Episode 491: The Art Of Ultrarunning | Ian Sharman

Embed Block

Enter a valid embed URL or code.

Ian Sharman is a legend in the ultramarathon space, finishing top ten at WSER 100 nine times, four wins at Leadville 100 mile, and a wealth of knowledge with respect to training theory and the variables that make for successful ultramarathon results. Ian recently published a book, “Art of Ultrarunning: Tried & Tested Strategies for Long-Distance Runners.” We spent some time covering what he has learned throughout his career as an athlete and coach.

Episode Sponsors:

True Nutrition: truenutrition.com/hpo Code: HPO (20% Off)

ProBio: probionutrition.com/endurance Code:Endurance (20% Off)

LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/HPO (free sample pack with purchase)

deltaG:deltagketones.com Code: BITTER20 (20% Off)

Support The Show:

HPO Sponsors: zachbitter.com/hposponsors

Support HPO: zachbitter.com/hpo

Zach’s Coaching: zachbitter.com/coaching

Ian: sharmanultra.com | IG: @sharmania n | X: @sharmanian

Timestamps/Topics: :

Episode Transcript:

Ian, welcome to the show Thanks for having me on, Zach Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to do this one. It was, it was one of those where when you told me you were writing a book, and then shared with me a pre-print of it, I'm reading it, I'm thinking to myself, it's "This is just one of those guests that I should have had on by now that I have not had on yet because you're hitting on..."

So, well, fir- first of all your experience with the sport as a whole is just deep, and it goes back far enough where I think a lot of people who are paying attention to your content, following your story, and things like that can learn pretty quickly how much thought and energy you've put into the training, the performance, the individualization side of, of ultrarunning.

And then, when someone like you writes a book and can consolidate it all into one piece, it really kinda ties all that stuff together, and it just triggers all these different topics I've been talking about on the podcast now for quite a while. So, it was, like, perfect timing to have you on and chat about some of them Well, especially 'cause I, I included you in the book to illustrate one of those points-

'cause we've known each other since, what was it? The 2012 JFK 50 Mile- Yeah ... I think, and then we had the same sponsor for many, many years, so loads of events for that as well. But that's the thing, when I, when I'm illustrating different points, I was thinking of famous ultrarunners I know who I, I knew that that's something that they'd done, or I suspected that's something that had applied to them, and then when I interviewed them, I was able to drag that out.

But, the thing for you in particular was pacing, 'cause of your-- The fact you did a negative split setting the world record for 100 miles, which I think is unheard of, but it shows how important that pacing is and all the detail you put into it. And so, it's just trying to tease out these ideas and make it a bit less dry by having actual stories behind it as well Yeah.

I mean, you did a fantastic job of getting into the nuts and bolts of what you're trying to get across with actual useful information, but tying in the stories that connect to them to a degree where it's actually readable versus feeling like a textbook, which is always nice 'cause it keeps you motivated and, and continuing to read versus feeling like you gotta take one chapter at a time Thank you.

Yeah, well, that, that was the aim. The funny thing is only a handful of people have read it at this point, 'cause it comes out in about a week. But it's mainly editors and stuff who are not ultra runners, so it- I'm, I'm happy to hear that you as an ultra runner get what I was trying to put in there.

Yeah, absolutely. And y- you, you actually probably presented a very nice transition point into some of the topics we wanna talk about today when you talked about JFK in 2012, 'cause this is the first time I really gave this any real thought, is the hiking versus running side of things, where, you know, JFK and, a lot of races nowadays, they get categorized as a runner's race versus a hiker's race or a mountain race versus a runnable r- and, and you get these loose definitions.

And JFK is one of those events where most people are looking at that as a runner's race because we're looking at it through the lens of the people who are competing up front When in reality, you add enough distance and you add the general popula-- or not, not general populace, but the, the, the whole field, anything of these distances are gonna have some sort of hiking component in it.

But what really was interesting to me at that point was there's that section early on where it is actually pretty steep going up, and I was there-- I think it was you, me, and Michael Arnstein were all in a l- bit of a group, and you were in front of us by maybe 10 feet, and you just stopped running and started power hiking, and Michael Arnstein and I are-- we're, we're still running.

And Michael, he just h- shouts up to you. He's like, he's like, he's "Ian, this is a running race. Stop hiking." And then I remember looking over and I was like, "He's going just as fast as us," which I think just hammers home that point of just the topic of hiking versus running and how powerful a lever that hiking side of things can be, especially when you actually go into it with the mindset of, "Hey, this is a skill set I can improve."

The reality is that if Michael or I had started hiking there, we probably would've slowed down, but that was because we hadn't done any hiking in our training, whereas you had. So you had this lever you could pull that we didn't have available to us because of the training side, the specificity side of that.

And that's the only part of the race I hiked. I mean, it's just, there's that steep climb at the beginning. So I maybe hiked for what? One minute out of six hours. So it doesn't really cost any time, but if it can save you energy, you're gonna be more durable later. You're gonna be feeling much stronger, and also you can do things like eating and drinking better.

So in races that are much hillier, that matters even more. To be honest, I am not a super physically gifted runner. I've had a lot of success in ultra-running, but I've never had my VO2 max tested, but it wouldn't be some amazing number. I can't run really fast, 5Ks, 10Ks. I don't have that high end.

So what I can do, though, is make use of good tactics and pacing so I don't slow down as much. And a big theme in the book is being able to explain how to execute better versus just being fitter. Because there's only so much fitness you can gain, but the more complex and the more the distance increases, the more the execution will matter.

And that's the thing that can make huge differences to performance levels. And to be honest, I just-- It wasn't like I stumbled upon this idea of "Oh, well, hiking must be the best thing." It's 'cause I'm not good enough to run those uphills in a 100-miler, so I had to hike. And then I thought, "Well, if I'm doing it in a race, I've gotta practice it."

And then I realized that this really helps save my legs. And to be honest, when it's a, a flat 100-miler, because you don't get that ability to-- or that obvious section to hike, um, I force a lot of the people I coach to throw in bits of power hiking for that same reason. Not because they can't run, but so they're using it preventatively to stop them from slowing down later, and it can make a world of difference about how fast you're going later.

The phrase that I like to use that people may have heard if they've speak me- s- heard me before is about how fast your slowest mile is, not how fast your fastest mile is, and that applies to any race. If your slowest mile is still at a decent pace in a marathon, in a 5K even, there's only so slow you can go, um, and it's gonna be how much you slow down that really determines the success or failure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting, too, and one way I've tried to explain this to coaching clients and people who are just interested in kinda learning more about this and are asking that question is well, how do I find a way for them to relate to it to a large enough degree that they actually do it?

Because there's the one thing to think "Oh yeah, that sounds like a good idea," but then when you get in the heat of the moment of the race, what is gonna trigger your mind to actually put that plan into practice and, and actually hike when you feel like you could keep running? And the way I've tried to describe it to people to try to make sense with something they can relate to on a more typical standpoint is think of an interval session where we're targeting an intensity that is a little higher on the aerobic intensity and spectrum, but we're trying to maximize the amount of volume you're able to tolerate at that and still recover from it.

And the reason we do intervals versus just running that intensity straight is because you can tol- tolerate a higher amount of volume at that intensity by breaking it up and having these small little breaks in between. So, if we just pull that down to the lower end of the aerobic intensity spectrum and think of it through the lens of a 50-mile or 100-mile race, you can kinda think of it the same way where if I take this hike break at mile 10 when physically I feel like I could just keep running, you're not doing it because you need it there.

You're doing it 'cause you might need it in that back 20% when, like you said, the time you lose is exponentially higher than the ta- time you gain by running versus hiking at that specific point early in the race. But I learned this really early on in my ultra running career because, um, I was in the UK at that point.

These were small local races, not super competitive. But I'd see guys zoom off at the beginning and I'd think, oh wow, they're gonna go so much faster than me. They look great, there's no way I can stay with them. And I would do my kind of tortoise and the hare impression where I'm just slow and steady, in relative terms obviously.

Um, but I'm feeling what I- I'm doing pacing for the entirety of the race. And then some of these guys, I'd catch them later and they're walking and their head's down. I'm thinking, but you look so strong. And I know they're fit and I know they've achieved things in the past, but I, it really drove home to me how important it is to be strong near the end of the race and who cares how fast you're going at the beginning.

There's no prize for getting a great split to halfway, and I've seen this in many of the 100 miles I've run as well. Like at Leadville, I have four wins. I've never been in the lead at halfway. Sometimes, 10 or 20 minutes back at halfway, and then some of those wins were by two hours.

And so who cares if there's a tiny difference in the first half if there's a big difference in the second half? And it also gives you a lot of confidence 'cause you just stick to your plan. You can trust that over the entire length of the race, if you know what you're doing, you know how to pace well, and you can trust that you're not gonna fade too much by using things like power hiking, judging that effort level well, your breathing, and all these kind of things to, to judge how intense it is, then you can just go past these people.

You don't have to race them head-to-head until one of you breaks. You just have to do your race, and then anyone who's, who's with you near the end, then you race them. But for most of it, you just stick to your own plan. And I think again, with the kind of races you've done where like doing 100 milers and, and time trials effectively where there's no one else going at your pace, you don't have that distraction of someone else going out ahead of you or dragging you along or making you screw up your pacing.

But it's the same mentality which is: So I've practiced what I'm doing, I know how to do it. I've just got to stick to that plan, and then when I get deep into the race, I'll still be feeling strong and I feel I can move well, and then I can race anyone who's around me. Then I can worry about what finish time is possible.

But if you feel crappy 'cause you've gone off too fast, none of that's on the table anymore. Mm-hmm. That's a really good point. I hadn't really given that as much thought with respect to what I've done over the years with the flat controlled 100 miler stuff, where you do have that situation when you're in a competitive field.

You- you're sticking to- you're trying to stick to your plan, but you also have these other distractions more or less kind of behaving around you that can deter you from that. Whereas when I go into one of those races, a lot of times I'm chasing a time that had been done before, whether it's mine or someone else's, and that kind of gives you that ability to step back and say, "Okay, there's different ways to get to this, and I need to pick the one that's gonna be the most likely for me."

And then it's already set. There's not some person out there in the race actually going out too fast. It's just the- the pace chart is even if from- from their past experience that I can do whatever I want with it. So that is very helpful not having that- that- that outside influence actually on the track.

Although it would be nice to some degree to have someone pull you along for a while. I'm sure it'd be much easier if you had a few people going at exactly the right pace or pacers effectively at that early stage. Mm-hmm. I remember the... I can't remember his name now, C- Calvin Woodward or something, an E- English guy who in the '80s, he set, if it wasn't the world record for 100 miles, it was at least the British record.

He did about 11 and a half hours, so very close still to the time you did. But he did it, and supposedly the- his splits were something like three hours through 50K. Mm-hmm. So he went off at a very fast pace, like 2:30 marathon pace, when all he had to average was a bit under three-hour marathon pace to get the world record.

So he went off incredibly fast and just gradually slowed down, but didn't fully blow up. And I've heard people say to me, "Oh, well, this is showing you that you're meant to be aggressive. If you, if you're going for that really fast race, you take the big swing, and you hold on for dear life, and you do a g- fast time."

Well, my takeaway from that is he could have run faster if he'd have gone off slower. He j- he was very fatigued, and he was losing more later than he gained early on. Yeah, I think Don Ritchie was known for that too, where he had split a couple of 50 milers at-- I think he even went under five hours for a 50-mile in the midst of 100-mile attempt, and then, was six and a half plus hours in the second 50.

And I, I think that's just one of those things where when you just look at endurance sport as a whole, it would be very odd that that obtuse of a positive split would yield your best potential end result. Mm-hmm. So to me it's okay, there may be some nuance here with respect to negative even and positive splitting, but it's probably a much tighter margin than what we're typically seeing.

I've had Nick Curry on the podcast in the past, and he's really dove into this whole-- the whole negative split side of things. And one thing we talk about from time to time is it's probably something like 2% or 3% on either side of even to the best you can actually-- Like, what I'm-- The nice thing about what I'm doing is you can actually get very objective with that 'cause nothing's changing on that 400-meter, roughly 400-meter loo- loop versus a course like Western States or Leadville, where now you do have to get a little bit subjective with respect to what a specific pace is in d- throughout different areas of the s- of the course.

But if we could, I still suspect we're looking at a couple percentage points on either side of even being, like, that optimal loading zone where your best day is on the table if you can stay within that. And then whether you're, like, 1% negative, 1% positive, that's probably less important than being in that relatively tight zone I, I completely agree and, and we see it typically with world records on the track and up to the marathon where they'll almost always do a negative split.

The world record that was just set in London Sarway- Mm-hmm ... he did a 1 hour and 30 seconds for the first half and then a 59:01 for the second half. So- Mm-hmm

That's probably too much of a negative split. I think that probably says that the pacemakers took him through it too slowly and he can go even faster. But usually it has to be a negative split for them because you're in a pack, and then it's whoever manages to break away from the pack that wins. But there's certainly no slowing down when you're running a world record like that.

As the distance gets longer, I think there's inevitably a bit more muscle damage and things that will slow people down, so that's why it's so crazy that your world record was a, was a negative split by, what was it? One minute, I think. So just slightly faster in the second half. Mm-hmm. But it- that's the point.

It's within that small margin of being very well-paced. Um, a race like Leadville, you go out for 50 miles and you come back and do the same course in reverse, so it's very comparable for those two halves. I think my kind of best races there would be something like eight hours for the first half, eight and a half for the second half.

But a lot of other people around me were doing 8 hours and 10 hours, 8 hours and 10 and a half, and that's obviously not optimal and they probably just burnt themselves out a little bit too, in the early sections, getting in that race mentality. Western States actually should be negative splits, I think, for the top runners because the second half is more- Mm

runnable. You get the canyons, the big climbs out of the way in the first half. There's much more flat stuff later on, and it cools down just a little bit even for the very, very fastest runners finishing in the light. But that should be a negative split because the terrain dictates that it is faster later.

So if you're not ... basically if you're, if you're only slowing down a little bit you'd still do a quicker second half because the terrain is flatter and you're gonna go quicker on the flat stuff when you're a bit tired than you will uphill when you're fresh. But this is something I talk to my clients all of the time about because we're trying to work out what is best for them.

But it's very different for someone who has Olympic levels of fitness and can run for 14 hours on this kind of course and someone who doesn't have Olympic levels of fitness and is gonna do 29 hours. And so there's just more time for fatigue. They're not as highly trained and so that's gonna have more of an effect as well.

They'll be more tired sooner, and that's where things like power hiking come in. It's just a, it's just a very simple rule of thumb is if you think you're going too hard, you are. At the very least drop into a bit of power hiking, take on some food. Do it preventatively before you have to. So instead of climbing a hill and you keep running until you're redlining it and you're huffing and puffing, at that point it's already too late.

You've already depleted yourself, your muscles, your energy levels and you're gonna be probably paying for that later in the race. If instead as you notice that effort level creeping up above what is sustainable for that distance, drop into the power hike there, then you save yourself for later. Um, and I'm

I've been amazed in some of these races against very good uphill runners where once they get fatigued, they're still running uphill but it's basically jogging on the spot. One of the Western States I did, right in the middle, there's a really nasty climb called Devil's Thumb. It's the hottest time of day.

It's pretty much the nastiest climb of the day, and I power-hiked past a guy called Alex Varner, who is an insanely good uphill runner. And actually, after the race, he said, "Can you coach me?" Because- ... I didn't even think that I'd need to power hike because he's so good at uphill running, but he realized that a hiking pace can be faster than a running pace once you're fatigued, once you've lost some of that durability.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and, and the other thing to think about, too, for people who are listening to this and they're like, "Well, I'm not in the top of the field, and therefore my hiking percentage is just gonna be higher no matter what," the other way I like to describe that to them is if the, the higher percentage you end up planning to hike or end up hiking, if it's something where, let's just say it's a 50/50 split, 'cause that's probably where a lot of people are with a course like Western States at the end of the day if you're thinking of trying to run somewhere in the 24-hour range.

When you just look at the pacing of that, it's yeah, you could hike half of it at that pace and still be in those pace targets. And then it's becomes that question of, well, if half the race you're doing this one type of mechanic, this one skill, the- and in your training it's more like a 90/10 split towards running, look at it through the lens of if you start to skew that more evenly, at least in the peaking phase, now you have this opportunity to improve your hiking pace, where l- let's say you improve your hiking by 5%.

It's like you, you, you apply that to 50% of the race, that's a big difference compared to trying to eke out an extra half a percent on the running side that you're already probably over-leveraging. But it's also choosing to power hike sooner. That makes a massive difference. The stronger you are at hiking, the more you're gonna trust it, which means you'll use it more.

You'll be more willing to use it, 'cause you don't feel like you're giving up as much time. But one of the biggest things I find that I have to hit home with people who are, say, doing a mountainous longer race is, okay, don't run as much as you can. Run the appropriate amount mixed with hiking to make it sustainable, and particularly learn from their previous experience.

If they know they keep blowing up, or they think they were doing loads of hiking, but then by halfway they're tired, and then they just have to walk it in from there, okay, well, that clearly wasn't sustainable. So we try to gain fitness. We'd work on all the specifics of the running side of it as well as the hiking.

But the main thing is just saying, getting them to accept in their mind that they should use more hiking, that what they thought was reasonable before clearly wasn't sustainable. So just choose to have a lower threshold of effort where you switch to power hiking. Maybe it's a lower gradient.

Maybe it's sooner on a climb. Another good way of thinking about this is if you're doing the first climb of the day, ask yourself, would you be ri- running if it were near the end? And in most cases, you can, even if you've not done that distance before, you can probably say, "Oh, no way, I'll be tired then."

Okay. Mm-hmm. Well, should you be running every step of it now? And it just helps to give people- permission to really use power hiking more. 'Cause one thing to do it in a training run when there's no pressure and there's n- no race excitement, it's another thing to do it on race day where you get carried away and you're just going a little bit harder than you expect because it's a race and you're telling yourself, "This is the one where I've gotta try harder," instead of doing the thing they've practiced day in, day out for months beforehand and that they've got good at.

They then don't trust it because race day has to be different because it's a race instead of doing the thing that's tried and tested and then seeing it play out well with a much stronger second half Mm-hmm. And you mentioned it earlier too, and it's something that I've used since, since you mentioned it years ago, which was once you do have a race under your belt, then these things can be a little bit easier to unpack because if you go into someone's 100-mile race pacing chart and you notice, okay, well let's pick out the three slowest miles in here, and if those three slowest miles are 10, 15 minutes slower than their average moving pace or their average pace it's like one of those things where it's like it stands out like a sore thumb, and it's a big enough number that I think it ends up making people think, "Oh, well, with three of those I'm t- looking at 45 minutes of lost time."

And that really rings in their head, especially if they're located in the second half of the race where you would imagine them to be in that scenario where someone's- Mm-hmm ... going out too fast. I think it just hits home a little bit more clearly for somebody who's still on the fence as to whether they should pull back a little bit in the beginning.

And, and I, I put some numbers on it to make it clear. So let's say someone's going for a 24-hour buckle in 100-miler, and that's a big deal. Most people will not achieve that. At a race like Western States, about a quarter of the field is likely to get the silver buckle for 24 hours instead of the bronze buckle for the final cutoff for 30 hours.

But to do 24 hours, you only have to do about a 14 and a half minute mile pace on average. So I tell them that and go, "It doesn't make a difference if you're doing an 8:30 instead of a nine early. You're, you're, that's shaving off irrelevant amounts of time, that even by halfway, let's say you're 30 seconds a mile quicker through the fi- whole first half, that's 25 minutes you've saved.

You can lose that in one bad mile easily." Mm. And not just when you've slowed down or you're having, vomiting on the side of the trail or something. The slowest mile you're gonna do is the one where you sit in the aid station and aren't moving for an hour or two hours or three hours. So part of it is, that durability element of what your legs still do.

But the even higher level idea is how do you just look after yourself? Really, in these races you're trying to get to the next aid station in one piece, not can you get there marginally quicker but maybe eat into your reserves too much and pay for that later. Can you just get to the next aid station feeling as good as you can?

And if it's a really long race, even at the front of the field, that's basically the tactic you have to do, 'cause they've gotta be so strong later on to still move well. But again, it's, this is the kind of thing I tried to put in the book is things I keep talking to people about all the time and that I realized that there were certain ways of saying things that hit home better than others.

But just that simple idea of, okay, well, how do you pace this? Just try to get to the next aid station feeling as good as you can, and if you keep replicating that, even if you're not going super fast now, you're not gonna slow down as much. And people also, they're, they're counting it into their calculation of how much they'll slow down.

They're thinking, "I've gotta get some time banked by halfway, 'cause I know I'm gonna be going so slow later." But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If instead you don't worry about banking that extra bit of time and you're just trying to go at what feels easy, that will be a good ultra pace And if you can then not drop off from it, it'll be a great ultra pace, and you'll possibly go many hours quicker than you thought you could without any change in fitness.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I have one more question with this topic, and then we can maybe move on to durability. But I have a theory that-- And this is, I think, just part of the sport still growing and still getting to that point where the competitive pressure is resembling some of the bigger endurance sports in the world, where you just can't make these mistakes, or if you do, you just find yourself off the podium, and then people start to get on board because they have to.

And I still think pacing is one of those that we haven't applied enough of the pressure to get to a point where the people up front recognize, "You know what? I have to obey these rules, or I'm just not gonna be competing anymore, and people who are, quote-unquote, slower than me are gonna end up beating me."

And I think that's the case with ... But I th- I think it's getting maybe a little bit better, but I still see that kind of theme that I'm sure you're familiar with, which was just like this incentive to get out quicker early, or if you let the pack get away from you, it's over because there's just too many people in it, and not enough of them are gonna blow up.

I think we're still over-indexing that kind of approach a little bit, even at the front of the fields, like at Western States. And I mean, I haven't sat down and tried to unpack what the average, like the, where that would fall maybe on a positive to negative split standpoint outside of a few of the runners.

Um, but I still think they're probably losing a little more time in the back half than they need to be, and if somebody could expose that or enough people exposed that, probably with just even more competitive depth than we're already seeing, I think we would start to see that sort of balance out a little bit more than we, we even do currently.

I completely agree. I mean, w- it, it, the, the competition level has gone up a lot. But if you think of shorter distances, or even up to the marathon, you have to be in the lead pack or you don't have a chance. Because you have a bunch of people who have almost identical fitness. If it's a 1,500 meter race, their PBs are gonna be a couple of seconds different.

These are almost identical athletes, and so they're gonna stay together, and then they've gotta make a move. In ultras, there's gonna be a lot more variety between the top athletes of just how quick they are, or this one's a bit stronger on uphills, this one's stronger downhill, this one's stronger in the heat of the day versus if it's a bit cooler.

And so you've gotta be doing your own race versus just doing other people's races, and that's why I think a lot of the elite pack still blow up and fade back, 'cause they're doing someone else's race. Um, I think they could pace it better, and you don't have to be right on them. I think it's an ego thing of "I'm just showing that I can stay with this guy.

I'm, he's not gonna break me." Yeah, yeah. While I think in many cases if they just allow themselves to, to fluctuate so they weren't just in a pack for as long, but it's just, some of them go a little bit ahead, some of them a little bit behind, but they're all in tune with what their body can do, then I think there's the potential for many of them to go a little bit quicker.

Obviously, the ones winning these big races are the survival of the fittest. They're the ones who got this as close to perfection as possible, and then just others are trying to replicate that to stay with them and maybe get pushed too hard on something that's their relative weakness while it's the other person's relative strength.

But, um, I, I do think that there's improvement to be made rather than just stay in a pack or stay as close together as possible. Because just by definition, that means that you're doing someone else's race. You're not doing the pacing that is appropriate to yourself that you'll have learnt through years of running.

But it has smaller margins. I, I don't think there's gonna be huge differences for, say, the winner of a UTMB or a Western States by totally changing their pacing. By default, they are the one who did it best on the day as well as being super fit. But it's unlike some other distances, it's not just who's fittest will win.

It's gonna be who executes best that wins amongst some very similar high-level people. But I think too many of them definitely do what you said there, where they're maybe just giving up a bit of time by not quite getting that pacing right Mm-hmm. Yeah, o-one of the interesting things that I can maybe end this part of the conversation on with respect to that is, kinda like I was saying before, we do have the, the, the relative difficulty of determining what is, what is a, an effort at the mile going up Devil's Thumb versus going down to the river, and how do those all kind of mesh together to create a profile that you could even look at as even positive or negative?

And Nick Curry actually came up with a formula that he uses, and it's not that the formula's perfectly accurate, but he app- if he applies it to everybody, now all of a sudden you can see the variances within the formula, which I think can be telling. And I want to say his most efficient Western States was Courtney Dauwalter's course record, which was I think like a 1.9% positive split or something like that.

And, and that controlled for the downhill and the uphill, so, it's not like-- I, I think that actually means she probably ran the second half faster, but because he's trying to balance out the, the uphill and the downhill to make it appear like a flat race where every mile would be, would be exactly the same.

It's really, a really tight margin compared to what we see with a lot of the other results. So maybe she's kinda-- her, her, her race that year was kind of a, a sign of what's to come with respect to what's gonna produce the, the big winning times in the future when we see the sport continue to grow.

I agree, and, and that sounds very plausible there, when you allow for how much that is having an effect. I think the heat and other factors have big effects from one year to another, so you can't just replicate what you did last year. True. But I think another thing that kind of hits this home is that typically for these really big races, the winner didn't win at the first attempt at that race.

They also needed the course knowledge of knowing, "Okay, I can't afford to push too hard at that section," or, they're gaining pacing information about the course from doing it the first time or the second time or the third time. I think Jim Walmsley took, what, four attempts to win UTMB. I mean, he was as fit as anyone all of those times, but it's just being able to just get that pacing exactly right for yourself, and that's a very, very difficult thing to do.

Um, and even amongst these top guys, they're not gonna get it perfect every time. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, Jim's a fun one to look at even for Western States, too, 'cause I think I think he maybe said that the fittest he has been going into that race was in 2017, and that's the one year he didn't finish, so Well, exactly, and, and this is another thing I say to people, it's we- we're focusing on execution because there's no amount of fitness that makes you immune to bad choices in the race, or bad pacing- Mm-hmm

or not looking after yourself. Um, and I do use Jim as an example. I say, "He's been the fittest guy at Western States multiple times, but it took him three attempts to win it. Now he's got it totally dialed in, it's amazing, but those first couple of times he was still learning, even though he was probably just as fit, and as you say, maybe the fittest for one of those ones he didn't even finish."

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun, fun to look at some of that stuff, and it kinda does lead us into that topic of durability versus running efficiency, because I think it's just one of those things where anytime we attach the word running to a sport, whether it be ultrarunning or anything else, our mind goes to just maybe over-leveraging running efficiency as a variable that i- that is important.

Because it is an important variable, I don't think anyone's gonna argue against that, but then the question becomes well, how important is it compared to things that are maybe, that, that could potentially be, like, a balance with it, where the way I like to look at it is you take someone like Sebastian Sawe, and what I try to tell people is the, him being a sub-two-hour marathon That in and of itself retracts from what his ability would be to actually do well at a course like Cocodona, or maybe even some of these mountain 100-milers, like UTMB, is because w- he has to over-index on running efficiency to such a high degree that now he's making compromises in what would be, like, durability for a longer race on varied terrain that he just wouldn't be able to make if you put him on a UTMB course or a Cocodona-style course and things like that.

So if we did take someone like Sebastian Sawe and tried to make them really good at a course like UTMB or Cocodona, by the time we got done with that finished product, he would no longer be a sub-two-hour marathoner. He'd, maybe be, like, a 2:10 mar- which would still be plenty of running efficiency variable strength for, for the average ultrarunner.

But I think it kinda shows the point where you have to give back some of that in order to acquire some of the other variables at a high enough degree to make yourself a well-rounded enough package to do as good as you possibly can on some of these unique courses. I agree. I think what this kind of brings together is a few different ideas.

I know you're, you're referencing the Let's Run topic that was on social media about- ... Sawe. He-- Would Rachel Entwistle beat Sawe at, at Cocodona? And if it's tomorrow, no doubt, she'd easily win because- Yeah ... There's the specific training, there's the tactics and knowing what to do, and there's a big difference between being out there for two hours and being out there for two and a half days.

I remember one year I was at the Carlsbad Marathon and Half Marathon, um, and I was chatting to some of the elite guys there. So these are guys running close to an hour and a half. Um, and I was just saying, "But this is crazy. You jog at a five-minute mile pace, and your speed sessions are so fast."

And the funny thing that really hit home to me is they were saying, "It's so crazy. You can run half a day and keep moving well. We could never do that." So in the -- you, you can -- The thing that you can do is normal. The thing that you can't do is crazy and unbelievable. And it really hit home to me that these are objectively better runners than me on any metric you can think of.

But yet they thought of this ultrarunning thing as too hard and something they couldn't do, partly 'cause they've not tried it, but because they're not familiar with the slow pacing and all these other elements to it. But I think there is a lot of specificity to it to being able to practice hiking, being on that t- more technical terrain, having a backpack, eating more, and the sleep deprivation that happens i- in these long races.

And so there's two things I think that are a good way of comparing that. One would be if you had 100, 100 top-level Kenyan and Ethiopian runners and had them train for Cocodona for a couple of years, yeah, they would be the best in the world just because it's-- some of them would have the right attributes that, again, survival of the fittest would mean that they're all very fast, but only some of them would also have the necessary physical attributes for doing these long races, as well as the mental at- mental Which includes just the desire to do it.

You've got to be so motivated for these long races that if you don't care enough about it, you're not gonna put in the right work to train for it, and you're also not gonna be able to execute well on race day when things are going wrong, and you feel horrible, and it's not fun at all. So, they- there's clearly gonna be advantages, all other things being equal.

If you are a faster runner, that is a better starting point, but it is just a starting point. It's not, it's not enough to do it amazingly just because you're really quick. Another way of looking at that is the Comrades Ultra, which is the biggest ultra in the world, just over a double marathon. I believe you've done that as well, haven't you?

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, one of my favorite races. And so it's a rolling hilly course, hillier than a typical road marathon by quite a bit. And the top runners there, even though it's in Africa, and they have had some guys from Kenya and Ethiopia, not the top-tier athletes, but they've had quite plenty of them do it, they don't necessarily do well.

And if you look at what a Comrades runner looks like versus a marathon runner, they're a little bit stockier, their legs are a bit stronger, and so it- it's, it's not exactly the same attributes as you say. That, that kind of the running economy of running on a flat, hard road versus hills versus longer stuff, it's not identical, and you do have to train for that specifically.

Um, I suppose one, one other thing here is, the top 5 and 10K runners aren't necessarily the best marathoners. Mo Farah was very good at the marathon. He did a 2:05, but he was multiple world and Olympic champion at the 5 and the 10K. And so even though those are much more similar, there's enough of a difference that it's a slightly different physical set of attributes and a slightly different skill set.

And going from a, a marathon to a 250-mile trail race, they're, they're technically the same sport, but there's a lot more different there than people might realize. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think when you apply enough competitive pressure, it gets really interesting 'cause then you start thinking about what are, like, some genetic, like- The variables that you really aren't going to be able to play around with versus the trainable stuff.

'Cause I do wonder about that, that, that same approach that you said with the top 100 East African runners all training specifically for, for ultra. I actually wonder, too if we would take a little bit of a spread from let's say if we go best in the world, so slightly under two hours to around 2:10 from that same group, if there would be, like, a point somewhere between the top marathoners in the world and that 2:10 runner where we find this person who there's some characteristic about them that keeps them from getting to that truly top of the world type marathon, but that is actually an important variable for something like an ultramarathon on varied terrain that now all of a sudden has a chance to express itself.

And since they're already still able to run under 2:10 in the marathon, they really don't have that-- They've, they've already cleared that, that running efficiency bar, and now all of a sudden we see oh, it's really the 2:07 marathoners that are the world-class 100-mile UTMB runners or something like that.

Or, or another way of thinking about that is if you are perfectly physically designed for, say, 100-miler, maybe the best in the world at that that you can possibly be would be limited in the marathon because of the attributes they have that are ideal for the longer distance, and therefore they could never be the two-hour person.

Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. You just said what I meant in a much easier to understand way. But it is a really fun topic, I think, and it, it just kinda shows the, what I think is the exciting part about ultrarunning,

which is, there's more variables, and then we also know less about them to some degree, or we're extrapolating them out far enough with respect to what you can actually do in any given training cycle compared to the marathon where with a lotta, with, with a lot of the Olympic distance stuff, it's like the, you can do a workout that- kind of says, okay, if something does go wrong today, you're gonna be within this pretty tight margin of finishing time.

Whereas you get out to these da- these races that are a day plus in, in duration, now all of a sudden there's a lot of really things that feel trivial that can totally derail you, and we can't always practice them perfectly in the lead up, so we're relying on prior races and other people's races and sort of layering some of the, some of the, the standard practices in, in real time if you're in the sport right now.

Yeah, experience, tactics, being able to play it out over a much longer period. Um, three... One of the chapters I have is called Confidence, Discipline and Patience, and it's another practical thing that I find I tell people about how to pace early on. So first of all, you need the confidence to know that you do not have to zoom off, and it's a long race, and it'll play out over many hours, and shaving off a few minutes to the first aid station is not gonna matter if you fade a lot later.

Um, but that takes a huge amount of discipline and patience. You've got to be able to hold back and say, "This is a 24-hour day. I need to get through all of that, so I've gotta, gotta be able to think about how I'm gonna feel 10 hours from now, 20 hours from now." Um, and so that's, that's patience as well as the discipline to actually do it and not get dragged along a little bit faster just 'cause you can.

And this is one of the difficulties about long distances where you're out there for, for many, many hours or even many days, is it's such a low intensity, it's very easy to go above that and not really feel like it's difficult for quite a while. But, um, another good way I describe this to people is when peop- people move from, say, the 5K to the 10K to the half-marathon to the marathon, they're basically doubling the distance each time.

And for a good runner, they're probably dropping 10, 15 seconds a mile to go twice as far. So do that in reverse in ultra-running, that maybe that small margin of, let's say, fif- 15 to 30 seconds a mile difference means that you only go half as far. So if you do your 50-mile pace, it's gonna be similar enough to your 100-mile pace, but you're not gonna have much fun after the 50-mile point 'cause you'll be worn down more, your durability will have gone, you'll have burnt through your energy reserves, it'll have been harder to eat and drink.

Um, and you and I, we, we've both done lo- lots of flatter, faster races going up to the 100-miler. It's not super slow still to do those dis- those long distances, but if you're just a tiny margin off the right sustainable pacing, you pay for it hugely. Yeah. I think about that with respect to my best 100-miler, which you referenced earlier and in the book where I negative split.

There was a kind of an interesting scenario that happened. I, I wish I could say that I had this all planned out perfectly and it was just like, yeah, I just executed, but really the reality is on that day, the first third of that race, it felt like I didn't feel as amazing as I had at some of the other attempts where I ran relatively fast at.

And I think that, that just slight sense of feeling like, I don't feel like I have quite as much pop in my legs as I normally would kept me a little more reserved, where I just kinda knew "Hey, if I push a little too hard here with this sensation, I know where this goes, and that's not the spot I wanna be."

So I kept it a little more conservatively that, a little more conservative relative to my fitness at that point in the race because I kinda had that sensation. And then that kind of went away after a while, and then I had some of those stronger miles at the end of the race. And I think part of it was maybe just because I didn't really even feel comfortable being aggressive the way I would have in the past, where like in some of the faster ones I did that had a more of a positive split to it, it was like I felt very comfortable going too fast, almost like what you were saying, too comfortable to the degree where you can bite yourself real quickly.

For whatever reason, I just didn't have that comfort level that day despite like in hindsight looking back at my buildup and it was like one of my best buildups to one of those races, so I was clearly as fit as I'd ever been going into one of those events. And things just lined up that way where my perception and the fitness I had were such that I sort of self-regulated in a way that made sense versus some of those common mistakes you see with pacing early on.

Well, this brings up two other chapter headings that I have in the book, which is... And, and they all kind of overlap and fit together as a whole, and that's the whole point. But one of them is about adaptability, and another one's about finding flow. Um, the adaptability here is that you knew how it should feel.

You knew to make little adjustments. You didn't just say, "Oh, 6:40 per mile, just stay there." You didn't just look at your watch every time and go, "Oh, that, that mile was one second too slow. I've gotta speed up now." You were doing it by feel 'cause that was really dialed in through experience, and you were making little changes.

I mean, you didn't really vary much from the pacing at all because you made these tiny tweaks to keep it sustainable. If someone's doing a, a longer kind of mountain race, the, the paces will be varying way more going uphill and downhill, but you're trying to get a sense of how should that feel and is anything changing or getting more difficult, and then being willing to adapt and adjust and be flexible with that, even if it means you've gotta back off a bit now, but you'll save more time later than the little bit of time you give up.

And that's very related as well to that idea of finding flow. And in the book I explained that, this is when you're in that groove. Everything feels a little bit easier. It's very difficult to get into, but it, it's, it's a form of mastery. It doesn't happen when you're a beginner. It doesn't happen when you're doing a brand-new distance that you're not as familiar with.

But you'd done multiple 100-milers in exactly the same format, dead flat loops, to know what it should feel like, so you had that confidence and that knowledge of how to do it. And then you get into that groove, and you just stay there, having the adaptability and the awareness to make little changes to keep it on track and what things do you need to be careful about.

But it's an incredibly difficult skill to get very, very good at. This is something that'll happen after years and isn't gonna happen in every race. Um, I always try to get in at least, say, in a marathon I'd hope at least a few miles are in a kind of flow. Otherwise, I'm probably not pacing very well 'cause you shouldn't be tired early on.

In an ultra, maybe even more so because the early miles have to feel so gentle. It should just feel like suddenly the miles are flying by, everything's not very difficult. You're just monitoring things, but nothing is going into the red. But these are all the kind of key skills you need to execute on the day as well as you can versus just executing some pre-designed plan because things will be different to that.

Part of the, a, a good plan is its flexibility, and that's a very high level skill that a lot of people will avoid because, say, they'll think, "Oh, I want to do a three-hour marathon, 6:50 per mile. I've just gotta hit 6:50s and I'll do it." Instead of you putting the work in to be fit enough to do it, you get a sense of what 6:50 pace and three-hour marathon pace feels like so you can settle into that groove, and then you still have that flexibility to go, "Oh, this is an uphill mile.

That's gonna be a bit slower. Oh, there's a bit of headwind here," or, "I'm having a bad patch," and just tweaking things a little bit. But it's such a fine margin when you do it perfectly, but it's the kind of thing that, say, in a 250-mile race, if you aren't doing this well, little things unravel, and then everything unravels massively and it becomes a major problem.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. And o- one other topic that I think feeds into that durability side, I think once we realized as ultra runners how important that durability factor is, the next question became, well, how do you acquire it? What do you do? Do you do more of the same? Do you add in some new unique things that are gonna help improve the durability?

And then we start seeing the sport as a whole start playing around with some of these different practices and things like that. And one of them that's a little more popular now, and we're having these discussions online and elsewhere around is this the right direction to go versus something else, is the muscular endurance training theories that we see there, which have gotten popular partly because, like Tom Evans, Ruth Croft both are using these training theories, and they both won UTMB, so obviously that stands out when someone's winning races with a specific training theory.

But when you actually kinda look at some of the stuff that it kinda goes into that, and then we look at the sport as a whole over the years, there's kind of bits and pieces of that that have been around longer than what maybe some people think. And I think you're a great example of this to some degree, where you're probably the first person in ultra-running that I was aware of that was utilizing any sort of weighted vest uphill hikings in your practice.

And I think at times you've probably been used as a poster board, maybe a little more than you're comfortable with, with respect to how often you're actually doing that or how you're leveraging that training input versus other things. But I would like to talk to you about that, just like what the reasoning behind some of these muscular endurance type training sessions or these weighted vest uphill things, like where you see those as being a potential value add versus maybe an opportunity cost of you should be doing something else other than this in order to better optimize for the race course that you're trying to do.

Well, I would say the higher level concept here is really just the idea of specificity for races. And so you're trying to train your body for the physical and mental demands of what you're gonna go through in that race. So if it's gonna involve hiking, you wanna practice hiking. If it's gonna be technical, you've gotta be on technical sections of trail.

So it's about gaining the skills and the fitness you need, and then for me, I know in 100 miles or in the mountains, I'm gonna be hiking. So how do you get good at hiking? You do stuff that is a bit harder than what you'll have to do on the day. So you can do some climbs that are longer than the longest climbs in the race.

You can do stuff that is steeper than the race. You can use treadmills to do this. You can be outside, but the more specific and similar it is, the better. But ideally a little bit harder than what you'll deal with. Um, it's the same kind of idea that when you're preparing for a test or an exam, you try and do some questions that are harder than they'll have in the exam, so then you're fully capable of answering the actual questions you're gonna get.

So, I didn't even really think of it as I was dealing with muscular endurance or anything like that. I just thought of, well, I'm gonna hike, so I've gotta practice hiking. Um, with anyone I'm coaching, I'm trying to work on their weakest area because that's what holds them back. So if there's new elements to a race that you haven't had before or things that in the past have been a problem, this could be nutrition, like your stomach goes bad and then that's the thing that keeps slowing you down.

You've just gotta work on that weakest link. And in many cases the legs get so sore and tired that therefore you're gonna slow down more later. So strength work or hiking with a weighted vest or just hiking more, and maybe including more vert in your training with or without ve- weighted vests, those things are gonna help to make you better prepared for the things that are likely to fatigue you the most.

And I think people don't appreciate that once they go into the red and they push harder than is sustainable, they'll have- used up more than, than the amount of energy they think they have, and they're not gonna have enough to finish the race. So maybe it's a really technical section, like a boulder field or something, and they're just doing big steps, and it's not the way they'd normally be running, so it fatigues their muscles quicker.

So the way you can train for that is by having bigger steps, by having lu- um, lunges and, and box jumps and things like that in the training. So the idea of using the weight vest really is just to help feel stronger when you hike. And yes, I've been known to use it for a long, long time, but it's such a tiny portion of my training.

Like me, I met Alex Honnold 13 years ago, and he's known as the free solo guy, particularly 'cause he's got the movie called that that came out afterwards. But he told me that's 2% of what he does. But it's what he's known for, and also it's the thing- Yeah ... that he's very good at, and helps him with the stuff where he does have ropes.

But same with me, I'd use the weight vest hiking mainly in the buildup to a race where I maybe couldn't get that specificity in other ways. So I live in Oregon near the mountains, but the mountains don't get snow-free until July-ish to be able to hike on them much. So if I'm doing Western States in June, I have to find other ways to get in big, nasty climbs or to make it harder, and so I could use a weight vest to hike up a hill.

It was only a small portion of what I did. Often what I'd do is, say, a, like a one-mile hike up a, a fairly steep hill and back down 'cause I lived on a hill, and then I'd have a run that same day. So maybe I was doing two miles five times a week. The weight vest, not a huge portion of my training, but it's helping with that leg strength, with that ability to hike.

A little bit of the downhill strength as well so that the muscles can endure more. But the biggest thing that I was aiming for with that, and when I'm coaching other people, is trying to work on the things that are most likely to slow you down. So look back at your previous races. What are the things that caused you to fade, or what things are you relatively weaker at?

Um, I'm also not a great uphill runner, part of the reason why I have to hike more of it, so I was trying to work on that relatively weaker sect- to improve my ability to do it, so on race day it wouldn't slow me down as much and it wouldn't fatigue me as quickly. So that's really the, the idea there is just trying to work on the things that are most likely to make you fade or not have as much capability later on.

And if you can improve the physical fitness for that, then it doesn't mean you ignore the other stuff you can already do well. You've got to do that, too. But you're usually gonna get more bang for your buck from working on those weaker areas than working on the stuff you're already good at, so that you can go even faster in that first flat mile of the race.

But who cares, 'cause later on something else holds you back. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, you made some great points in there, and it's one of those things where when I see arguments against weighted vest hiking, a lot of times it seems to be centered on this idea that it's unspecific from what you're doing, enough that you should be doing something else that would get you a better value add than that.

It's not that the uphill weighted vest is bad, it's just there's something better you should be doing. But I think that makes a potentially flawed assumption with respect to what people actually have access to, where it's yeah, it's great if you live on the side of the course. And I mean, even if you live on the side of the course, if we're talking about a 100-mile course, you still might be quite far from parts of the course.

Or like you said you live in an area where you have access to mountains, but maybe parts of the year you don't have access to those mountains. I think when you start looking at it through the lens of practicality of what people actually have access to, and then it becomes a game of directionality, like, how close or how specific can I get with some of these tools that we have available to us?

And in some cases, that's gonna be weighted vest, uphill hiking if-- especially if you live in the Midwest or you're dealing with winter climates and things like that that keep you off the mountain No, that's a really good point. And, and to illustrate that even more, I would use the weight vest to build up to Western States for June.

I'd then do August with Leadville. I didn't use it for that because I could get in the mountains, and that's more specific. Mm-hmm. And yes, strength work can do elements of this as well in the gym, but what you're looking for is just can you do something a little bit similar. So if you're hiking in the race, hiking with a weight vest on a hill is similar.

I thought of it generally more as active recovery. It wasn't a super heavy weight vest. It was a 20-pound weight vest. There wasn't any running. That would be too much pounding. That would be the downside of potential injury and more recovery time would be too important. So for me, it was more active recovery.

It was a way I could get in more volume and some more specificity without it harming me too much, with it, with it being easy enough that I could, after I'd done it two or three times, it wouldn't leave me sore, and therefore it was very sustainable as active recovery that boosted volume. And I think that's the key thing.

And, and the chapter I have about, um, weight vests is, is al- also about active recovery. Even just- Mm-hmm ... going for a walk, it's the most underrated form of exercise. I think a lot of runners think, "Well, I, I'm not gonna do any walking 'cause I'm already doing lots of running, and that's enough." But that lower impact side of things, it allows you to do more, and all other things being equal, more volume will be helpful.

It allows you to help recover from some of the harder stuff. So you could do a weight vest flat walk with it as long as it's not too heavy, and that's still very gentle on the body. It's just getting the blood flow to the muscles. It's giving you some practice for doing some flat fast walking that you'll need to do in these long races anyway.

So there's a whole load of specificity, but I didn't use it in quite the same way that Tom and, and Ruth did, where they did some really hardcore sessions. I think one of the ones I'd heard he did was doing the vertical kilometer course in Chamonix with the weight vest, and it was a 30-pound weight vest.

That was a really tough session. That is a session in itself. Most of the stuff I was doing was like a second session in the day that was easy enough it didn't need its own recovery. But I can see the benefit of doing that harder stuff 'cause if you can hike well with that extra weight, you take it off, you can hike that same thing so much fresher and faster, and it causes less muscle damage.

So I totally appreciate the way they did it. I think that's great. I think most people don't have that level of fitness or the time available to add in that- Mm-hmm ... as the final level of, of performance. I think the way they're using it is something that very few of them would make sense to do. The way I've used it is something maybe more applicable where it's an easier level of it, and it allows you to do more volume and get in more hills and a bit more leg strength in a very sustainable way.

But that's the point, everyone's a bit different, and you shouldn't just mimic someone else's training. You're trying to work out what is the purpose of that for that person, and how would I get that benefit, and it wouldn't necessarily be the same way Yeah, that's a great point too when you look at it through the lens of what Ruth and Tom have access to from both a time, a recoverability standpoint, or just a point in, in their career versus what you're going to see.

Or maybe the real clear way to look at this is that a lot of people probably have maybe 10 hours per week to prepare for some of these races, and that maybe they can make some sacrifices during the peaking phase to stretch that out. But if we look at it on average over the course of the year versus someone like Tom or Ruth, who I'd bet they're spending 20-plus hours per week with everything, including the s- the recovery s- or the mobility and e- everything they're doing in the gym, maybe up to 30 hours at times if they're really pulling the lever for a peak race.

It's just a different equation to be playing with with respect to what you're gonna be able to put into that timeframe, and then also recover from it. So that is a really good starting point, I think, is looking at, well, what do you actually have available from a time standpoint, and then what are the biggest movers that we can fit into that?

And if you're doing the small movers that would be available to someone who has twice as much time as you or twice as much training history as you do, then you're probably putting the cart before the horse. A- and I think the other key thing there is their extreme fitness level. They are genetically gifted.

They're incredibly well-trained over a period of years. So if someone suddenly isn't working or they have more time on their hands, doesn't mean you should then whack up the volume and include all this extra stuff, 'cause you're gonna get injured very quickly. So it's, it's also something that only applies once you've earned the right to get there.

In fact I use that phrase just for speed sessions and long runs in general. You can't just be doing very low mileage or be a new runner and expect that if you do the same thing as someone else, it's gonna work for your body. You've gotta earn that right by having more base mileage, more base fitness, and to do something like a, a 20% gradient vertical kilometer, vertical kilometer course with a 30-pound backpack, just that alone is a very, very hard session, and you need extreme fitness for that to even make sense as part of your training.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I, I've had that conversation with people that are outside the running world and more in the fitness world, where they'll sometimes ask "What's the point of doing all those low-intensity miles? Just go do the interval sessions." And I try to explain to them, it's well, you have to understand, obviously, your goal and what you're trying to get out of it is the, is the big starting point here, but if you're someone like me or you or, or any runner for the most part, if we're looking to maximize the amount of volume we can do at those short intervals, long intervals, higher on the aerobic intensity spectrum, you're gonna be able to do and recover faster, do more and recover faster from those sessions when you have that foundation there.

So I really liked in the book how you explained that. You have to earn your right to be able to do the higher amount of volume at those sort of, in-- I shouldn't say higher amount of volume, 'cause it's still relatively, it's actually probably relatively lower amount of volume at those type of sessions, but the amount of mo- volume you're doing minute for minute is probably, is gonna be higher if you've earned that than it will be if you're just kinda going out there and doing intervals without any of that base training.

Completely, yeah. It does take time to get to that, and so I'm trying to explain these ideas in the book so people can see how it applies to them. And in particular, it's for things that I've been talking about for 15, 16 years now as a coach, and I've just- I've, I had people at all different levels, people who live in flat cities, people who live in the mountains, different ages, and it's trying to work out how do the same concepts apply, but you tweak it for that individual circumstance, and it's not one size fits all.

The key principles are- Mm-hmm ... but exactly what they look like in practice has to be tailored so that it's appropriate for what, where you are, and what you've just been doing. Ideally learning from your history. If you've been making mistakes, like you've been doing too much volume and you're constantly getting injured, then doing less is probably gonna help you more.

But it's trying to work all that stuff out, and, and I found that kind of fun, and the more, more chapters I wrote, the more I was thinking, "Oh, I've already kinda mentioned that in the other chapter," and just seeing how it does knit together. And that's why really this book is like my coaching philosophy really, how it all works in practice.

Yeah. Yeah, and then one, one kind of final topic along the line of specificity that I wanted to talk to you about is just kind of like dif- the train specificity because you talked about Karl Meltzer in the book as well, and he's ob- he's a great example for a lot of reasons within the ultra world.

Consistency's obviously a big one. He's been doing this for so long. I think he's getting pretty close to his 100th 100-mile finish. I think he's won... Was he winning like 50 of them now or something? That's like- It's something like that. The funny thing is when, when I was including the stuff about him, it was, "And he's won this number of 100-milers, and he's done this total number of 100-milers."

And when I then, a couple months later, I'm sending him back the proof and just to get him to sign off, he says, "Oh, I've done a couple more now, and by the time the book comes out there'll be even more." It's no, no, I'm just gonna say, "At the time of writing, these are the numbers," 'cause he's done so many.

And, and he's continuing- Mm-hmm ... and a lot of it is 'cause you get these principles right. You're adaptable and adjustable enough, and you're not just doing the max you can get away with. I think that's another key thing to point out to people. There is a trade-off of maybe after a few years, and then you go all in, you can still overdo it, and maybe you get that extra little gain for now, but maybe you're giving up a bit of your future as well.

And so the whole last section of the book is about longevity. How do you enjoy- Mm ... the sport for the longer term? How do you deal with maybe a, a changing relationship to running or really any endurance sport this applies to? But I think it's really important to point that out, that once you get close to your best and, and the best you can possibly be, the gains are so marginal that you've also gotta think of what are the trade-offs.

I know that I didn't do the absolute peak of my possible fitness because going an extra, 1% improvement from there was so much extra work and so much trade-off for lifestyle and potentially from then wearing me down maybe for doing this for the long term, and I want to do this forever. I want to constantly be a runner.

I wanna be that 90-year-old guy at the marathon where everyone's "Wow, he can still do a marathon." But I think at this point it's important to really think about that because often people don't realize how big the trade-off is. Maybe they just doubled their training for a year, and then injuries pop up, and they never run again, or they just get burnt out 'cause they do too much as well.

'Cause it's- Mm ... it's a tough sport. Training hard takes a lot of energy mentally and a lot of time and consistency for it to pay off. Yeah, and I mean, there's the mental, psychological side of that too, where, like you said, that last 1%, it's gonna take a lot of mental fatigue, and it's gonna almost recalibrate some of your expectations to some degree, where if that ends up being something where once you get into that later stages of life and you still wanna engage with the sport, you can easily train yourself to hate what you're doing- Mm-hmm

if that's your reference point. So I think that's- Well, particularly if it's not having as much benefit as it used to. You used to do- Right ... a certain amount of work, and you were 30, and it paid off in a certain way. Now you're 50. You put in even more work, plus more rehab stuff, and you're less fit, and that, that's a difficult thing to live with.

So you've gotta find other ways to get enjoyment out of the sport, other ways to get growth. A good example would be maybe you m- move up to a longer distance. I mean, that's what a lot of ultra runners do. They've just gradually done longer distances as they got older because that's something they can do, and it gave them a new challenge that made it invigorating and fun.

And actually, I've, I've got a question for you there. Yeah. I know you've, you've obviously been a high-mileage guy, particularly at your peak for setting world records. How has that changed over the years? Now you're what? Close to 40. And how do you see that changing? Yeah, I mean, I just turned 40 in January, so I'm, I'm officially a masters runner now.

Welcome to the club. But yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, and it's interesting because I'm still pretty high mileage, but I definitely have to do things differently around it. And, and I, I actually do think the mileage question can be a little deceiving too, because we are getting into some of the stuff you referenced before between what are your unique strengths and weaknesses, and how do you leverage those as an individual versus as what you see in the norm?

So for me, I-- and I think this is-- I mean, time will tell, but I think this has been generally true, as I tend to both enjoy and physically respond pretty well to high or low intensity volume, and interval sessions, like short intervals and stuff like that. They work for me just like they do anyone else, but those are the things that really break me down and fatigue me.

So usually if, if-- I just have to be mindful with-- I have to be more mindful now with how I engage with volume when I'm in a phase of training where I'm doing intervals close to VO2 max or intervals close to lactate threshold and trying to really pull that topper end of the aerobic intensity spectrum efficiency phase of training.

Because, when you're 25 you can just bang out a ton of miles and do those and bounce right back, whereas now it's if I try to combine those too much, all of a sudden that's when I start having injuries pop up and things like that. Um, other things too is it's volume is volume almost regardless of whether you're doing-- I mean, there's, there's obviously differences, but I mean, I can hop on a bike and get some volume that maybe I wouldn't have done in the past, where now if if I, if I do a, if a, if I do a training session and I'm like, "I could use a little bit of extra recovery from the actual impact of running," I'm, I'm gonna hop on a bike now instead of going out for that easy run that maybe I would've done 10 years ago or something like that.

But yeah, I mean, I think in, in general, I'd still consider myself a high volume training, but I'm definitely a little more strategic about it too, where, if I'm gonna build up for a peak of a race, I'm gonna use something a little, little tighter window for that than I would've in the past, and still, still hopefully extract the same amount of progress as I would've had from, from prior training builds where maybe I would just lean into that for a little bit of a longer period of time.

Well, the funny thing there, just as you were saying that, reminded me of one sentence that's in the book that, it's not a chapter, but it, it's actually really important here, everyone responds differently. So you know what things work for you, what type of training gives you the maximum gains, maybe certain types of speed sessions versus other ones.

Some people might do better from tempo runs than from interval sessions. They might do better from high volume, lots easy, than from lower volume with harder stuff. And you, you learn that over the years, and you've got to be able to, to leverage that experience. But obviously you've worked out what works for you.

I've worked out what works for me. It does change over time as well. But again, it's something where you, you, you don't just know that this is the perfect way of training, or here's a plan for anyone who's 25, who is already a three-hour marathoner, to train for a 50K. It's not, 'cause one person will respond very differently to another, and that is something that you always want to factor in, whether you're doing your own training or the coach that's working with you to see how your body responds to certain things.

Mm-hmm. And I, I would say the thing that maybe I've adjusted the most to is the, the interesting thing about the flat 100-mile stuff is you're, you're, at least, at least from where I'm at from just a, a running potential standpoint, I'm engaging with an intensity that is well into zone two, and then sometimes maybe even pushing up to the top end of that or crossing over into zone three with race-specific intensity.

So I have to be very careful with that because that's not generally where you wanna be sitting most of the time because, like you've mentioned in the book, you kinda have this situation where if you're doing too much of that, now all of a sudden to go and do the interval sessions, you're gonna do those at a lower quality, and you're you're just doing everything wish you wa- or low quality for everything, essentially, when you're doing that.

So it ends up being something where picking and choosing when your peaks actually are, are different, where if I'm gonna do a phase of training where I'm building up my race-specific stuff, I just have to know okay, I can't lean into that for too long because this isn't necessarily something that's gonna be productive for me to be doing for more than maybe four to six weeks outside of this particular event itself.

So if I wanna be doing more of these in the future, I probably don't wanna lean into that thing that feels exactly like what I should be doing on race day too often. And, and when you're doing 100 miles, I mean, that's still half a day. Mm-hmm. That is a relatively low intensity. You're doing it very fast, but the intensity is low.

Mm-hmm. And, and I think that's something people don't get. It's not that you just do way more speed sessions or something. You're doing high volume, but most of it is very easy for you. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean, the- these are all the nuances that y- you've dialed this in. You didn't get a world record on the first attempt of doing that.

You have the years of training, the getting to know your body, knowing the signals it's giving you during training, in recovery, overall, um, and that's why y- you get to that level. And, I think hopefully people can appreciate how their body works, and they're not necessarily going for world records, but to get that PR or to get that age group place, it takes a lot of knowledge about your body.

It's not... Another way of thinking of this is when, when I'm speaking to people, I'm not just trying to tell them what to do, I'm trying to help them learn how their body works so they can do it better in training and making adjustments, and also on race day. 'Cause, you can't be halfway up a hill in a race and go, "Hey, coach, can you tell me, should I speed up or slow down?"

Right, yeah. You gotta be able to do that yourself, and if you're not practicing it, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, that's perfect. Are you training for anything right now, Ian? I've been enjoying marathons a bit more in the last few years since the pandemic. So I'm... These downhill ones that Revel, they organize a series around the country, so I've been enjoying doing that just 'cause it's fun to run fast.

But Comrades next year, 'cause that'll be the 100th race ever of Comrades. It's gonna be the biggest ultra in history, 35,000 people. It'll be my ninth time going to South Africa for that, so that's a year out from this point, so I'm- Okay ... I'm excited for that. Well, that means you've got at least one more Comrade after that that you have to do, right?

Then I'll have at least one more, 'cause that's 10, and then you get what's called a green number when you've done 10, and so y- you get a bib on the front and back that is green colored. And then I'll have to do at least an 11th because you gotta run with the green number to get that experience. Oh, yeah, yeah.

They've got you, they've got you- Tight ... tied in. Yeah. They... Well, it's good marketing, but I, I mean, when you love something, and then they add on these extra things, it's okay, you know- It's so easy ... you've got, you've got me there, yeah. Yeah, they don't need too much bait to get you- No ... to bite. Have you thought about ev- doing any of the multi-day stuff?

Um, not a 200-miler, but I have done quite a few multi-stage races. Mm-hmm. So things like- That's right ... Marathon des Sables, which is actually what got me into the sport. I kinda don't have sleep deprivation, to be honest, for me personally. Mm-hmm. I know this about myself. I'm not saying I'll never do a 200-miler, but for the moment, I like the adventure of single-day things.

Um, there's enough challenge there to keep me interested. Um, and I think I'd go back to a multi-stage desert-type race before I'd do a 200-miler, because it's just so ... It's a very good social thing. You run for a few hours in the morning, then you're in the middle of nowhere, no phone reception, no connection to the modern world, and you just hang out with people and make friends and, and have a good connection that it's difficult to do when we have phones and laptops and, and Wi-Fi.

So that appeals to me more, which is a similar kind of thing, like a week long, maybe 150 miles, but you get to sleep at night, and you get a, a, a proper way to recover between each of the sessions. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, I've, I've thought about it, that with respect to what I would like to do with a multi-day at some point.

It's one of those things, too, where- I, I mean, you and I are probably similar in this regard where there's, there's a lot more to what we're doing other than just the training and racing side of things. So you have to consider those, too. And- Mm-hmm ... any time I add something that is going to be inefficient because I'm doing it for the first time, you can really take for granted how efficient you've gotten within the context that you are to make everything work.

So, between podcasting, coaching, and training and racing, it's like I've gotten very efficient with what I need to do, when I need to do it, and how I can fit that into my day for a single-day thing. If I start deciding to do a six-day event or something like that, now it's okay, well, something's gonna have to give there, and then you, then you're, you're, you just gotta pick and choose where your compromises are at that point, too, where it's a little easier just to jump into something that fits within that framework that you've built already, too, so.

But when you have the off-grid for a week just for doing that six-day race- Right ... plus afterwards you don't wanna come back to an insane workload. Right. I'm just amazed at how people do this, 'cause, people have jobs and lives, and to take that time off, it's more than just that week. It's not like a vacation where you come back from it, maybe refreshed.

You are not refreshed after you've been running all week. Mm-hmm. You need another holiday afterwards to recover from that, except then you're gonna have to deal with this, all this other stuff. So- Yeah ... the logistics of it is one of the things that puts me off. But never say never, 'cause again- Right ... part of the book is about how to keep it interesting and do new things.

I'm excited to do plenty of new things. Running is such a wide scope of things. It's not just roads or trails or mountains or jungles or whatever. It's all of them. I mean, there's not much similarity between a 1,500-meter track race and a 250-mile mountain race, but they're the same sport. It's available to, all of that stuff is for us.

We don't have to pigeon ourselves, pigeonhole ourselves into just one element of it, and the more you broaden it to being not just an ultra runner, but a runner, not just a runner, but an athlete, then it opens doors to so many options as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, o- one thing that you s- mentioned that I, I thought was funny is I had Meg Eckert on the podcast after she broke the women's six-day record, and we were trying to just frame that in a way that made sense to people, and I remember thinking, you literally spent almost 2% of your year at that event.

That, and then you've, like you said, you add in the okay, what do I gotta do to actually logistically prepare for that, and then how much of a mess am I gonna be for the week following before I actually start becoming productive again? And it's yeah, you're looking at 4 or 5% of your year just- For the event itself, not, not the training or anything else that goes into that.

So it is one of those things, I think, like when you actually back up and look at it through those numbers, you're like, "Okay, well, maybe that's why I'm not gonna do a six-day anytime soon." But, that can also be the reason why someone does want to do it. Right. You're right, yeah. Because it's such a big commitment- because it's such a big challenge.

Mm-hmm. Um, and, that's the nice thing as well. When you open your mind to different options, you can go, "Oh, actually, I, I could do that, and that does appeal." But I think that, a g- a good final thought maybe is don't do stuff just 'cause you think you should. Right. D- do stuff... make sure you really do care about it, 'cause the longer and the tougher the race is, when you get to that moment where you're thinking, "Why am I doing this?"

If you don't have good and really, really good answers for a six-day race, then you can answer that question a million times with some different answers. One of them might work for a couple of days, but then stop being a motivator. So it's very difficult to do that. But, whenever someone's picking races, I'm trying to think, "Okay, what do you actually like?

What, what's gonna have meaning for you that isn't just you want to get a buckle and show it off on social media?" But you, you have intrinsic value that that's something that, that is something you care about and will, in the moment, not be something where you just give up because you don't like it. Yeah, perfect.

Perfect. Well, Ian, it's been great to chat. I think we covered some really interesting stuff, and hopefully the listeners will be excited enough about what we talked about to dive in a little deeper, 'cause I think your book's gonna be an awesome resource for the ultra-running community. But before I let you go, if you don't mind sharing where people can find you, where they can get the book when it comes out.

I'll make sure I put all that stuff in the show notes. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm on social media, @charmanian, @charmanian. I'm on most social media, but not TikTok. And then charmanultra.com is the coaching. We have a whole load of other coaches, including Meg Eckart, who just joined the team. Yeah. And then the book is The Art of Ultrarunning, and that's online everywhere.

It comes out probably about the same time as this podcast. At some point in late June, it'll be available everywhere. But yeah, Art of Ultrarunning, it's definitely on Amazon at the moment, and Target, and a couple of other places. Very cool. Well, thanks again, Ian. Thanks a lot, Zach. Take care.