went as good as it could go. And at the end of the day, you have an event where there's gonna be some groups of those people who are not in their best shape because of injuries or, you know, something that kept them from getting to that point, or, you know, people who are [00:50:00] maybe actually injured at the time or, or not there because they couldn't get to the start line and things like that, where it thins out maybe a little bit.

But, but like you said, I mean, the depth is so big right now it is pretty crazy to think, like, how fast you have to be. I mean, talking about 2:07 as a conservative spot to be, to wanna have a shot. If we go back, like even a few years, it just seems you know, at that-- You don't have to go back too far where 2:07, it's like you're walking away with it and you're gonna be going to the Olympics.

Yeah. I mean, even going back to the last trials, like when Clayton ran 2:08.0 something, and he was the second seed going into the race. So yeah, I think that just kinda shows how, how fast things have accelerated. And I think another really interesting thing to see over the next two years is like who else shows up.

Like seeing guys pop in now like Klecker and like Charles Hicks and you know, Mance has continued to get better. There might be-- I, I threw this out on, on our last episode, like if Graham Blanks decides he wants to try to run the marathon trials you know, he's gonna be, he's gonna be a factor into these, a sub-27 [00:51:00] 10K guy.

I'm sure he could run. He's a great cross-country guy. He was 19th at the World Cross. So yeah, I, I think we're gonna see potentially even more guys like that show up, and yeah, I think this is gonna make things all the, all the more interesting. It would be-- I would say it's impossible right now to, to shoe in anybody, even from, you know, from Mance to Zohair, to any of those guys as okay, he's a lock on the team.

Where I think going into the last trials, it was pretty clear Connor was a lock, and I think most people were pretty confident Clayton was a lock, and it was kind of only one spot up for grabs. I mean, I don't know, maybe a month out from the race, we'll have a much better idea, but it is two years away, and I think, yeah, things are gonna continue to progress and change quite a bit over the next, yeah, next 24 months.

Fun stuff. More to look forward to. Yeah. I was gonna say too, I think another thing with the Adidas shoe being so fast now is I feel like the super shoes were, like all the brands were trying to get a super shoe back in, you know, 2021, 2022. And then we kinda got to a [00:52:00] point where it's like, at least seemed like a very even playing field, Mm-hmm

for the last, like a couple years. But now kind of we're like, all right, what's next? And you know, in shoe tech it is like, is this Adidas shoe that good? Like I know Under Armour is constantly working on you know, the next iteration. So, I feel like there's only so much time until, you know, a new foam or a new way to p-put the plate in the foam or whatever happens.

Yeah. And, you know, whatever brand figures that out first are, is gonna be ahead of the game, and then okay, can other people catch up before the trials? I think it's, it's almost kinda like an arms race. The Velocity Elite 3 we wore in Boston, it's I mean, it's a great shoe. Sharon wore it to win New York and now Boston twice.

And it changes, every model changes and continues to get incrementally better. So I'm like, I'm kind of curious now if we're gonna keep seeing small changes in shoes or if there's gonna be something that comes in like the first super shoe that you know, blows the doors open again.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that is, that's such an interesting variable because we are... I- I mean, it really feels like Adidas may be-- we don't have third-party testing that I'm aware of yet on that shoe, but [00:53:00] it almost feels like when that comes out, it's gonna be like, "Oh, look at that. Now we have maybe a little more of a gap than we'd like to see."

W-we, we almost got that with the Puma Fast-R 3, I thought. It just happened to be, like, maybe the stable of athletes with Adidas was such that getting to the top of the heap showed up a lot more, 'cause now all of a sudden you got a group of guys who are all capable of running a 201 or 2 something.

Putting on a shoe that now is notably better than the one they had prior to that, and then all of it lining up at the race the way it did. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see. And, and just the timing of it too, 'cause I would imagine having your shoe make a meaningful jump up in terms of how well it performs right around the Olympics is probably a priority for most of these brands.

Yeah, I would say it's definitely what, what brands are, are probably working towards is, like, all right, what's... You know, I feel like you always see a new spike and stuff come out you know, right before the, right before the Olympics, and I think, yeah, the road shoes are gonna be, be the same way. [00:54:00] And that's one cool thing with Under Armour too is we get to work a lot with the shoe designers and the shoe engineers.

So, you know, they're testing Sharon and getting feedback right away. They come into Flagstaff once or twice a year and sit down with all of us and, you know, we go through the whole lineup of shoes and yeah, then they go back and we have a new prototype eight weeks later, and then, you know, it's, it's kind of like a, it's always been like a work in progress since I've been with, with Under Armour.

So yeah, I'm excited to kind of see what, yeah, what the next change is or what's, what's new again after, after this. Yeah, that's the other thing too is they're getting better and faster and more efficient at making alterations to shoes that- Like you can, it, it used to be such that where like you, you decide to make a change and it's okay, well now we're waiting for the next model versus, okay, we, we've got enough time to put this into the newest one or adjust it.

One thing I do wonder about is just the way they have the whole regulation set up where it has to be publicly available to s- you know, it's kind of a weird system where there's a lot of potential like no one's really getting their hands on the deed issue before London in any [00:55:00] meaningful way other than their athletes.

So it's kind of like that rule is sort of, in my opinion, kind of a waste, and I'd almost rather at this point see them just say like let the, let the pro athletes play around with prototypes and build shoes specifically for them if need be, as long as they fit within the regulations, the 40 millimeters one plate and pass whatever rules they put on that sort of stuff.

I think that's maybe a little bit of a better approach to go, just to kind of keep the-- try as best you can to keep parity amongst brands so you don't have a scenario where, oh, I got fourth at the trials and I probably got beat by a shoe, versus- Yeah ... I did a better training block and race strategy. Yeah, I think that's definitely an interesting thing to look at, 'cause there's like loopholes around all of those, those rules, like I'm, I'm sure...

I mean, can you buy the Adidas shoes on their website or do they say they are sold out? I'm pretty sure- It's so- it sold out in two seconds, I think. Yeah, and I mean, I, I've heard of brands before where they'll have they have to put 10, 10 pairs up and, you know, sports marketing just [00:56:00] buys them off their own website right away, and then- Mm-hmm

they put it, and then they put it up and it just says sold out. And I think you see brands do, do stuff like that, just basically get around those, those rules sometimes. So yeah, I don't think it's, like most rules or maybe a lot of rules, it's good in, in theory, but yeah, it's not really doing what it's supposed to do, so might as well- Yeah, all sorts of- Yeah, work with the prototypes

unforeseen, unforeseen consequences and perverse incentives are gonna always find the little cracks in whatever rule you put out there, so. That was an interesting topic with the Adidas shoe too, there was j- it got so big... That whole story, the sub two hour got mainstream to the degree where you'd have people talking about the shoe that didn't really know anything about running or running shoes or the sport of marathoning, and they'd be...

It was so funny to watch these people freak out about how Adidas just blew it with their marketing by not mass producing that shoe and selling it for probably $500 still- Yeah ... to like a huge group of people. And I was like trying to explain to people, it's like- That would be a terrible idea [00:57:00] for them to do that because that shoe is such a unique thing that the average person who emotionally buys that shoe off of that race is probably not gonna use it right, and they're gonna be dissatisfied.

So you're gonna have this big wave of sales up front, and then you're gonna have another big wave of negative publicity around that shoe 'cause you're not putting it in the right person, people's hands. They don't, they actually don't want you to have that shoe. They wanna take that shoe and take bits and pieces of it and put it in their other shoes and then sell you those, versus getting everybody a pair of the, the, the Evo Pro 3s.

So- Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the shoe game- But yeah ... is it's definitely, yeah, it's a big, a big factor these days, so I mean, there's no, no denying, denying that. And yeah, I'm, I'm interested to see what, yeah, what happens and what changes between, between now and, and the trials and the next Olympics. Yeah, no doubt.

One thing I did wanna ask you too about with respect to Boston, and I would imagine just some protocols in general, is your fueling strategy. I, I think you put it-- You-- Actually, when I, when I wrote that down on [00:58:00] the notes of what to ask you, I did find an Instagram reel that you put that kinda laid out all your, your Boston protocol.

But you mind just sharing with us kinda like how you kinda came to your strategy for fueling? Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, they kinda go through the whole day, like the morning I did the Nomio shot, and the bicarb. I take one gel, a caffeine gel before, like right after I warm up, so, you know, 30 minutes, 25 minutes or whatever before, before the race.

And then during the race I used the Precision 30-gram gels, and then I did one of the Beta Fuel 200 milligram of caffeine gels at I think it was 25K, so like right, right past halfway. And yeah, I think it just came down to really practice. That's, I got, I got pretty used to taking in that many carbs, so I think it c- yeah, it came out to, I had 200 and, what was that?

30 times eight, 240 grams on the course. And yeah, my stomach handled that pretty well. I did have a bathroom stop in the, in the 209, which, you know, maybe made it not a perfect day. But yeah, that's, that's basically what I [00:59:00] did for all my long runs, and then I just started practicing it all the time.

So every long run or medium long run on Wednesday, we'd get up to close to two hours of running, so I was doing it pretty consistently then. And then any workout, I was constantly taking fuel, even if it was like a shorter rep you know, bunch of 800s or whatever it was, like I would have some type of either-- It wouldn't be the exact strategy, but, like I would be taking carbs, whether, you know, drink mix or whatever, like through the race just to get my stomach used to it.

And then any long tempo, you know, we did three-by-five miles with a mile float, like a 17-mile workout, like I was trying to nail all that stuff exactly like I would in the race. And yeah, that's just kinda what I, what I came to. It's exactly what I did. I did the same plan for CIM in the fall, which was also about a minute PR in 210 there.

And yeah, it seems to work pretty well for me and I don't know if I don't know if there's any need for me really to go higher 'cause I, yeah, I'm getting to the end of these races feeling pretty good now. I think it was earlier in my marathon career, I was having a really hard time the last [01:00:00] four or five miles of marathons, and I think probably it's 'cause I wasn't taking enough.

And that's actually when I switched, 'cause I used to use the Maurten drink mix and- Mm-hmm ... it was just so thick, I couldn't always get as much down as I probably needed to, and I think that came to bite me later in, in my marathons. But yeah, once I switched to gels, I haven't really had that problem.

And I also like being able to decouple the liquid from the carbs. So like the gel, I tape it to the side of a water bottle, take down the gel first. I try to get all of it down, and then the liquid I can kind of play with a little bit. You know, if I do, I usually put six ounces in a water bottle.

I probably average drinking three to four ounces each, each station, which is every, every 5K for us. Like Boston, it was like a cool weather day. There were a couple of them I didn't feel like I really needed as much. It was just like a quick sip or two to, you know, help get the gel down, and I was done.

Whereas, you know, an Olympic trial or something where it's gonna be, like, a lot hotter probably, at least the last Olympic trials was in Or- in Orlando. You know, I can still get in the same amount of carbs and you know, fluctuate how much of the fluid I'm [01:01:00] getting down. Mm-hmm. Where I think that was, that was an issue with when, when I was doing the drink mixes, 'cause it was like, all right, if you wanna get your carbs, you have to drink, you know, six ounces or whatever you had in, in the bottle.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's interesting to hear the different strategies and what goes into the training for that too. And it's always mind-boggling to me that, like, when I think about just the way I engage with it, you know, I'm targeting 100-mile paces in the mid to high sixes usually in training. And it's one thing to take down 100 grams of carbohydrate per hour plus in that context.

You guys are moving so fast out there. I imagine there's just a little bit more of a, of a, of a need to maybe challenge the gut a little bit within the specifics of, of marathon pacing. And I do wonder about, like what you mentioned, where obviously the long runs with goal marathon pace in it, practicing the exact protocol is gonna be what you're likely to do a few times, at least before the race.

But then also challenging your gut to some degree with [01:02:00] smaller amounts during shorter interval sessions where maybe in theory you wouldn't technically need it. I do think that maybe it helps, like you kinda put yourself in a scenario where your digestive system is that much more unwelcoming to something coming into it.

If you can make that comfortable, then all of a sudden kinda backing up the pace and doing it just feels that much more sustainable to me. Yeah, I think that definitely has there's-- I haven't seen any study or have any numbers, but just from my own personal experience and preference I do think it helps just because, yeah, it is a challenge to the gut, the, to stomach that.

Anytime you're running, I think, half-marathon pace or, or under at this, at this level, it's pretty hard to, to get stuff down. And being at altitude in Flagstaff, I actually have a really hard time when I work out up here getting stuff down. Mm. So if we're working out at 7,000 feet, I actually was spacing it out quite a bit more, where I would only take stuff every four to five miles.

So I would take, just take less overall, just because I, I don't know if it's just, you know, my diaphragm with the breathing and stuff already being harder up here, but [01:03:00] I, I would throw it up all the time. But I go down, we go down to Camp Verde for our workouts, which is at 3,000 feet, and I can pretty much do anything I could do at sea level there.

And so when I, whenever I'm in Camp Verde, I am definitely taking on as much fuel as I would in the race at least. That's the sweet spot. Awesome. Well, Jacob, it's been fun to chat. I think we covered everything that I had on the list. Was there anything you wanted to chat about? Oh, yeah, I wanna show you this.

So after the Red Sox game, we- Yeah ... or after the, after the marathon, Sharon, my teammate, and John Krier got to throw out the first pitch of the Red Sox game, and I got to go down on the field and stuff with them. I basically just hopped in Sharon's entourage for the-- Extended my flight and, yeah, stayed in a hotel.

My wife called out of work the next day, and I was like, "We gotta stay for this." I was a- Yeah ... grew up a big baseball fan, Red Sox fan. And so then I got them both to sign the ball that- Oh, no way ... or the ball they threw out the first pitch with. So I-- Yeah, I've got it in a case and everything. So I got-- I figure that's gotta be, like, worth something one day, right?

Yeah. No kidding. But, but yeah, I put it up on my mantle next to my [01:04:00] Olympic trials bib and stuff. I'm like, "Yeah, this is going, this is going up there." But yeah, I, I'm trying to show that to as-- I think it's really cool, so I'm showing that to as many people as possible. Yeah, no, you got the full Boston experience.

You got the PR, you got the baseball game afterwards. Yeah, we got to sign the, yeah, we got to sign the Green Monster and then yeah, go down on the field and watch, watch Sharon and John throw out the first pitch. And yeah, we stayed, stayed for the rest of the game. It was a great time. I saw that they both threw out the first pitch, but I didn't actually see them do it.

Did one of them throw better than the other? John actually, he had like a good flick of the wrist. He just had a heater for him. Yeah, he threw a heater. Yeah, he threw a heater. Sharon's-- They, they both got it, they both got it from the mound to the, to the plate. Nice. So you would... Yeah, two Kenyan people who've probably never thrown a baseball before.

We actually, there was a Dick's Sporting Goods close to the hotel, so, we went and bought a ball and we had Sharon, we had Sharon throw and- Warm up ... out- outside the hotel before we went to the game. We're like, "All right, we gotta get some, some practice throws in." Look, step, throw. We practiced that a couple times and yeah, she crushed it.

They both crushed it. Nice. Yeah, I, I assume they didn't do anything too [01:05:00] crazy because I didn't see the clip, so I just heard that- Yeah ... they were throwing out the first pitch. But had they been like, had they sent it up into the stands or something like that, I'm sure that would've ended up on my feed a little bit quicker.

Yeah, both of them, both of them made it to the plate and got caught. There's a good clip of it. Actually, I put it in the YouTube video I put out, like recapping Boston so yeah, if anybody wants to see- Okay ... John and Sharon throw, throw a baseball, go check that out. Yeah, I'll have to go check that one out.

And also before I let you go too, if you wanna let the listeners know where they can find you, website, socials, YouTube, all that stuff. I'll, I'll link all of it to the show notes too, so if people wanna go check any of that stuff out it'll be easy to find it. Yeah. I'm on Instagram, I'm on YouTube Strava, and the Out & Back podcast, but everything else is just under my name, Jake Thompson.

No P. T-H-O-M-S-O-N. Everybody throws a P in there, but... Perfect, yeah. That probably helps you stand out a little bit because like- Yeah, maybe ... there's not like a million Jacob Thompsons on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah, that might-- Maybe that... Yeah, hopefully that helps a little bit. I just always have to spell it, always have to spell it for [01:06:00] people.

Yeah, that is probably annoying after a while. Awesome, Jacob, it was a blast to have you on. I'll be rooting for you, and it'll be fun to follow everything you got coming up. All right. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.